Page 1 of Margins

Chapter One

Alex Ramos picks up his jacket, presses it back down onto the armchair, then stares at it for a minute while he decides what to do.

What he should do or what he wants to do, he isn’t even sure, but there must be some contrast there, even if it’s about as distinct as the two shades of gray he’s studying with an unnecessary frown. He’s been like this a lot lately, probably far too often for him to argue he’s on the right side of okay, a constant restlessness leaving him anxious about something he still hasn’t seriously considered figuring out. Unfortunately, it puts him in stupid situations like this, where he looks at a goddamn jacket for too long because he can’t decide whether he’s motivated enough to take a morning walk around the neighborhood.

He should, he thinks. He’s actually pretty sure he wants to. And because those two don’t always line up quite so neatly for him, the ongoing battles in his head only worsening his inability to take a step in any direction, Alex figures he might as well take advantage of their truce today. He sighs, grabs his jacket from the armchair again, and shrugs it on.

The fog he steps into feels exactly right, and he’s almost positive he’s not being sardonic about that.

Alex has always loved this one very specific thing about living near the California coast, a light blanket thrown over his home every morning, one that stretches far past his front lawn and onto so many others around him. Even if the sun is certain to warm them later, or maybe even soon, they’re all treated to something tender first, and it’s why Alex insists on drinking his coffee on the back patio every day. Very little about the world is soft, and he thinks he needs that one routine to help harden him for the rest.

The coffee is gone though, and the fog is still here, and maybe Alex can keep his guard down for a little while longer.

He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and turns down the street.

It isn’t exactly a new thing, going for a walk around the neighborhood, though most of the time he’s with Elena, and most of the time they’re traveling to and from the park. With Elena at Cassidy’s house today, Alex thinks being alone should be an indulgence, but seeking anything quite like that has been a lifelong challenge, and it seems too early or too late to learn something about it now. As it is, Alex is still adjusting to the idea of his wife and kid being together without him, along with whatever other failures made it necessary in the first place, and he only wishes the cool morning air would be enough to help him solve the puzzle before he’s picked up half the pieces.

It’s far more likely Alex will be stuck making sense of it all when he’s locked inside his empty house again, surrounded by a few too many echoes.

The half of the neighborhood further away from the park is less familiar to him, even after having lived here for six years, and Alex decides to go that way because, as long as a few new experiences have been forced upon him lately, he figures he might as well have a choice about one now. Everything is mostly quiet and calm this early, and Alex makes a point of absorbing it all. With a steady gaze, he takes note of the cars resting in driveways or tucked away in the garage, a handful of people out to walk their dogs, two women jogging while they carry on a hushed conversation, and a couple of cats in something of a standoff until Alex gets close enough for them to take their argument elsewhere. When his toe catches on the uneven sidewalk, he looks down at sneakers that could stand to be replaced, moves up to sweatpants and a t-shirt he’ll hold on to for too long, and then while rolling his eyes for nobody, he struggles to remember whether he did anything with his hair after he showered that morning.

Vanity isn’t a thing for him, blessed with looks that have never required it, but Alex thinks he could work on being a little less of a mess. Maybe he’ll find time for that right after he stops wandering around with nowhere to go. Then he sees a sign on the corner—a literal one, not the figurative kind his abuelita loves to pray for—and a tiny smile tilts his head sideways. It’s silly, but maybe now he’s headed somewhere.

Garage sales have probably been around forever, in whatever various forms, for as long as people have had old stuff to sell to strangers, but there’s something that still manages to be warm about them, furniture and art and toys and absolute junk and a touch of humanity being passed from person to person. They’re held so close to home, but not quite close enough that anyone gets a real peek inside, and memories get sold to neighbors who can’t possibly understand why they matter but want a piece of them anyway. Or maybe that guy around the corner just loves that he can buy old ski boots for next to nothing, but Alex would like to think there's at least a little more to it than that, and he follows the signs now to a house four streets down from his own, in search of something he doesn’t even know he needs.

Even at a glance, he’s already sure he’ll find something that makes the stop worth it.

