Marc’s apartment was on the ground floor and Paul said handing out candy would be a good thing to do even though Marc had avoided it all four years here in the city.
The two sat on Marc’s stoop.
“Halloween used to be my favourite holiday,” he told Paul, who’d picked up three bags of Mounds from CVS. They sipped from tumblers of Fireball. The wet cinnamon on their tongues, along with the smell of damp leaf petrichor, transported them home. They were two white boys who’d fled the white suburbs for West Philadelphia. Marc’s stoop had a view of the Avenue, and the young men watched nearly three car crashes and one subway trolley accident transpire.
“Looks like people are dropping kids off on the…gentrified blocks,” said Paul. “Can’t blame them.”
“When I was a kid, we’d put out this gaudy dancing skeleton flag. Sometimes a Muppet cat,” said Marc. “Seasonal ‘90s shit. The other neighbors would put them out too.” Marc drained his whiskey. “Nothing like that here.”
A group of teenagers, who were Black, approached Marc’s stoop with their bookbags swung over in front.
Marc asked, “Where’s your costumes, guys?”
They held out their bags and stared. Marc didn’t ask again.
Paul and Marc had exhausted all three candy bags well before 8:00 PM, when Marc suggested food. He pushed himself off the stoop, knocking over his fourth tumbler of whiskey, sliding an ice pearl on the porch.
“How many drinks is that?” Paul had tsked when Marc had reappeared with his third.
“Kill the lights before any more kids jump down our throats.”
Marc was drunk in a way in which, when he squinted, streetlights became segmented bars, like the white cells around orangeflesh.
Another trolley boomed. They hurried to the south side of the Avenue.
Across the street, moonlight shone on the upper bars of the geodome jungle gym.
Three teenage boys chucked Good & Plenty boxes at a man in a cow costume. Had the teens been one of the groups Marc had wanted to refuse? He cursed at them – loud enough for them to hear.
“You want to get us shot?” said Paul, who still read the university newspaper’s crime column. He pushed Marc down the Avenue. Then an African American man hunching in front of the liquor store beckoned, saying he needed something to eat.
Paul said, “Sure, friend, I got you,” and dug into his pocket.
“Anything helps. Anything. I’ve gotta eat.”
Paul gave the man a fistful of change. Marc stormed away.
When Paul met him a half-block from the liquor store, Marc said, “He lied. He’s going to go in there and buy booze. You’re not helping him.” Paul only thought on the surface of matters; when Marc turned he saw, sure enough, the man strolling into the liquor store. After another streetcar bumped past, Marc and Paul walked into the Green Garden. In the last four years, Marc and Paul had ordered from the Green Garden about once a week. They’d eat sesame tofu on Marc’s porch and drink.
Instead of a crowded store, Marc saw only the family who worked there, sitting at the lone table, enjoying something from ceramic bowls and plates. The store was completely empty.
No one ever dined at that frail table and chairs. A tall, gray thermos with a silver ring around its base stood in the middle of the table.
Marc had assumed a friendship out of mutual nods and smiles with the Green Garden owner, a woman whose name was Li Ming, but her American name was Emily. The family’s environment contrasted with the teenagers in the park. The family sipped from deep spoons, their expressions peaceful, statuesque. It all appeared like a Norman Rockwell painting, something from Nighthawks.
“Look at that thermos,” Paul said, pointing.
“Yeah. Bet there’s some high-grade ginseng in there. You could go for days. Like a steam engine.”
“Go get me two spring rolls,” said Paul, frowning.
Marc pushed inside while Paul stayed out.
The table was set under a small sunbleached poster of a soft pretzel. The woman, Emily, her husband, and then her daughter turned; she wiped her mouth with a beige cloth. The teenage daughter, who Marc called by her American name, Natalie, wore an Eagles crop top. You’d never see Natalie out trick-or-treating. “You’re not closed, are you?” he said. Questions heated his forehead. Why were they here in the customer area?
“No! Come in!” Emily’s husband blurted. He strode through the door behind the counter.
Marc stared at the broth, at the four oil pearls clustered into a comma. The food he couldn’t recognize either. The thermos was tall and rose almost to Natalie’s chin.
At the window, Marc ordered sesame tofu and Paul’s rolls. Emily and Natalie still sat over the soup, the cups of hot tea, and the gray thermos. “That tasty? I bet it’s why you’re so…successful. Not like,” and he nose-motioned to the boys in the park. Emily and Natalie stared at each other. Finally Paul entered. The two moved near the flickering ATM. “That,” Marc said, “it’s the whole package. It’s not on the menu either. Not the stuff we get. This is the authentic shit.”
“Let’s get our food and go.”
“I feel like I’d eat an animal if I could harness this.”
Marc had convinced Paul to go vegetarian in high school; Marc liked to say how he himself bothered to give a shit about animal rights. The two had met during Wednesday meetings for the school’s literary magazine. Then at college, Marc enlisted Paul to attend protests: on Chestnut for protected bike lanes; on the Parkway for the Women’s March (Marc always had Paul take pictures of the two in front of those crowds); until, finally, their activism evolved into something resembling a working love relationship.
