I saw his billboard--www.VaticanHidesPedophiles.com--and drank it in. He saw me, and I saw that he saw, and we locked eyes. His twinkled like Kris Kringle. He wasn't irate; he was exuberant, rather like a convert. He shuffled forward and reached over two rows of passengers to hand me his pamphlet, a cut-and-copied sheet railing against the moral imbecility of Pope Benedict and all the progress haters in the Vatican. I drank this in, just like his sign, just like his face. I absorbed it. I drank.
The only butterflies came when I gave him a cross of blessing. By then, though, he was on the other side of a window and I was on the platform. It was a moment of perfect indeterminacy: he was looking down when I began the cross; the train rolled forward; my hand slid across the horizontal space toward the third nail; his neck creaked up; by the time his eyes could have possibly followed I was turned, taking my own way. And he passed beyond me.
Godspeed.
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