There’s a bunch of lawn and garden equipment and several tools, some disassembled bedroom and living room furniture, a couple of stacks of large blankets and comforters, small kitchen appliances and other household gadgets, jackets and coats and shoes, framed prints and assorted home décor, piles of books, plenty of board games, two TVs and a few other electronics, probably a hundred vinyl records, and a small collection of kids’ toys and sports gear. Most of the stuff looks like it belonged to an older man, if Alex wants to do the most basic of profiling, though there’s just enough reason for him to be confused about the rest, and he shakes his head when he realizes it doesn’t really matter at all.

“Morning.”

Alex looks over at two women—mother and daughter perhaps—rifling through the dozens of books, and at a man measuring a small dresser with his hands, then back toward the guy who must be talking to him.

“Morning,” he echoes with a nod.

He gets a tired smile from the guy whose hands are wrapped around a travel mug of what Alex hopes is coffee for someone who looks like he needs it, this man ducked into his hoodie like he might be able to sleep there if everyone leaves him alone long enough. He’s probably around Alex’s age and he’s sitting at a card table, notably also for sale, and there’s a dog, likely some sort of black lab mix, lying next to his feet and no more alert than his owner.

“Feel free to look around, pick stuff up, ask questions, whatever,” the guy tells him. “I put price stickers on some of the bigger things, but you can just make an offer on everything else.”

Alex feels the corners of his mouth curl upward, though he eases them into what feels like a more neutral grin. “Too early in the morning to be greedy?”

The guy shrugs. “Not trying to make a fortune here. Mostly just emptying the house.”

At the risk of overstepping, Alex is about to ask what prompted the garage sale now, spring cleaning a thing most people did about six months ago, but they get interrupted by a question from Dresser Man, and Alex wanders off to browse instead. He looks through the rack of coats but doesn’t think he has a need for anything there, and none of the shoes are quite his style. The vinyls are tempting, at least a handful of them albums Alex already has at home, but he moves over to the games instead, and thinks about buying a couple of those for Elena. Most of them look barely used, and he could say the same for the rest of the kids’ stuff nearby, nothing particularly old or worn. He decides to look around a little more before grabbing anything, already accepting the risk of anyone else coming by to take it first, and he makes his way over to the books, Older Woman and Younger Woman busy buying some of the artwork now.

He spots an easily recognizable collection of Stephen King works and skips that because the last thing he needs are more bad dreams, and he brushes past several western novels and a half dozen memoirs out of a general lack of interest. There are some children’s books, but he thinks they might be ones Elena has in her closet, and he only gets stuck for a moment when he thinks about the fact that she has two closets now and might want duplicates of a couple of things.

Alex breathes, a weary and hollow thing that lasts long enough for him to get lost and come back again, then he continues looking through the titles in front of him. There are authors he recognizes and plenty he doesn’t, but then he comes across another group of books with some of both, all beautifully bound and almost too intimidating to touch. He’s gentle then, reaching for a book he read a cheaper version of back in high school, and opens to that perfect used book smell, his eyes fluttering closed before he can think of how silly he might look to anyone else.

“You too, huh?”

The book snaps shut, just barely missing the tip of Alex’s nose, and he feels his cheeks grow warm when he looks up at the Hoodie Guy, the garage sale’s sleepy host. He looks no more awake now, but his hair is notably wild where it curls around the fabric of his hood, a bunch of blond vines winding toward the sun. Maybe the rest of him will get there eventually.

Alex cocks his head, his free hand scraping through his own dark hair, and whether he’d styled it earlier becomes unimportant now. “Um, what?”

“It’s okay. I love the smell of used books, too,” Hoodie promises with only the slightest smirk. “See anything you might want?”

And yeah, he does, especially this entire array, which would be an amazing Christmas gift for his soon-to-be ex-wife, even if that’s not the kind of thing he’s really supposed to be shopping for at all. D. H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, E. M. Forster, Oscar Wilde, and on and on, probably a perfect choice for Cass, and something she could always pass down to Elena someday.

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