Greek Revival: Chapter 1

I.

The first time Ari saw the guy, he was carrying a book entitled BIRDS. All caps, nothing else. Not even an author’s name visible on the part of the spine that his large square fingers weren’t obscuring. Just BIRDS.

It was a cold day in May, too cold, “unseasonably cold,” as the women who came into the bakery with their unruly grandchildren kept saying. As though every season in New Hampshire wasn’t unseasonable. There had been a snowstorm a few days prior, and although the snow was long gone, there was still an uncomfortable grey bite in the air and a thin layer of dirty slush on the curbs. Several trees had foolishly bloomed too early and now their flowers were pinned to the ground under that slush. Presently, Ari pretended to pick one of those flowers off the toe of their boot – or rather, they actually did pick it off, but they did so only to disguise their observations of the guy. Why they were observing the guy, they couldn’t say. The writer’s instinct to people-watch, maybe, although Ari hadn’t written anything since they were editor-in-chief of the college’s literary magazine two years prior. But they were observing him, almost compulsively, like there was something sharp and compelling about him that they couldn’t look away from. Maybe there was.

The guy who carried BIRDS had a ragged bob of wavy, bleached-blond hair, although the uneven stubble on his chin and upper lip was dark brown, and the crown of his head was hidden under a large brown broad-brimmed wool hat – very Indiana Jones, if Indy’s hat had twice the brim and half the charm. He carried a dark green coat, also wool, herringbone, over his arm, and as he approached the stool next to Ari he indicated it with a gesture of his book-holding hand, and Ari nodded and said, “Go ahead.”

He spread his coat over the stool, opened up BIRDS, and began to read. Or to pretend to read, maybe. The lighting at Paige Turner’s Books and Beverages was, despite there being a bookstore connected to the café, uncomfortably dim for reading by, and the guy wore a pair of mirrored sunglasses which made it impossible to see his eyes, which in turn made it nearly impossible to discern his age – early thirties, perhaps? It seemed to Ari like they were sunglasses, anyway, although maybe they could have been those fancy glasses that change into shades when you go outside, but the longer Ari stared out the corner of their eye, the more certain they became that these were just regular sunglasses. Which he was wearing indoors on a cloudy day.

Cool. Definitely not a jerk move.

But even if he wasn’t reading, he was, at the very least, flipping back and forth through the book, stopping longer on some pages than others and tracing them with a finger. Ari watched him flick past puffins and pelicans and plovers as he rifled through the waterfowl section.

In the pocket of his baggy brown corduroys, a pager buzzed, and he stood up, pulling it out of his pocket, to retrieve his order from the counter. As he passed Ari again, they got a good look at the many, many carabiners, keys, and keychains dangling from a shiny silver utility clip attached to his belt loop. The clip had a sawtooth edge which glinted wickedly in the low light. They also caught a glimpse of an insignia embroidered into the sleeve of his slightly-too-large khaki button-up shirt. Dark green thread. A pair of crossed rifles above a double chevron. Ari didn’t recognize it. Some kind of forest ranger thing, maybe a scout? They forced themself to turn back to their raspberry danish and keep halfheartedly poking at their latest statement of interest for their latest grad school application. My passion for Euripidean drama was ignited primarily by a groundbreaking Brooklyn Academy of Music production, which –

The guy was back, carrying a mug in his cupped hands. The steam of his hot beverage wafted across Ari’s face as he passed, and they inhaled. Alcohol. Something strong, too. Turner’s offered margaritas every morning and beer on tap throughout the day, but it was – Ari checked their watch – a little after three on a Tuesday afternoon. Had he gone off-menu? Did he know the folks who worked the counter?

He picked up BIRDS again, and Ari could see now that he was still investigating the waterfowl, examining each picture closely as he paged through herons, egrets, and ibises, leggy birds with giraffe necks and knife bills. After a few minutes of this, he stopped on one page for longer than the rest, stabbed his finger in the air, as if to say, “ah, of course!” and shut BIRDS with a thud, standing up to go put it back on the shelf. Without knowing why they did it, Ari opened a new tab on their laptop and began taking notes about the guy, quickly paging back to their statement of interest when he passed them. He stopped by his stool, picked up his coat, and shrugged it on, and Ari could see that the pockets were heavy. The right-hand pocket, the one closest to them, was full of something hard and square. A book? A wallet?

As if he’d read their mind, the guy reached into that pocket and pulled out a small blue notebook. From his pants pocket came a green ballpoint pen that he’d obviously gotten for free, as it advertised New Hampshire’s Most Convenient Banking Destination on the side. He sat back down, coat still on, and opened the notebook to a fresh page. Ari turned back to their laptop, attempting to appear studious, and continued taking notes. The guy, however, didn’t appear to be writing anything – based on the motion of his hand, he was drawing, and although the paper was mostly angled away from Ari’s line of sight, it seemed based on the general shape like he might be drawing one of the long-necked birds he’d just looked up.

