Title: Metronome (Chapter 3/?)

Rating: R for language and adult content (for entire story)

Summary: From hence emerge the prior stories of our heroes. Pre-RENT.

Disclaimer: You know they're not mine; I know they're not mine. I promise to clean them after I use them. I make no money from this. I apologize if I have stolen or caused any sort of bodily harm to anyone through the production of this written material.

FEBRUARY 25TH, 1992, 2:19 PM, EST. Tom Collins.

The café is quieter than usual—it's that small, almost indiscernible pause when most of the lunch crew has left and the afternoon coffee-drinkers are about half an hour from coming in. Something you need to have waited tables to know—and therefore something that half of this neighborhood could probably tell you. Well, the ones who aren't dealing or stripping, I suppose. The nice thing about the Life, even if it is up on 10th Street, is that the window seats have an extra padding in the back, as if you're being doubly rewarded for minding your own damn business and watching the living art of the street pass you by in a tsunami of existence. I consider retiring Heidegger for the day; I'm tired of Death and its relationship to being truly alive. There's enough of that in my life, fuck you very much. I just want to drink my coffee and watch that woman across the street winding a scarf around that little boy and—look at this scruffy young man who has dropped unceremoniously into the chair next to me.

"Hey," he says, not only friendly, but downright expectant, like we'd arranged to meet here, like we're old friends. "How're you doing?"

"I'm quite well, thank you," I answer slowly. "Yourself?"

"Oh, great, thanks a load," he says, all in a rush. "Look, my friend and I"—and he gestures across the room to where some kid who doesn't look old enough to have graduated high school seems very involved in filming his own feet—"were just thinking that you look damn familiar, and we wanted to know from where." He shifts inside his worn leather jacket, and smiles at me. It's all so absurd that I momentarily wonder if he's strung out—I have no patience for that shit—but his eyes are too bright and he's smiling at me so cockily I almost have to smirk back at him. God save me from the unsolicited attentions of young straight men. But he moves his head like he's expecting an answer.

"Well, I have to say I don't know. I'm here rather often. Pehaps we've seen each other."

"Nooo..." he says, squinting and smiling, "I don't think that's it. I just know...Hey, Mark!" he yells across the room, and while several heads snap up at his baritone, only one stays up. Camera Boy gives me a weak wave and dutifully walks over to my new unrequested friend, still lugging that camera. "Mark, this is..." and Leather Jacket stops, and looks at me. So much for my quiet afternoon alone.

"Collins. Tom Collins," I say, reaching out a hand. Mark changes hands around the camera and takes mine gratefully, like he's glad I didn't just have them thrown out of here.
"Mark," he says, pointing to himself, and rolls his eyes towards his companion. "And Roger. A pleasure."

Roger is still grinning like that cat that got the canary, but he focuses on Mark. "It's not from here, right? I feel like it couldn't be from here, we don't even—"

"No, not here." Mark has trained his eye on me. Almost unconsciously, he leans back, and while Roger's manic gaze is a focused, almost-cruising type of eyework, if he weren't so obviously hetero, Mark is looking at me like I am a work of art, like he is seeing everything around me. Like, I suddenly think, feeling a bit silly when I remember the camera, I am a piece of film. "A...a subway, maybe?" He ducks his head a little after he says this, like he's reentered the real world from wherever it is that he just was.

Roger takes back the conversation. "Do you take any trains near here? We could have seen you there." He nods at Mark. "Could be the subway."

I consider. "I suppose I'm on the F a lot. Second Avenue station." And suddenly I'm explaining to them how my boyfriend performs at this unofficial poetry club on Bowery and how I have to get back to Brooklyn some nights and when did I start telling my life story to total strangers? But while Mark smiles and glances out the window, Roger is positively glowing.

"That's it, that's totally fucking it. Mark, you douche, think about it—not only are we on the F all the time to go visit what's-his-fuck on 34th, but I know the place this guy's talking about—it's right across from CBGB's. I play there sometimes," he adds for my benefit, strumming chords on an invisible guitar. Ah, a musician. Now it all makes sense.

"What?" asks Mark, noting my expression. I smile, hold up my book, and indicate the three of us.

"A filmmaker, a musician and a philosopher sit around a table one day, drinking some coffee..." and they both laugh.

"Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke," says Roger.

"Or a bad movie," says Mark, a little ruefully. "Well, this is the neighborhood for it." I nod. "Um, Collins," he says, pronouncing my name like it's got a question mark in it, until I nod and indicate that that is indeed how I prefer to be addressed, "we can stop bothering you now, if you'd like."

"Although," says Roger quickly, "when Mark finishes his goddamn tea, we were thinking about going for Chinese. There's this place on 6th where the egg rolls are only ninety-five cents."

This is ridiculous, but it's also perfect. Steven has been working non-stop for several days, and I will admit to being a little lonely. And depressed, perhaps; a little too caught up in my Heidegger and the news for enough real human contact. And what the hell could it hurt, a little Chinese with these two artists, these two friends. We live in isolating times, I think. A little human contact might do me some good.

"Boys," I say, lifting the rest of my coffee to them before draining it, "to the Alphabet City avant-garde," and Mark grins and Roger's eyes seem even brighter. "Now let's get the fuck out of here."