Emily took the plates, bowls, and cups, walking them back behind the counter, until only the gray thermos remained. “Think I could grab it and go?” Marc pointed.
“Do not,” said Paul.
Marc strolled to the counter and grinned at Emily. Then Natalie peeked out, and Marc gazed at her, smiling when she turned his way. Then a familiar voice bristled the air.
It was the man who’d been begging outside the liquor store – the man Paul had given money to. The man asked Emily for money. She shook her head with a curt smile. Then he asked Natalie, who also said no. Something brown-mustard color dappled the man’s long, tobacco-smelling jacket. Marc glared into his eyes which appeared yellowish, with scleras the color of eggnog. “You can’t come here asking for money. This family’s trying to run a business. Get your drunk ass out.” Marc’s face heated and reddened. The man seemed to quiver in front of him. Then, as slowly as the man had slumped in, he lurched away.
Marc couldn’t help smiling and swaggered back to Paul. He’d expelled a trespasser. Saved their business!
The husband said their food was ready.
“You think they saw how I kicked out that rando?”
After Marc settled up, he clutched their bag and asked, “What were y’all eating?” He smiled wide. “What was in that thermos? Can I buy that?”
Emily and Natalie exchanged a few words in Chinese. Then Natalie turned to Marc and said, “I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”
“Don’t listen to her!” said Natalie.
Emily glared at Natalie, then tapped her fist against the table as if she were doorknocking, brushed her hair back over her forehead, and stiffened. “Go,” she said.
“Whatever,” he said, and pushed past Paul with his bag.
—
Earlier that night, Li Ming had meant to discuss Li Nan’s behavior here in the store, with her husband. She’d reached into her own bag, pulled out the thermos, and set it on the table where it clanked in front of her daughter. “Your Father and I,” she began in Mandarin, “Want to know what you had in the freezer. When I caught you and Dwyn.” Li Ming had caught the girls smoking something in there the night before. Now she unscrewed the bottle. “I know you got this from Dwyn. What do you think we should do about it?” Dwyn was a 17-year-old like Li Nan. The two went to high school together and, the times Li Ming talked to Dwyn, the girl self-promoted. Li Ming might ask, “So what’s going on with the school construction? Are they just paving the lot?” Dwyn’s parents sat on the Board. But Dwyn would only talk about how the bulldozers made it harder for her to park her E-type.
Li Nan eyed the missing ceiling tile above the ATM. “I don’t know,” said her daughter. “Say we can never hang out anymore?”
“You don’t have to do that!” her husband said. What a fool. Li Ming exhaled. “What is this in the bottle? Another drug? Because if that’s what she gave you, you’re never seeing her again.”
Li Nan shouted, “You don’t love me!”
Li Ming tapped the table with her knuckles, twice. “It can mean whatever you want it to.”
Then that boy had charged in like he’d wanted to make love to their food.
—
Li Ming had endured Marc for about three years. On good days, he’d leave immediately after paying. One balmy summer evening, Marc had annoyed her with a story of when a man came up to him on South Street back when he was a freshman. “I told the guy, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you money,’ he’d said to her at the counter. “And you feel big when you get to say money before them. They always start in with something vague.” His voice aped: “‘Can I ask you a question, man?’ Or, ‘Can I tell you something?’ Then the guy asks me for a subway token – said he’d pay for it – I thought he was telling the truth.” Customers behind Marc glared. “So I dig around,” Marc said, “all while the guy just goes off in anticipation of getting his stuff. How he needs to take a bus to see his daughter, and how he’ll pay me back. ‘Anything would help, my friend, anything you can spare.’ And I gave him a token. The guy searches his pocket and then puts his hand over mine.” Marc winced. “But when I open my hand there’s just a penny. The guy had tricked me. Can you believe that?”
—
One night later, the subway streetcar thundered above ground at the 40th Street Portal and bumped onto the Avenue. Marc stumbled off the trolley at 50th. Paul followed, comparably more sober. “We’re going to get some food?”
“Some special food,” said Marc. “Off-menu tonight.”
The Green Garden smelled of fries, cherry blunts, and perfume. Six other customers congregated by the table and chairs. Natalie stood by the door to the workers’ area with her white female friend, who Marc sometimes saw hanging around the store. (This was Dwyn.) Customers were lined up at the window. The friend wore one of those puffy jackets common in late ‘90s R&B music videos; she had trophy-blonde hair as if she were transplanted from the white suburbs Marc and Paul had also deserted.
Marc cut in front to get to the counter and knocked.
Paul rushed to him and grabbed his wrist. “I cannot deal with you right now.”
Natalie appeared in the window.
