I met Milky Way Joe at a coffee shop on Newbury Street. That's in Boston. He wasn't exactly strange, but with the way he moved he made you think something was going on, something you weren't wise to. Always hunched over in his seat and looking over his shoulder, bobbing his head up and down and saying "Yep, yep, that's where they go." I had just published my first novel and was invited to speak to some kids attending Northeastern University. I had been dreading it because I knew they were better writers than me, I just had a certain amount of guts where they didn't. The truth had been revealed to me: that sometimes the only difference between the so-called greats and the so-called ordinary people was that the so-called greats bothered to try. I arrived an hour and half early and there were protestors blocking the entrance, something about bad breath, I kid you not, they were protesting mouthwash or something, and bad white people and ban listerine. In any case I had to go around back through the alleyway to get in. That’s when I met Milky Way Joe. He was standing in the alley holding a paper up to his face. He decided to start pacing at the exact moment I was moving past him. We kissed shoulders. “Holy hell!” he yelled and let himself fall into some trash bags. I mean really he didn’t have to fall, he kind of used the momentum to purposely sit down in the trash. “Well look at where I am now!” “I’m sorry man, I thought you heard me coming through.” I went over to help him up. When he got to his feet he dusted himself off and then started scanning the alleyway. “Say, how do you know about this back entrance?” And before I could respond a couple of college girls exited the door laughing. Joe and I parted like the red sea and they went on through. “Don’t answer that,” Joe said. “Hey!” he ruptured with a newfound hope. “You can help me.” “I don’t think so man, I have to go,” and I started for the door but he was quick to follow, on me like a fly. “Wait, hold on, hold on. You see, I’ve got this love letter.” I stopped. Those kinds of things interest me. He held the paper out to me. “Would you read it? Just tell me what you think?” “You want me to read it?” “Yeah.” “Oh I don’t know man, isn’t it personal?” He shook his head. “All right, fine.” I took the letter from him and started to read it, but he snatched it right out of my hands. “Don’t you want me to read it?” I said. “Maybe it would be better if I read it to you out loud.” “Sure.” I leaned against the alleyway wall, crossed my feet and stuck my hands in my jacket pockets. Joe worked at his composure. He struck a kind of elegant pose and slapped on Italian eyebrows. I swear he looked like he was taste testing a pasta sauce. “Dear Loretta,” he began, “I’ve been frozen in time ever since we happened to disagree with one another. You really know how to make a man feel miserably small. I’ve got this nightmare see, and it makes me feel awful when I recall it during wakeful hours. Did you know you’re the first thing that’s given me some shred of defense against that terror of mine? And like I said, you made me feel real small, like I was not worthy of your pinky finger. But you see, I would rather have someone to contend with than have no one at all. And your eyes, where am I ever going to see eyes like that again? Now that’s my nightmare, never seeing those eyes again. It’s true I’m a fool. It’s true also that my legal name is Milky Way Joe. I changed it when I was fifteen and I just have not had the spare dough since to remedy that. Regardless, I love you, straight up, and I think we should be married. Yours if you’re game, MW.” Joe gazed a hole into that letter for a brief moment, then let his arm flap down like it was made of rubber and the paper cut sharply through the air. “So what do you think?” He had a sad way about him. “Honestly?” He nodded. “I thought it was really great.” “Really?” A breath shot up into him and the sadness seemed to wash away like soap bubbles under a hot shower head. “I mean it did get a little, I don’t know, odd there at the end, with the whole I love you and let’s get married thing and hold on a second, is your name really Milky Way Joe?” “Okay that’s enough, I just let you read my love letter didn’t I? No more free, personal freebies, all right? Yep. Man, that’s just where they go, isn’t it?” I threw my hands up and went for the door. Joe went back to reading his letter. The cafe was also a bookstore and on that day it was busier than I had ever seen it. