Kurt ground his fists into his eyes and groaned. “I’m such a fuck-up,” he said.
Alan tugged Kurt’s hand away from his face. “Stop that. You’re an extraordinary person. I’ve never met anyone who has the gifts you possess, and I’ve met some gifted people. You should be very proud of the work you’re doing, and you should be with someone who’s equally proud of you.”
Kurt visibly inflated. “Thanks, man.” They gripped one another’s hands for a moment. Kurt swiped at his moist eyes with the sleeve of his colorless grey sweatshirt. “Okay, it’s way past my bedtime,” he said. “You gonna go to the bookstore today?”
“Absolutely. Thanks for setting them up.”
“It was about time I did some of the work, after you got the nut-shop and the cheese place and the Salvadoran pupusa place.”
“Kurt, I’m just doing the work that you set in motion. It’s all you, this project. I’m just your helper. Sleep well.”
Andy watched him slouch off toward home, reeling a little from sleep deprivation and emotional exhaustion. He forked up the rest of his omelet, looked reflexively up at the blinkenlights on the AP over the Greek’s sign, just above the apostrophe, where he’d nailed it up two months before. Since then, he’d nailed up five more, each going more smoothly than the last. At this rate, he’d have every main drag in the Market covered by summer. Sooner, if he could offload some of the labor onto one of Kurt’s eager kids.
He went back to his porch then, and watched the Market wake up. The traffic was mostly bicycling bankers stopping for a fresh bagel on their way down to the business district. The Market was quite restful. It shuffled like an old man in carpet slippers, setting up streetside produce tables, twiddling the dials of its many radios looking for something with a beat. He watched them roll past, the Salvadoran pupusa ladies, Jamaican Patty Kings, Italian butchers, Vietnamese pho-tenders, and any number of thrift-store hotties, crusty-punks, strung-out artistes, trustafarians and pretty-boy skaters.
As he watched them go past, he had an idea that he’d better write his story soon, or maybe never. Maybe never nothing: Maybe this was his last season on earth. Felt like that, apocalyptic. Old debts, come to be settled.
He shuffled upstairs and turned on the disused computer, which had sat on his desk for months and was therefore no longer top-of-the-line, no longer nearly so exciting, no longer so fraught with promise. Still, he made himself sit in his seat for two full hours before he allowed himself to get up, shower, dress, and head over to the anarchist bookstore, taking a slow route that gave him the chance to eyeball the lights on all the APs he’d installed.