Fan

He had his computer at the coffeeshop not because he worked better in public. Later, he would have to erase everything and start again, all these stray thoughts infecting his own, but he couldn’t be at home anymore today. Those walls felt like obscurity. These were mediocre walls, covered in quirky animals and newspaper clippings, but they were public. He could learn from these walls.

A young man did a double-take as he passed by. Trojan looked up a few times and saw him looking over, checking his phone, and looking over again. The attention was unsettling, and he had to ignore it. He wrote a line of poetry.

bent over ocean wave held at ten thirty

Lately, he was always putting numbers in things. Most of his documents started with “ten thousand” before he figured out what he was saying. Seemingly, he wanted to say something important.

“It is you,” he heard. The young man was next to him, and was looking down closely. “You’re Armando Truck. I saw you at a reading in college.”

Trojan was not Armando, and rather disliked his work, all washed out with mothers and sex, but he saw no need to contradict. He shook the young man’s hand, and spoke with an ordinary amount of friendliness.

The young man sat down. He began talking about his girlfriend, how she didn’t seem to pay attention to him anymore, how he was just going through the motions in life, that he’d never really believed in anything. Trojan wasn’t sure if he should comment, if he was listening, if he was meant to be there.

“I’m not who you think I am,” Trojan said, and the man stood up and hugged him.

“That’s so true.”