/wg/ Writing Comp Submission

	Marcus tried his best not to let his displeasure show as he sipped on his tea. The saffron and cloves overpowered any hint of the earthy bitterness that he wanted from the tea leaves, and a gritty film lingered on his tongue and on the roof of his mouth after each swallow. He would’ve been perfectly contented with a cup of English breakfast from any of the thousands of quieter – and less expensive – coffee shops in the city, but his sister Julia had insisted on bringing him to the latest SoHo café that she’d seen in Instagram posts from all of her friends and favorite influencers.
	The noise of the espresso machines and obnoxiously loud conversations spilled out of the store, muted only slightly by the fact they were sitting outside and around the corner from the door at one of the aluminum tables that sat in front of the cafe’s window. Marcus was glad that he managed to convince Julia to sit outside using the argument that the picture of her drink that she’d inevitably post on her story would look better in natural lighting. Besides the noise, Marcus hated the café’s atmosphere. The white marble countertops and mahogany floors looked too clean, and whatever lavender-sea salt air freshener they were using stifled the smell of coffee beans, giving the whole shop an air of affluent sterility. It made Marcus feel too comfortable.
	While Julia was engrossed in a FaceTime call with her friend Amanda who was vacationing in Bora Bora, Marcus looked over a letter sent to him from the Inner-City Relief Fund thanking him for his generous donation to their organization. Marcus didn’t consider it generous at all. To him, tens of thousands of dollars from a personal store of millions was hardly praiseworthy. Every week at his father’s firm, he oversaw transactions that were several orders of magnitude larger than what he tossed on a whim to the first charity that found his mailbox. He was relieved that he had found the letter in his mailbox before his mother, who would have chided him for throwing away money that should’ve been invested.
	From his childhood, Marcus had often dreamed of being a philanthropist. He knew his privileged upbringing and certainty of taking over for his father as soon as he retired would give him the opportunity to chase that dream. He wanted to see his name on library buildings and park plaques like Rockefeller and Carnegie, and try to use his money in a way that wouldn’t only benefit himself. Now that he was getting his feet wet into the practice of being a benefactor, he found it underwhelming. Fixing a problem by throwing money at it left Marcus unsatisfied, and the practice felt wholly impersonal. All he had to do was press a few buttons and write a few checks so that some charity could meet their fundraising goal ahead of schedule. Marcus wanted his offerings to feel more like a sacrifice. He wanted to be inconvenienced – to suffer a bit.
	As he folded up the letter and placed it into his pocket, his eye caught a glimpse of something. At his feet next to one of the legs of the table, he found a bright red pair of glasses. Picking them up, he noticed they were somewhat small, most likely a child’s. The cherry frame was covered in dents, and the nose bridge was held together by layers of masking tape. Another piece of tape ran along the right temple and had writing on it.
	“What’s that?” asked Julia.
	“A pair of glasses,” said Marcus, holding it up for her to see. “I found it on the ground.”
	“They look hideous. Do you think someone left it there by accident? Maybe the store has a lost and found you could turn it in to.”
	Marcus nodded. He looked around the street to see if anyone was looking for anything, but didn’t find anyone scanning the ground. He took a closer look at the righting on the strip of masking tape. “230 E 115th St, apt 13A,” it read. He typed the address into his phone and saw it zero into an apartment complex in Spanish Harlem, 30 minutes from the café by car. He could easily give the glasses to the family chauffeur to deliver after dropping him and his sister off at home and have the returned, but the idea made him feel the same way he did reading the thank-you letter. Then he had a better idea.
“Hey, Julia, why don’t you go on ahead. I just realized there’s an errand I need to run,” said Marcus as he stood from the table and started walking down the street.
	“Oh, okay. See you at home! Wait, you didn’t finish your tea!” she said.
He pretended not to hear her. He turned a few corners before coming to the Spring St subway station. He was glad that his sister couldn’t see him walking down the steps. She would’ve been bound to tell his mother about it, who would’ve given him an earful about the how uncultured public transit was once he got home. He felt like a child sneaking off to a playground without permission. The trivial disobedience gave him a bit of a thrill.
	He had to wait in line for a few minutes to buy a ticket since some of the kiosks were broken. The exercise in patience was new to him, but he welcomed it. Once on the train, he took note of the people sitting around him. A man who looked homeless sprawled out across three seats. A girl with big hoop earrings talking to someone on their phone with the speaker on. A man wearing nothing but a beanie and a banana hammock was yelling at the window, threatening to fight the guy in the reflection. Marcus’ discomfort grew with his satisfaction.
	The train screeched to a halt halfway through the trip. A voice came over the intercom explaining that the rest of the line would be closed due to an accident. Marcus took out his phone and checked his map while a chorus of obscenities rang out. His options were either a 15-minute car ride or an hour’s walk. Marcus grinned big as he stepped off the train onto the platform.

	Marcus’s feet were sore by the time he reached the apartment building, but the out-of-service elevator didn’t seem to care about that. The nice dress shoes he had worn for the day offered no relief, and he had considered even taking them off after walking a mile, but kept them on out of fear of broken glass and random discarded needles. Dark spots were beginning to pollute the back and armpits of his shirt that he had just gotten back from the cleaners that day. After trudging up a few flights of stairs, he came to the apartment listed on the pair of glasses. He knocked on the door.
	It was answered by a small girl with almond skin who could’ve been no more than seven years old, her hair unkempt and her brown eyes a little red from what was most likely tears. The sounds of a Spanish conversation poured out the door. Marcus held the pair of glasses out in front of him. The girl’s expression changed in a flash. She smiled as she looked up at him with wonder in her eyes. She took the glasses from him and put them on, blinking a bit to adjust her vision. She ran back inside calling out to someone in Spanish.
An older woman came to the door dressed in a hotel maid’s uniform. Before Marcus could say anything, she grabbed his hand and let out a series of graciases. She attempted to wave Marcus inside, but he put his hand up in polite refusal, smiling as he shook his head. He wished them a good evening as he turned to leave, and gave one last wave as he entered the stairwell. He paused before making his descent and realized how exhausted he was. He checked his phone to see that the subway line back to SoHo was still down, and an uber back would take 15 extra minutes due to traffic.
	Despite all of these inconveniences, Marcus felt satisfied. It was the kind of satisfaction that he had never felt from any good report card, any full course meal at a five-star restaurant, any successful merger that he had overseen, or any thank you note from the fundraiser of the month. As he massaged his feet through his shoes, he thought he’d take a taxi back home and give whatever middle-eastern man who was driving it a generous tip. He just needed to make sure no one from his family saw him getting out of a car that wasn’t an Uber Comfort.