Abruptly the pen went back into his pants pocket, the notebook into his coat pocket, and he stood up a final time. He downed the last of his drink and retrieved, presumably from an inner pocket of his coat, a pack of cigarettes in a bright teal carton. The color caught Ari’s attention. They’d known many smokers in college, as most editors-in-chief of literary magazines tend to do, but they’d never seen a pack this color before. They squinted as much as they thought they could get away with, trying to read the name. Panda cigarettes – the name was written in a flowing font above the heads of two panda bears. From the same pocket, a large silver lighter engraved with complicated designs that Ari couldn’t make out from the corner of their eye. He held the lighter in his hand, bouncing it gently up and down in his palm like he was weighing it, and stared into the bottom of his cup. He stayed that way for a while, like he was waiting for something. Ari brought their notes up to the present moment and kept writing their statement of interest. …framed the arguably misogynistic playwright’s work in a new and unsettling light by gender-swapping its lead character. He – or, in this case, she –

The guy nodded his head once, a sharp motion, placed his mug in the dirty dish bin at the end of the counter, and left the café. Ari, without really paying attention to what their body was doing, stood up, indicated to one of the girls behind the counter that they’d be back so please watch their laptop, and drifted toward the door after the guy. They could see him out on the patio, taking long drags from a cigarette and still bouncing the lighter in his hand. After a moment, he turned his head, just enough that one of his eyes was visible behind the shades, just enough that they made eye contact, the corner of his gaze to the corner of Ari’s, and Ari froze. Oh, man, now this guy knows I’m watching him and thinks I’m some kind of weirdo, which is fair considering I’m watching him for no reason.

The bell on the door tinkled, and a herd of backpack-toting kids, likely from the local high school, poured through the doors and swarmed the counter for after-school snacks. When the door finally swung shut and Ari’s view was once again unobscured, the guy was gone.

Ari went back to their stool, thanked the girl behind the counter, who gave them a toothy smile behind her neon blue lipstick, and closed their statement of interest. Ari reviewed their notes and opened yet another tab, where they typed in “crossed rifle two chevron insignia.” They found themself on a Wikipedia page for military insignias, scrolling through a lengthy table until they found the one that matched the guy’s shirtsleeve: the Marine Corps service dress “B” and “C” shirt, whatever that meant. Ari hadn’t taken this guy for a Marine, ex- or otherwise. (But if he wasn’t, did that mean wearing the shirt was stolen valor? Did anybody actually care about stolen valor? Ari didn’t know.) The bleached chin-length bob would have been a surprise on a Marine, for one thing, and he was a sloppy dresser. His corduroys had been baggy, the shirt oversized. Ari was used to associating the military with their grandfather’s pressed, starched, stiff Air Force pride. This guy had looked more like one of those backwoods, off-grid hippies you sometimes get in New Hampshire: deer-hunting, trout-fishing cabin-dwellers, half of whom are crotchety right-wing libertarians and the other half of whom believe ecoterrorism might be a viable backup plan if selling homemade jewelry doesn’t work out.

Maybe the shirt wasn’t his, though, Ari reasoned. Maybe he was just a garden-variety civilian. A slightly weird one, sure, but weren’t they the one taking notes about him? Ari couldn’t explain what about him had caught their attention, nor could they justify it to themself. After a few minutes, they gave up on trying.

“Hey,” they said to the girl with the blue lipstick. Sonya, according to her nametag. “Did you know that guy?”

“Hm?”

Ari indicated the empty stool beside them. “The one who was sitting here.”

“Oh! No, but he tipped Flora a 20 so she would make him an extra-strength hot toddy even though it’s not the winter menu anymore.”

“Weird.”

“I guess.” Sonya shrugged. “Can I grab you anything while I’m over here?”

“No, that’s fine. Thanks though.”

Ari packed up their things and left.

The next day was Wednesday – the first day of the work week at Full English Bakery, which was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays – and Ari drove their puttering little hatchback across the river and parked behind the bakery and moved through their morning tasks like a robot. Don the black-and-white striped apron, peel ten pounds of carrots, wash dishes, take over the register while Virgil goes on his break, offer the customers the list of one hundred types of tea, wash dishes, make the blueberry cornbread batter, wash dishes, peel ten pounds of potatoes.

The kitchen was small but well-appointed; it had to be, since there was no wall to separate it from the rest of the bakery. Customers could, and did, peer in at the bakers at work. When they did, they’d see gleaming stainless steel ovens and a massive walk-in fridge and another massive walk-in freezer and fancy marble countertops and three black-and-white striped bakers. Apparently the aprons had specifically been chosen for their pattern, which disrupted the gaze and made it harder to tell when they were soaked with sweat from the heat of the ovens and the closeness of the kitchen on hot summer days. If you weren’t near enough to notice the sweat beading on the bakers’ foreheads, or you were a wealthy Vermonter who never thought to look twice at service workers, you could easily imagine the operations of the kitchen as effortless. Three easy, breezy zebras in a magazine-photo kitchen.

