By Angus Stump
I would be headed out this morning, but first things first. I wanted breakfast.
I checked my notes. The Frontier Restaurant. Perfect. An Albuquerque institution.
I turned on the news and learned that the night before, somebody had been murdered in the alley outside the Frontier Restaurant.
Well, then there’s that.
I’d like to make it plain that people are not usually killed outside the Frontier Restaurant. Every single person I know has not been killed outside the Frontier Restaurant. But it was the news of the morning, and I needed to check that they’d be open. I learned that, in deference to the previous evening’s unfortunate events, they’d be opening an hour late. Fair enough.
I showered, dressed and prepared to visit a popular local crime scene for breakfast.
The Uber driver who shuttled me to Frontier had opinions about the place that he was trying and failing to keep to himself. He whipped a u-turn to deliver me to the front door. “Have a nice trip,” he said, pausing for a beat, then finger guns. “But don’t fall!” Thanks, Uber driver.
So yeah, the Frontier Restaurant. I’ve never had a contemporary restaurant work so hard not to impress me. It was refreshing. It was designed for efficiency, with a long tiled barricade spanning the room, separating the dining floor from the human machine of a masterful kitchen crew.
In most diners, the booths are anchored to the walls and offer you kind of a sense of enclosure. But here, the booths are like islands. They’re open at both ends and floating right in the middle of a thoroughfare with traffic on either side.
Frontier was not overly busy during my visit. There were people, and more than a few. But it wasn’t chaotic. That’s a shame. This room was built for chaos.
I ordered at the counter, sat near the counter, picked up my food at the counter, and spotted TJ near the counter. The counter was my gravitational center, and I hovered.
Had I explored, I probably would have gotten lost. Built in a single room in the early ’70s, Frontier’s floor plan expanded inch by inch, absorbing the adjoining buildings over time. The space now comprises more than 8,000 square feet across five distinct, maze-like areas. It possesses the architectural ambition of a Costco with the soul of a fire station mess hall.
But I didn’t explore, so I wasn’t lost. Instead, I took my tray of breakfast and plopped down uninvited at TJ’s table, where he waited for carryout.
He looked like a guy. Forty, give or take, and carrying a few extra pounds that weren’t hurting anyone. He was dressed for the kind of morning that involves a slow drive across town to fetch breakfast for someone you love. He looked exactly like what he was doing.
TJ is his fake name. He offered it with the patience of a man who has been mildly inconvenienced before and survived.
He’s from California now, but used to live in Albuquerque. They like to eat at Frontier whenever they’re back in town. Today, he’s picking up carryout.
Our conversation drifted to the topic of homelessness. I’m not sure how. Our semi-mutual semi-conclusions: you can’t fault people for taking the help that’s available, and you can’t fault the people offering help for trying to do right. Everybody is behaving in the ways that make the most sense for their particular kind of poverty. Just human beings being humans.
I picked at my hashbrowns.
Then I pulled out the book.
There’s a particular look a stranger gets when he realizes the friendly old guy with the tray has just produced a paperback and says, “You know, …”
Oh, his face said. We’re doing this now.
I was a guy with a bit. But then I said time travel and he lit up.
He and his wife had been talking about exactly that earlier, on the drive in. There was a show, he said — couldn’t quite recall the title, two words, one of them is Away — about people sent up and down the timeline to fix things other people had broken. He had been thinking about it that morning.
So I said the thing and I did the bit and the QR code and the dollar bill and the book was Lonesome Dan and he very intentionally registered every beat. He understood it, purposefully, the way a man does when he knows he’s going to have to repeat it to his wife, word-for-word, as he delivers her favorite breakfast.
I don’t know his wife. I hope the book ends up in her hands.
Outside, my Uber was already waiting. It was the same guy who’d dropped me off in the morning.
He looked like he stopped being a biker when he needed a paycheck, and Uber was as close as the world was going to let him get. He was, by any measure, an unlikely recipient for a book. but he was the candidate the morning had handed me.
I asked his fake name, and he bristled. I was up to something.
I backpedaled. The book I was holding was named Dwight. “How about,” I said, in my friendliest voice, “if I call you Dwight?” He glanced back over his shoulder and shrugged. Dwight it is.
So I asked, “Do you read?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I can read.”
In that moment, it was exactly the right answer. I gave him a book. No ceremony, no explanation, no story, no nothin’. It would ruined everything.
Sometimes the best thing to do is just shut the hell up.
“Here,” I said. “This book has been looking for you. I hope you enjoy it.”
He looked at the cover and arched both eyebrows. “Thanks, brother.”
As I exited the cab, Dwight called after me. “Have a nice trip,” he sang out. “But don’t fall!” Same joke as before.
Yeah. A guy with a bit.
