Story Preview Chapter | The Scooter
Marcus came over to Joel's place sometime in March, on his own scooter.
This was, in retrospect, a mistake.
Not the scooter itself.
The parking lot.
Joel's building had a basement parking lot. Wide, mostly empty, a decent stretch of floor between the entrance and the far wall.
Safe, they decided. Perfect, even.
"Race," Marcus said.
"There's a glass door at the end of it."
"We'll stop before that."
Joel, against every instinct he had, agreed. No countdown. Just a "go" neither of them can agree who said. Two scooters, roughly the same speed, straight down the lot toward the glass door.
What happened next is something Marcus has told at least six times since, each version slightly more heroic than the last.
Joel started slowing down halfway.
Marcus did not.
From where he was, gaining on Joel, this looked like winning. He rode the rest of the way with full confidence and zero deceleration, and rode directly into the glass door of Joel's building lobby.
The door survived. Mostly.
The security guard - a man who had, until that moment, been having a perfectly average Tuesday - came out of his booth with the energy of someone who had been waiting his entire career for this exact situation.
He was angry. He was dramatic. He was, crucially, not finished.
Marcus stood next to the scooter with the specific expression of someone who has just done something undeniably stupid but has not yet decided to admit it.
"It came out of nowhere," he said later.
"It's a glass door," Joel said. "It was literally just standing there."
"The lighting was bad."
"It's 4pm."
The security guard spoke for approximately seven minutes. Not all of it was comprehensible. The comprehensible parts were not complimentary. Marcus nodded throughout with the solemn attention of someone at a university lecture, which somehow made everything worse.
By minute four, it became clear that words alone were not going to resolve this situation.
By minute six, food had been proposed.
By minute seven, food had been accepted.
They ended up at the shawarma place two blocks down - Marcus, Joel, and the security guard named Ahmed, who turned out, once fed, to be perfectly pleasant company.
He showed them pictures of his son. Joel said nice the appropriate number of times. Marcus paid.
"So," Joel said on the walk back, "how was the race."
Marcus thought about it.
"I was winning," he said.
"Until the door."
"I slowed down."
"I know."
"That's when you should've slowed down too."
"I thought I was winning."
Joel looked at him for a long moment.
"You were."
