Generosity

Начало книги

A man rides backward in a packed subway car. This must be almost fall, the season of revision. I picture him in the thick of bequest, tunneling beneath the I Will City, the world’s twenty-fifth biggest urban sprawl, one wedged in the population charts between Tianjin and Lima. He hums some calming mantra to himself, a song with the name Chicago in it, but the train drowns out the tune.

He’s just thirty-two, I know, although he seems much older. I can’t see him well, at first. But that’s my fault, not his. I’m years away, in another country, and the El car is so full tonight that everyone’s near invisible.

Look again: the whole point of heading out anywhere tonight. The blank page is patient, and meaning can wait. I watch until he solidifies. He cowers in the scoop seat, knees tight and elbows hauled in. He’s dressed for being overlooked, in rust jeans, maroon work shirt, and blue windbreaker with broken zipper: the camouflage of the non-aligned, circa last year. He’s as white as anyone on this subway gets. His own height surprises him. His partless hair waits for a reprimand and his eyes halt midway between hazel and brown. His face is about six centuries out of date. He would make a great Franciscan novice in one of those mysteries set in a medieval monastery.

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