Ari was the most recent hire and functioned as an assistant prep cook and assistant dishwasher in addition to their official role as assistant baker. Greg was next in the line of succession, barely old enough to drink, but he’d been working at Full English since he was a dweeby high schooler with an Afro too big for a hairnet. In addition to good-naturedly bossing Ari around at the prep station and the dish pit, he spent most of his time cracking jokes with the other boys. Teddy was, appropriately, a bearlike man, the boss, owner, and head baker, whose massive, heavily-tattooed hands turned out some of the most delicate pies and quiches Ari had ever seen. And once customers had satisfied themselves with watching the three of them work, they could turn their attention back to tall, fox-faced, purple-haired Virgil, who worked the register and brewed all one hundred of Full English’s tea selections.

“What’s your problem, Real Estate?” Teddy asked Ari, elbowing them in the shoulder as they stared into the middle distance, working the potato peeler like an assembly line. They jumped.

“You’ve used that one already,” Ari replied, getting a hold of themself and the potato in their hand.

“Yeah, well, there’s only so many things with the initials R. E. Why are you a space cadet today?”

“I’m not,” they protested, gesturing to the eight or so pounds of potatoes they’d already peeled. “This is my normal peeling rate.”

“Yeah, but your normal making-a-face-when-Greg-makes-dick-jokes rate has gone way down. You haven’t been listening to us all day.”

“Sorry.” Ari straightened up and peeled a little faster. Even in a small and relatively friendly kitchen like that of Full English, not listening could get you seriously injured or, worse, fired. “I’m fine. What’s next after the potatoes?”

“Your break,” Teddy pointed out, beginning to sound more concerned.

Ari grimaced. “Yeah, right. Obviously. I meant after that.”

Teddy squinted at Ari for a moment, and they held their shoulders taut and tried to look present and un-space-cadet-ish under his gaze. Finally Teddy sighed, seemingly deciding they weren’t worth any more trouble, and said, “I have you on pie crust duty today so I can focus on trying out that new savory scone I’ve been developing.”

“Cool.”

“When you get out there, tell Greg he needs to get his ass back in here. Those carrots aren’t going to pickle themselves.”

Ari grabbed their laptop and lunchbox from their cubby, in a narrow, dim hallway beside the walk-in freezer, and proceeded out the back of the restaurant. They found Greg sitting on the back steps beside the big blue recycling dumpster, smoking a cigarette.

“Those things’ll kill you,” Ari said. Greg glanced up at them with a wan smile. It was an inside joke as old as Ari’s employment – so not that old, but still.

“Not as quick as spacing out in a kitchen will.”

So everyone noticed. Great. Cool. “Teddy said to tell you to hurry up.”

“He didn’t say that.”

“He said to get your butt back inside.”

“Better. I guarantee Teddy said ‘ass,’ but better.”

Greg took another drag and dropped the butt of the cigarette, crushing it under the heel of his boot. He picked up the carton, which Ari hadn’t even noticed sitting between his feet, and moved to tuck it back into his pocket. Ari saw a flash of teal.

“What kind do you smoke?” they asked, hoping they sounded casual.

“Hope you’re not planning on starting.”

“No way. I’ve just never seen that kind before.”

Greg handed Ari the carton. “Panda. Around here you can only get ‘em at the Nanjing Marketplace, but I like ‘em better than any of the American brands I’ve tried. They taste better. Apparently they’ve got some special filter design or some shit.”

“Oh, that’s like five minutes from my apartment.”

Greg knocked his shoulder against theirs. “Then why don’t I see you around more, huh?”

In their almost-a-year of working at Full English, Ari had never once been able to tell if this was Greg flirting with them or if he was just like this all the time, and they still hadn’t decided if they wanted to figure it out.

“Remember thirty seconds ago, about Teddy and your butt?”

Greg laughed. “Enjoy your lunch. Don’t take up smoking.”

Ari opened their lunchbox, with the intent to eat the leftover tortellini they’d packed for themself, and their laptop, with the intent of finishing up at least one graduate program application before their half-hour break was up. When their laptop flared to life, though, their last open tab was not their statement of interest but their notes about the weird guy from Turner’s. Despite themself, they scrolled back through. The encounter, if it could even be called that, had taken on an almost mythic quality to Ari in the past twenty-four hours. The sunglasses inside, the waterfowl, the sketching, the drinking and smoking, the Marines shirt, the dyed hair, the Indiana Jones hat, the fact that – they’d realized afterward – they hadn’t heard him speak or even make a noise in the half hour or so that he’d been sitting next to them. Ordinarily people at Turner’s exchanged pleasantries and book recommendations with their seatmates or at least audibly thanked the baristas. Although, Ari supposed, a twenty-dollar tip was better than a thank-you of any volume.

“He wasn’t even that weird,” Ari said aloud, addressing this point to the recycling dumpster, which did not appear to care.

As they closed their tab of notes about the guy and opened their statement of interest, they felt a prickle at the back of their neck, like someone was watching them. Ari spun around, and the door back into the bakery clicked softly shut.

“Eff off, Greg,” they called to the door, which also did not appear to care.

Ari ate their tortellini and, as their lunch break was drawing to a close, sent off their finished statement of interest along with their application form and transcripts and GRE scores and an excerpt from their thesis. Another grad school application down, another million to go. They fought the urge to bang their head against the uncaring dumpster. They settled for packing up their things and going inside to beat some butter with a rolling pin until it was ready to become pie crust. That usually helped.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.