“You know. This and that.”

“Stories?”

“Something like.”

He nodded like Hm, OK.

Like OK, fair enough.

Like a ‘Larry David scrutinizing nod.’

“Well hey, you know they have schools for that. An old friend of mine, Jerry, he used to write for, what’s it called…Harper’s! Used to teach at, uh, not Haverford—”

“Bryn Mawr?”

“The other one.”

“Swarthmore.”

“Swarthmore!”

I thought about whether or not to say what I was about to say.

Then said, “Where I went.”

His eyes lit up.

“Noo!” he almost yelled, not believing.

“Class of thirteen,” I said, not mentioning the extra two years it took me to graduate.

His gaze and stance 180’d.

“You went there…and you’re writing…but”—gesticulating, brow furrowed, like he was piecing together the damn Da Vinci Code—“now you’re doing”—gesturally dismissing my bike—“this?!”

Sure, homie was a curmudgeonly fuck. But he was also so old and enthusiastic.

I wanted to know what the trash bags were all about.

He kept asking me if I’d been published in this or that mainstream-ass mag.

Going Man, if only.

Wouldn’t that be something.

“You’d be able to quit…this!” cackling hoarsely.

“I mean, it ain’t all bad,” I said. “Gets me outside.”

He looked at me like I didn’t know what was good for me.

“Bro what you been doing? Shopping?” I nodded to his bags.

“Shopping? Ehhhh—”

But then the bus came.

“Oh man, here we are,” he said, picking up his bags and indecisively turning back and forth, between me and the approaching bus.

The bus stopped. The door opened.

“Hey—Sam was it? I’m headed down to the Wawa on Broad for a coffee. Why don’t you bike on over, we can keep talking a sec.”

“At the Wawa?” I said.

The bus driver gestured like Tf bro.

Like On or off pal, chop chop.

“Yeah I wanna tell you about my friend Jer—”

“OK OK, meet you over there!” I said, shooing him so he’d get on the dang bus.

But then I actually did meet him over there.

I hadn’t gotten a delivery in twenty minutes, it was almost midnight, and shit wouldn’t pop off again till drunk folks started ordering Taco Bell around 2. Plus it was on my way home.

This Wawa was the belly of the beast.

Blown af.

A fkng shitshow.

I held the door open for a trio of yelling drunk girls: one wobbling and crying, eyeshadow streaking down her face; the other two stabilizing her.

I turned to see where they went.

Into an awaiting Uber.

I let the door go.

Two huge lines to either register, extending to the back sammie station.

Seymour about two-thirds the way back one of them.

Seeing me, he pointed frantically to the standing-only bar table facing Walnut.

Where, I noticed, he’d stashed his trash bags.

‘Saving us a spot.’