There's a Pounding in My Head at 3:30am

There’s a Pounding in My Head at 3:30am

“Hey, how’s it going? They said that you work here?” he said touching my chair and then joining me on the back deck, facing the beach. I look up at him and wait until he’s seated in the Adirondack chair next to mine.

“Yeah,” I say shaking his hand now.

“I’m Mark. I need help with writing a book about this place. I need access to one of your business rooms or can you tell me about having a meeting here?” Mark asks sitting back and Turing his face to the sun. He’s wearing short jogger shorts that are pitch black with a gray shirt that puff’s in the breeze. His sneakers were Nike or the other, but I couldn’t figure him out.

I already liked him, but didn’t know why.

“I can tell you a story?” I ask awaiting his reply.

“Great! But, what is your name?” Mark asks and looks at me tilting his head to the side.

“Johnathan,” I say with the flash of a smile and the shaking of my legs side to side.

He regards my clothing, but only for an instant. He looks at me and asks for the story.

I nod. “I lived out of what was like a hovel in New York, a bare apartment with a bed and a desk,” I say and see, but more feel, than anything that he’s listening. He has a small lap top that he’s brought with him and he’s looking at the screen and now writing what I’m saying.

“I lived for the days of Starbucks that the man upstairs bought me from time to time. His kindness that taught me humility rained down on me. I saw him only from time to time, so that aloofness that I saw the second time we went to get coffee, I hid my reaction, but I knew him instantly.

Knowing him again taught me that he was very much who I wanted to become. I saw the suit, the briefcase, the fast talk of a typical New Yorker that I could only hope to hone, and the slick hair and asked him who he was.

“I live upstairs, one day you will too,” he said to me with hand on shoulder.

He became vacant because I figured out his door number, the nice shiny gold letters at the top of of his door read five eighty three, I knocked loudly.

“What are you doing here?” He said stepping out his door as if to hide his wife, his food, his life. I felt ashamed immediately because I had infringed on him. It was a deafening sound of something so loud as a fog horn in my ear, but it resounded in my head like no sound, but apparent space.

“I’m just leaving. I’m sorry, I thought I could just come say hi, but I know you have a life,” I said in all honesty.

“I have some chocolate that I got earlier. Would you like some?” He asked and I nodded feverishly. He went in, I stayed outside in the hall waiting patiently. When he came back outside with the chocolate I took what was handed me. I thanked him and left and then I heard him call my name.

“Come eat with me.”

“Okay,” I say behind my shoulder and coughing to clear my throat. I then walked up to him and followed him inside. What was like the level of cleanliness in a hotel, this apartment possessed, I walked through gawking at the artwork that looked more expensive than my years worth rent. I sat down what was like ahead of time because of the way he looked at me with a scowl and then I stood. I stood right back up.

“Would you like some spaghetti?” He said and I nodded.

I walked into the kitchen and the aroma hit me in what was like running into a brick wall. The sauce was the color brick. I looked in the sink for noodles and filled a big bowl that I found in the cabinet the color white as bone. The noodles, the sauce, the cilantro for garnish all made the dish a delectable treat even more than the chocolate.

I sit there at his table and he looks at me with a great big smile. “This was nice,” he said and it was that night that I put it all together. I lay in my bed, small bed compared to his, but I found no regret. I found that if I learned anything from the rich man, I learned that life was rich, rich as chocolate fudge or spaghetti. I found out that the richness of life was not found in materials, as much as I wanted materials, I found that life is real.

Then I turned to Mark who looked confused. “What does it mean?”

“While I don’t want to tell, I’d rather you tell me, but maybe there’s a misgiving in my story telling ability,” I say and sit back now relaxed after recalling the past to whom I think could be a good friend.

“No, I just need to know what you mean,” Mark says.

“In my time with him, he became who was like a father to me. He taught me apart from whom my biological father was, I loved that man, but the rich man was far above who I was born from. The rich man…”

“Let me teach you something. Where you come from should be cherished and thought of,” Mark says staring straight ahead.

And in my silence, I thought that maybe this new friend is saying something that I need to hear. If I’ve learned good things in my life, I just learned from him.

“Thank you for that,” I say finding myself teary eyed. “Being CEO came from the rich man that led me to a pounding in my head at three thirty a.m. But, I’d never be here without my biological dad,” I say thanking Mark.

“Oh, I thought that might be the case,” Mark says and I laugh.