Chapter 3 - The Man of Wind and Moss

Pansy Angelica Doerr was a friend of Marco’s since freshman orientation. They were both eighteen when they met at Florida State, and their friend group, comprised of six, had moved to New York one after the other shortly upon graduating. Now Marco was going to turn thirty after this coming summer and he had begun to feel inadequate. He had yet to accomplish anything in the city but merely coasted by, waiting for something to happen. He came from Florida with no idea of what he wanted to do, and if you couldn’t guess, it was at Pansy’s request. She was the white girl in question.

“Imagine all of us living in Brooklyn,” she famously said. “Doing cute Brooklyn things.”

“What’s a cute Brooklyn thing?” Keith Kennesaw asked. “Riding the train? Getting Hep-C from a stick and poke?”

They were at a craft beer joint in Tallahassee and sat around while the sun set and the string lights came on. Marco only watched Pansy. He decided right then, half subconsciously, that if she wanted to be cute in Brooklyn, then goddammit, he was going to be cute in Brooklyn. He hounded his folks for some starter rent and found roommates that didn’t need his name on a lease. He bounced around doing jobs that only required him in the background. He was an assistant at a podcast studio. He was the janitor of a bike repair shop. He even tried his hand at writing grants, copy, and customer service exchange. Now, he was the stock boy at a natty wine store, really thriving.

When Pansy graduated, the first thing she did was travel. She was impulsive like that. A three-month stop in Los Angeles struck fear in Marco and made him panic thinking he’d have to move out there, but finally she came around. Now she lived in Crown Heights with her sister Doll and also Sasha, all of whom were at that same bar, sitting at the same table, when Pansy made the plan. Marco Wonder, Keith Kennesaw, Sasha Heckler, and the Doerr sisters, Pansy and Doll. Oh, and not to mention Dean McMurphy. Pansy’s boyfriend.

Sasha was already aware of this, and she was the first to deride it. By her measure, love triangles were old news. They were played out. But to Marco, a love triangle on top of turning thirty was a whole other beast. Coming back from his failed PR trip, Marco moved through Brooklyn with a sense of “What now?”

He whined to Sasha about it ceaselessly and she always offered to read his cards. She always knew he had feelings for Pansy, and he always assured her he wouldn’t jeopardize the friend group. But yet . . . But now . . . Time was running out! Even Monchito had spent years listening to Marco hem and haw about Pansy and had urged him to get off his ass and do something. Well, now Monchito moved away, and something had to be done. It was a ramshackle plan at first (“I’m gonna tell Pansy I love her”), but, luckily, the question of how and where was answered quickly. And that was thanks to a woman named Paula Hodstack.

Paula Hodstack offered him her cabin in the woods as a Thank You for house-sitting her apartment. Paula was generous like that. She was an older, gray-haired woman that Marco had befriended when working retail at the hipster wine store. She and her husband, Christopher, had moved to Brooklyn early, made a heap of money, and bought real estate that would make a kid in their twenties go into cardiac arrest. Now they biked around with drop bars and popped in on their friends’ galleries. They kept friends like Marco around because it reminded them of how it used to be. The halcyon days and all that.

Paula was a good listener though, Marco had to admit. They met years ago, and she took him under her wing and helped him out. Pinched his cheeks now and then. Prodded him to spill gossip about people she didn’t know and never would. When he started going on about Monchito, she never shied away. When he started going on about Sasha, she leaned in closer. And when he started going on about Pansy, she grabbed on even tighter. And maybe it was because Paula Hodstack was older, seemingly wiser, or just a new pair of ears, but Marco told her two truths.

The first truth was obvious. It was that he had always loved Pansy, he just knew how it looked. The whole unrequited love thing was a real drag. He had dated other girls and had settled nicely into just being Pansy’s friend, side pocketing but never fully discarding his affection for her, but it was when the whole Monchito thing went down when he fully embraced it. Just like the depression that came over him at La Playita. He benefited zero from keeping quiet. So, no more. No más.

The second truth was that there was a non-zero chance Pansy felt the same. Marco wasn’t crazy. Even Keith and Doll assured him a handful of times, and whenever Marco brought it up to Sasha, she sucked her teeth, further hinting at some confirmation. Dean and Pansy were on and off, hot and cold, and in the breaks between their tempestuous romance, there were times when Dean disappeared and Pansy arrived at Marco’s front door, her face still red and blemished from crying. He’d save her from the muggy Tallahassee air and let her into his apartment, and a lot of the time she just curled up next to him on the couch and they watched TV in silence.

But there was one time in particular, in Brooklyn actually, a time Marco held to his chest like a bird lest it fly away, where they spooned in his bed, and in the middle of the night she undressed herself and pressed her body close to his. She held his hands and put them on her chest and her waist. He breathed in her essence from the back of her neck. She turned to him in the night and kissed his lips softly, only saying, “It’s okay now,” before turning back and going to sleep. In the morning, she was gone, and, in a week, Dean had his arm around her again.

Paula agreed. With the evidence presented, how could he not shoot his shot? Fine, he had assured Sasha he wouldn’t disrupt the friend group, but things have changed. They were older now. The friend group was no longer held secure by proximity and obligation. Now you made a concerted effort to take the subways back and forth to each other, to link up after work, to do things not branded with the communal FSU logo. It was more precarious, yes, but more meaningful if it worked. They were adults with real lives now and life was for living. Love was for confessing.

“Have you ever been up to Five Ponds?” Paula asked. “Near Watson’s Tub?” She brought over her laptop and showed him images of her and Christopher’s cabin. They just had him over for dinner, plied him with expensive wine, and were now helping him plan.

“No, I’ve never been,” Marco said, leaning towards the screen. She clicked through breathtaking images: vistas, mountains, watering holes, trails, the awesome sprawl of the Adirondacks. The implication was for him to do it there, the confessing.

“Remember what nature is for,” she told him, squeezing his arm with one hand. And obviously she was right. How could somebody not fall in love out there?

After he agreed and they ironed out the particulars, he put on his shoes and headed out to meet Dean and Keith at a bar. “I can do this!” he shouted, fist pumping the air.

“Big bucks, no whammies!” Christopher shouted back.

“I don’t know what that means, but yeah!”

Walking from Paula’s place, tipsy, full, Marco was ecstatic. The trip would be a “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” situation. He would confess his feelings to Pansy. He would tell Dean to fuck off. He would risk losing friends. After all, he was going to be thirty in due time, and something in him painted a threshold. He had to step through the door either leaving all of his friends behind or taking the ones he wanted with him. Sasha was his friend. She’d get over it. Marco’s new life waited and nothing could stop him.