Marcelo in the Real World Chapter 14 Summary

  • Marcelo decides he'll walk to South Station and get the train home, and he thinks he can find it himself even though Wendell took off.
  • Unfortunately, he can't. He's lost in Chinatown.
  • Because he likes strong smells, he sits on a crate next to a fish market and is trying to figure out what to do when his cell phone rings.
  • It's Jasmine, trying to figure out where he is.
  • Marcelo admits he's lost, and Jasmine asks him to read the closest street sign. He does, and she comes to rescue him.
  • But while they're in Chinatown, she's got something to show him: her home.
  • Turns out Jasmine lives in a tiny room in a building that used to be a dorm for Tufts medical students but now houses mostly Cambodian immigrants.
  • When they get to her room, Marcelo is amazed—every inch of wall space is covered with CDs, except for the patch covered with a Keith Jarrett poster.
  • And then there's the keyboard, with 88 keys like a real piano, which Jasmine sits down and effortlessly plays.
  • Marcelo's impressed, and not just because in the poster of Keith Jarrett leaning over the piano, it looks like he's praying. Jasmine's funky tunes have a rhythm and beat he's never heard before.
  • She hands him a Keith Jarrett CD, the one with the same picture as the poster, and he thanks her.
  • When she asks what he's thanking her for, all he can think to say is, "For showing me."