This is part of a larger work, so some explanations are necessary. Helena has recently gained the ability to manipulate fire. Three other kids she has yet to meet can manipulate Air, Earth, and Wind respectively. This stranger referred to as "the man" and later as "Jerry" has given Helena and the other kids a card directing them to find him at a location so that he can answer their questions.
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The address that had been referred to on the business card led Helena to an abandoned airplane hangar adjacent to the industrial dockyard. The pale sky seemed to make the mechanical landscape look even more dismal. But at least the world didn’t seem like it was closing in on her here. Everything was wide and open as she walked toward the enormous opening to the hangar.
Inside the hangar, everything was just as bleak. The rusty arched ceiling was scarred with several gaping holes that allowed a little more light in. Tenacious weeds had surpassed the concrete floor and grew along the cracks.
In the center of the hangar, though, appeared to be a man sitting in a beanbag chair. On one side of him was an old couch that oozed yellow stuffing from its seams. On the other side of the beanbag chair was a chair that looked oddly like Archie Bunker’s from All in the Family. Whatever this had been set up for, it seemed that it was meant to look welcoming and modest.
Focusing on the man sitting in the beanbag chair, it was immediately evident that this was the man who had visited Helena at the park. He appeared just as relaxed now as he had been then, wearing a faded pair of jeans and a maroon windbreaker. He had his feet up on a stack of books and was reading a leather-bound one while chomping on a sandwich.
Helena quickly decided that she did not like this man. He gave off beatnik vibes, and Helena detested hipsters of any kind. This man obviously had a high opinion of himself if he thought it prudent enough to lead her here with little other explanation than what he could fit on a business card. Though Helena knew that some of this irritation was unfounded, she decided to hold onto it until she found out just what this clown’s angle was.
Only then would she leave and attend to much more important things.
Taking in a breath, Helena walked with powerful strides towards him. When she realized that he was too engrossed in his book to notice her, she shouted, “Hey!”
The man jumped and then looked up. With a huge, almost frightening grin, he delightedly shouted, “Oh, Hello! I didn’t expect you here until—” he glanced at his watch. “Well, I suppose I lost track of time. Not to mention my watch has been five minutes slow for quite some time now. I really should have—”
“Hey!” said Helena again, snapping him out of his insipid ranting. “Look, I wasn’t going to come here at all—”
“I know,” said the man, shortly.
Helena paused, thrown off by his comment. “What?”
“I know you were debating whether or not to come today,” he explained, struggling to extract himself from the beanbag chair. “You did come two days after my card told you to come.”
“But you said you were expecting me.”
“Oh, I did, didn’t I?” He looked at his feet pensively. “Sorry. I told myself I wouldn’t do that sort of thing. At least not until the others arrived and I could explain things all at once.”
“What sort of thing? What others?” said Helena, her frustration building.
“I’m being vague,” he said apologetically. “I told myself I wouldn’t but I’ve suddenly found myself too excited to keep from saying too much. Would you like something to drink?”
Bewildered, Helena briefly wondered what kind of cosmic joke was being played on her that she was here, now, with this lunatic. Things were getting a little surreal and that was the last thing she needed.
“Who are you?”
“I usually go by Jerry.”
“Okay, Jerry,” Helena sighed. “Clearly, I have made a mistake in coming here today. So I think I might just—”
“Oh no,” he said, sounding alarmed. “You haven’t made a mistake. No, in fact, you’ve probably made the most vital decision of your life in coming here. If you’ll just wait until the others arrive, I can explain everything.”
“And what, exactly, do you plan to explain?”
“Well…you have found yourself with a new ability, haven’t you?”
Helena furrowed her brow critically.
“I’ll answer everything,” he said, with a reassuring smile. “I swear. All you need to do is just wait for the rest of our party to arrive. In the meantime, why don’t you have a seat? I made tuna sandwiches. Well, those and tomato sandwiches. Would you like one?”
The more this man spoke in his erratic, absentminded kind of way, the more interested Helena became in finding out who he was. He wasn’t pompous and condescending like most hipsters she knew, and as far as she could tell, his distracted behavior wasn’t caused by any kind of illicit substance. However, it seemed clear that the childish manner in which he talked excitedly and excessively hinted that perhaps this man sought after the ideas of grandeur that most others considered to be delusions.
And maybe this realization was what motivated Helena to say, “Yeah. I’ll take the tuna.”
Just a few things I'd like to point out!
From the way you write, your reader can already tell that Jerry is A) Excited, and B) talks a lot.
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