"When I was a kid in Georgia, a butterfly landed on my lip, and it freaked me out!" he says. The smell of alcohol and cigarettes coming off this old man fills up the booth as he wobbles from shelf to shelf, looking at Katie's pieces.
"They don't just land on anybody, though," I say, thinking for some reason of Saint Francis, "so that must mean you're pretty special."
He stops and looks at me, and suddenly, in spite of his drunken, half-lidded eyes and sentimental, garrulous manner, I feel more than see the weight of the person standing in front of me, not that he's fat or something, but the weight of his existence, his history, the sheer physicality of his being standing as an entity before me, and for whatever reason it terrifies me, and I wonder what the two of us, him and me, are doing here (in New York, the Western Hemisphere, on Earth).
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One year ago: Know Return (Been Here Before)
Two years ago: Neutrality
Three years ago: All Things Considered
Four years ago: Paris, je t'adore
Seven years ago: Even Kids Aren't Really That Much of an Accomplishment
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