M Train begins with a Preface describing Smith’s dream about a cowpoke, who tells her that it is “not so easy to write about nothing” (13). Smith tries to talk to the cowpoke, but he ignores her, eventually telling her that this is not her dream but his. The Preface ends with a photograph of a solitary table and chair. 

In Chapter 1, “Café ’Ino,” Smith is in her favorite café in Greenwich Village, where she lives. Café ’Ino’s server, Zak, brings her black coffee, brown toast, and olive oil, her usual order. She contemplates her dream about the cowpoke, and Zak tells her that he is moving on from the café to open his own on a boardwalk in Rockaway Beach. Smith has always dreamed of opening a café herself and is happy for him. She offers to invest. Smith almost opened her own café when she was young but abandoned this dream and moved to Detroit to be with her partner, Fred “Sonic” Smith. They married soon after. 

Just before their first wedding anniversary, Smith and Fred took a trip to Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in French Guiana. Smith wanted to see the remains of the French penal colony that was important to Jean Genet (1910-1986), a French writer.