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought, there is no way this is all for me. I could see the space by the window overlooking the street where I was to address everyone. The tables and chairs before it were already occupied with energetic young minds babbling amongst themselves. I snuck over to the bar and took the farthest stool, burying myself away behind thinking knuckles. “Hi there,” said a pretty blonde behind the counter. “Know what you want?” “Just a cup of coffee please.” “Rocco?” I turned. “Oh hey Tim, what do you say?” And I went to shake his hand but he met me with a fist bump, so I had to convert my greeting currency into his halfway through the journey. “I’m really glad you decided to come still, I think you’re really going to like Ray’s mind.” I leaned forward with an ear. “What’s that? Ray?” “You did get my email, didn’t you?” I shook my head with pursed lips. “Ray Verdure. Ver-dure. Ray? You know, the French novelist? He suddenly became available to us. I’m sorry man, we couldn’t pass the opportunity by.” I leaned back in my seat. Something deflating came over me, half disappointment and half relief. “Of course, of course. That’s all right,” I said. He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Oh my, speak of the devil.” And I watched him hurry over to greet who had just come through the door, a cool and sharp apparition, donned in black leather, his face tan, his eyes hidden behind blacked-out aviators, his jaw and cheeks speckled with a shadowy beard, his curly dark hair weaving itself outwards towards everyone in the room. “That’s him, that’s him!” the pretty blonde behind the counter whispered with Beatle mania as she set down my coffee. “He’s perfect. He’s a dream.” I turned from the scene and leaned over the countertop, rubbing at my forehead with an open palm. The blonde continued her biography. “And he’s a writer too. A poet. A visionary, really. A romantic. Have you read his work?” “Could I get a to-go cup for the coffee?” “What? Sure. I mean, yeah of course.” “I’ll take a slice of that blueberry pie as well.” “To-go?” “Yeah.” The back door slowly closed behind me and with it went the volume of the ovation for Ray Verdure, who I am sure was a swell bloke. Outside the air was satisfying and the racket of the city, the cars and distant thuds of construction and nearby birdsongs in the park, it was all a sympathy to my exit of rejection. I started to walk because that’s all one can start to do when something they thought was there for sure wasn’t at all. “Hey! Buddy!” It was Milky Way Joe, calling out to me in a muffled voice because he stood by a food truck chewing a hot dog voraciously. I put a hand up and waved to him but continued walking in the other direction. After a few steps I checked to see if he was after me. I could see him speedily decorating the rest of his hot dog with a sloppy amount of ketchup and hastening in my direction. Oh brother, I said to myself. “Say, say, where are you heading?” he asked me. “The park.” “You got any peanuts?” “What?” “Peanuts. You got any in your pockets?” “No, why would I have peanuts?” “What kind of a maniac goes to the park without something to give to the squirrels?” That day, it seemed, was a continuous throwing of my hands up at the world. It was all absurd. We were walking together now, Joe and I, towards the park. “I can already see them all, you see them?” “Yeah, there’s a lot of squirrels in the Common,” I said. “Yep, that’s where they go. Look at those bastards.” “What?” “What’s that, pie?” “Yeah, blueberry. You want it? I lost my appetite.” “Do I want it?” And Joe took the pie-shaped box from me and the plastic fork and began digging in. The sun was beating down, it really was a terrific day. My newfound company was strange but I appreciated it. We passed a statue of George Washington on a horse and both gazed up at its majesty. “Now that’s how a man must feel, my friend.” Joe pointed at it with the blue-stained prongs of the fork. “He must feel like he’s won a great battle, but more than that, because he could be down in the gutter. He must feel and believe that grace is within reach at any moment, under any circumstance.” I marveled at the craftsmanship of the bronze statue, the attention to detail, and then the green impressionist waterfall of a weeping willow caught my eye in the distance behind George. From our perspective it was as if nature rained down to dress him in her bounty. “She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace,” I said. “That’s it. That’s exactly it. That’s what every human being should get hold of. What was it you said?” “An ornament of grace.”