marvin

Marvin Bryan was a quiet man. He was well liked by all who knew him but not known by many at all. He lived in his apartment with his Mother, Doris, sixty-five, and his sister Judy, twenty-six, both of whom were at this moment downtown watching the new James Bond Flick, he was not. Marvin worked in a building downtown which looked like every building downtown. It had 16 floors, which was really fifteen because thirteen, and all the bad luck that goes with it, was missing. His office was on the 14th floor and had, on its wall, one diploma and a picture of an inspirational message with a fish. On his brown wooden desk that looked like all brown wooden desks he had two sharpened #2 pencils, two black pens and one red one, his morning to do list, one black telephone and a set of five silver balls which if you swung one, would not stop clicking for exactly one minute twenty-five seconds. Right now Marvin’s office building was occupied by three janitors, two secretaries, one security guard and one office manager masturbating in the paper supply room. Marvin was not there. Although he would be there most days, this day happens to be a thursday April 26th and Thursday April 26th happens to be the day Marvin schedules his bi-yearly teeth cleaning with Dr. Harrison down on the corner of Patrick street and twentieth avenue.

Dr. Harrison was a little old man of seventy-six who, though computers were everywhere and were very much better for the environment, insisted on keeping all his appointments in a large brown leather book with yellow pages full of blue and red lines. Every year he would get a new book. Including the book that, at the moment, sat in front of Raychael Burton (his receptionist), he had 51 large brown leather books with yellow pages full of blue and red lines. The other 50 sat on a shelf in his main office and none had been opened since they were set there. Dr. Harrison’s practice had sat on the corner of Patrick street and Twentieth Avenue since he started fifty years ago and neither the interior, nor the magazines, had changed after all those years. His waiting room consisted of seven chairs with silver metal frames and grey surfaces holding their frames together. In the corner was a small table with a faux wooden top. The sole purpose of this table was to hold five magazines: two Men’s health from 1962 (june and april issues), a Chickadee Magazine from December 1977, and two national geographic from March 73 and July 86. These magazines were always laid over each other in a fanlike fashion because Dr. Harrison himself would come out between patients to put them back in order if any appeared to be moved. He did not know what to do with The Little Engine that Could book that was missing its back cover and pages four through seven so he simply allowed it to rest, out of place, in the corner of the table. On any given day some of those chairs would be filled but never all of them at once. Today two of them were filled by Johnny Decker and his mother Glinda. Dr. Harrison had 322 patients and knew every one of them by name but he had no idea what Marvin’s name was. This seems rational considering that Marvin has never set foot inside Dr. Harrison’s office in his thirty-two years of life. At this precise moment Dr. Harrison was deep in concentration as he worked on the 2nd molar on the bottom of the mouth of Mrs. Joy Maddison. Joy, for her part, was staring at the picture on the roof of a wet tabby cat asking if it is Friday yet. She wondered to herself, between the moments of pain as the drill dug into her mouth, if there would be any added humor in the poster if it was indeed Friday, being Thursday, however, she guessed she would never know. Behind her head Joy heard the clock hand move from the 11:14 position to the 11:15 position. She had been late for her appointment this morning, arriving at 10:44 for her 10:30 appointment, because she had been having coffee with her old friend Misty at a little bistro on the corner of 5th and main called the Three Bananas. They had been talking about last weeks episode of The Spinster and the Toad, which was her favorite show, and she had been so interested about her friends thoughts of Molly Sickle’s runaway marriage that she had forgotten all about her appointment. Finally, after a quick glance to her watch and a memory flicker, she shouted a quick “holy shit,” grabbed her purse and rushed out the door leaving her friend sitting there alone and dumbfounded. This would seem like rather rude behavior to most people but anyone that knew Joy knew she was, well, rather rude, and would therefore not be surprised. Misty, however, did not know Joy well, and was quite surprised. While Joy had moved on and sat pondering the humor of a twenty year old poster and Dr. Harrison sat digging into the crador caused by years of a secret obsession with black licorice, Misty was still situated in her chair at the Three Banannas trying to figure out what just happened. As Misty sat in a cushioned red chair by the window, sipping her mocca and watching a mother pull her stubborn young son behind her down the street, five feet away, sitting at the second stool to the left in a row of six stools under a bar table facing a window that looked out over the city square, sat a short brunette man of thirty-two. This was Marvin.
Marvin softly blew on his double espresso latte, half cream and heavy foam (with extra chocolate shavings), as he surveyed the scene outside the window, oblivious to the disgruntled woman sitting five feet away wondering what happened to her friend. Outside to his left there were six army vehicles lined up in a row on the side of the road. They were all army green camouflage but three of them had a bright white star within a circle on the side doors. Marvin wondered to himself how this would work to camouflage as it appeared to him to be a large moving bulls-eye as opposed to a way to blend in. He spent seventeen minutes puzzling over this fact when he realized that the sixth vehicle did not look like a vehicle at all but more of a large boat on wheels. Again he pondered how this would help anyone blend in with their surroundings. After an added six minutes to ponder this and five sips of his still too hot latte he realized that all of his thoughts were for nothing because, until they make a camouflage skyscraper, none of those vehicles would blend in around here anyway. This lead to thirty three seconds of wondering why they insisted on using the camouflage colours before he came to the conclusion that he really didn’t care and he turned his attention elsewhere. A group of school children gathered in a small herd in front of one of the vehicles with their teacher. They looked like garden gnomes compared to the largeness of the boat on wheels. The bright purples, pinks, and whites of their jackets created an interesting juxtaposition to the dark greens, blues, and blacks of the camouflage and Marvin consciously thought of how pleasing it all looked to him at this moment. To the right of Marvin, on the other street, two lines, each consisting of six school buses, traced the sidewalks on either side of the street. As Marvin was gazing over towards them a group of sixteen soldiers marched into his line of sight in front of the school buses. He thought about the irony of what he was viewing before he turned his attention again to the latte in front of him. It took exactly twenty-three minutes from the time Marvin received his latte until the time it was cool enough for him to truly enjoy it. From that moment Marvin had sixteen minutes to finish it before it was too cold and he had to leave it behind. At four dollars and sixty-two cents a latte, Marvin hated when that happened. At 11:17 on the morning of Thursday April 26 Marvin had received his latte twenty-one minutes ago and had only two more minutes to wait. During his trips to the coffee shop Marvin carried four things with him. They were now all placed in front of him on the wooden bar. One standard size notebook lay squarely in front of him. Out of two hundred and sixty three pages only forty six were full, but this was his seventeenth notebook. To the left of that lay his black gel ink pen and the miniature alarm clock he had set for 12:50, to leave him enough time to get back to the office. To his right lay the forth item, a black faux leather wallet containing fourteen dollar bills, two quarters, a dime, and an old weathered picture of Audrey Hepburn he had had since he was a boy of six and found it in an old magazine. He periodically wrote notes in his notebook:



11:14. Woman in brown coat walks from north to south through the square. She stops to pick up an old pepsi can and carries on.

11:15. Sixteen army men walk up the street to my right. Must figure out why they are here.

11:16. Burnt my tongue on my latte. Must wait the entire 23 minutes next time.

11:17. Woman to my right, sitting in a red chair, is on her phone complaining about someone ditching her. Wish she would shut up.

This would continue:

11:19. Perky blonde sitting to the left of me. She is perky. Too perky. I wonder what she would taste like.

11:20. Latte time.

11:23. Young business man walks from left to right in front of me. Preppy, too sun damaged