Unscheduled

Across from us on yesterday's Manhattan-bound Q as we passed over the bridge: he had huge brown eyes that looked as if they'd contemplated Infinity from any number of sleepless 4 A.M. colloquies with silence; despite his youth, he sported a positively Biblical beard of the sort that both Stonewall Jackson and John Brown made a splash with back in the day; and a copy of Cleanse and Purify Thyself, Book One : The Cleanse. We saw that he was a small man but one whose self-possessed manner would in many situations compensate for any disadvantages inherent in having a compact physique. His athletic shoes were new, and of an uncertain manufacture. He ate in a casual, devil-may-care fashion, munching from an open, half-empty jar of green olives, which he plucked out with delicate white fingers.

We had quite a few of questions for him, but pressing business took him from the train at Canal St., before we could get the interview started.