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MARCUS
black bear poke its head out from the roadside bushes. It came onto the side of the quiet road and looked suspiciously at me. I passed it nervously, singing John Denver’s Country Roads until I came within feet of the bear and it scampered off into the bushes. Back in the hostel my heart was racing and I went to tell everybody about my rendezvous with the wild beast. Marcus listened with his usual tense and forceful smile. When I was done, as people were going “Whoa!” and “Aww cool”, Marcus took the floor in his perfectly crisp and steady English. He began, “I remember one time I was doing a 30 day hike—” “You did a 30 day hike?!” Spectators gasped at the claim. “Yeah I was raising money for cancer research.” Marcus offhandedly added, “—when a bear walked right up to me on the trail and stood up, as if to challenge me. And I just held up my hands and said, ‘Hey!’ and it ran away in fear.” The crowd of hostellers surrounding Marcus now listened intently to him and “oohed” and “awwed” at his tale. Marcus had good stories. But the more I thought about it he seemed very guarded and insecure. And he sure had a knack for rerouting any conversation back to his own life and his own accomplishments. One of the last days I was at the hostel that June I went out for a wild night of drinking with three other hostellers. An Irish guy and
November 1 1 , 201 2
I made a secret pact not to let a drunk Newfie (who was giving us a ride in his rigger truck) convince us to get too wasted. We failed. At the bar the Newfie kept ordering shots and the cute bartender chick with a Kiwi accent convinced us all to drink. I told the French girl at our table, who I had genuinely fallen for, “Melissa. I know I don’t know you very well but I think you’re so cool and so attractive and I just had to tell you that.” She said something beautiful in French and left a few minutes later to catch her bus out of town. She was one of those travellers perpetually running from town to town. The next morning I awoke hungover and without my French love-interest anywhere near me. I sat down at a kitchen table feeling a bit dizzy as light poured into the huge communal kitchen. Marcus walked into the kitchen with a dark-haired Irish girl closely at his side. He immediately took to making one of his patented, over-the-top, organic, gourmet meals (this time consisting of elaborately constructed omelettes). The Irish girl stood thoughtlessly at his side looking hungover. As Marcus prepared breakfast he groped her ass and thighs and gave her the occasional peck on the lips. From eavesdropping and common sense I pieced together the story of their previous night: Marcus and the girl got drunk out at the firepit behind our hostel (where swarms of hostellers drank and partied every night). Then somehow, somewhere, Marcus and