Marc said, “The…meal you were eating last night. Whatever was in that thermos. I want to order it.” He smiled and slid to the left, facing Emily. With all the charm he could mobilize he said, “That…dish you were eating yesterday. The tea, the soup, whatever was in that thermos.” Emily shook her head no, smiling. He waited for a look of recognition. “Not a problem,” Marc said to Paul, “this is a cultural difference. Living in a city we need to recognize quirks!” But when he turned, Paul was halfway out of the door. Maybe Paul was saying something about Marc’s drinking again. He turned back to Emily. “You, you know what I’m talking about, Emily,” he said, trying to enunciate. He inhaled and spread his shoulders wide, taking up all the space he could.
“That’s not for you,” she said.
“That’s,” his head shot up, “not what you say to me.” His voice was drained of emotion.
“That’s not for you.”
“Tell me!” Marc shouted. “Tell me what it was. I can get it somewhere else, God.”
Someone behind him shouted. But Marc stayed anchored. Then Natalie strolled out and Marc smiled at her. Emily rapped her knuckles on the register twice, exhaled, and said, “Just a minute.” Natalie slunk back to the register. The door separating the restaurant and customer area opened. Emily waved him in, flitting her hand while glowering at Marc and Natalie.
The smell of soy sauce and floury deep-fried food swamped him. The orange subway tile appeared dappled with droplets. Emily led him down a cramped hallway toward the freezer. Marc made a fist, but she only motioned for him to wait and then emerged with the thermos. Excitement crackled in his cheeks.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “please, don’t drink. My daughter and her delinquent friend had it.”
Marc ripped away the thermos. He unscrewed the top, swirled the bottle around, touched the cold opening to his lips, and swigged. It was icy. He tasted – ginseng? Some dribbled onto his stubble and he wiped with his sleeve.
She still had her hand out for the thermos. But he drank the rest in four gulps and shoved it into his hoodie. Now the wind was gnawing his cheeks like he’d just shaved. He was waiting in the rain for the trolley at 50th and Baltimore Avenue. As a dump truck passed the park, the space its haul bed left revealed a figure brooding on the geodome. It was the man who’d been begging for money in the store. Emily gripped his wrist. The man’s long, ratty coat whipped in the wind. Perhaps it was the same man who’d tricked him for a subway token all those years ago in college, maybe. “Oh my God,” said Marc. “There he is. O-on top of the jungle gym. I’m gonna kill him.”
“What?” said Emily.
“On the jungle gym. Disrespecting you,” he whispered. “They do! Always.” Now he tasted blood.
The man atop the geodome clamped his hands to his patchy beard. He grunted, and his leg flinched over one of the steel poles. It looked as if he were struggling to open a heavy door. Then the man split off his face, and a u-shape of droplets spit across the gravel. The man had a tiny skull like a Saint Bernard’s. His body slumped over the jungle gym and collapsed into the rocks next to a toy turtle.
“We need to take you to the hospital,” Emily mouthed.
The trolley clanged up, its headlights cutting through fresh rain. When she followed him onboard he said, “We need to go to Chinatown,” and he knew that she knew all about the delinquents in his life.
They sat together near the middle row. Rain surged in the trolley floor’s grooves. Emily stared up at him. She must’ve known he was flying. The face of a lawyer in the trolley ceiling wailed, asking if he was having issues with workplace harassment. Marc said to Emily, “You’re not taking me anywhere but Chinatown.”
He reached over Emily to pull the cord to signal his stop. He jerked her up by her wrist. The trolley swung left as it neared the Portal, where streetcars plowed underground to head to Center City. He rocked into her; she smelled of deep fryer. He wanted to tell her to move, but his jaw felt wired shut. He activated some confidence to stand as the streetcar approached the Portal. But Emily was yammering on about the Emergency Room?
And then they stood out in the cold rainy wet at the Portal. Wind breezed in his armpits. “You wouldn’t,” he whimpered, his voice teetering, “trick me, right?”
“This,” and he tried counting the stops to get to Chinatown in his head but it all blurred. “This is my vision quest.”
“You need the hospital. Now. Give that to me,” she said.
“Fuck what you think I need,” said Marc.
There was something about that thermos glinting in his clutches. He was sick and he had learned. Everyone relied on Li Ming but they pushed her aside. She was turning to walk back to her restaurant when Marc howled, “I’m sorry I told you guys you needed costumes,” he screamed. “I’m sorry!” And in moments, he was running, scanning behind him as he went, deep into the subway tunnel, as if some unseen force were chasing him.
Perry Genovesi lives in West Philadelphia, works as a public librarian, and serves his fellow workers in AFSCME District Council 47. His first book, Skintet and Other Tales of the Brassican American Experience in Philadelphia, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. His work has won the O:JA&L Weitz Prize, and has been nominated for Best of the Net (2025), and Best Microfiction (2024). You can read him in The Santa Monica Review, Bridge Eight, BOOTH, and collected on tiny.cc/PerryGenovesi. He wishes the Good, Bad & Ugly theme would play whenever he faces someone at the other end of the sidewalk & there’s just a hairline path shovelled in the snow wide enough for one person. IG and Bluesky.