I try to remember my first impression of him, but it’s hard to go back ~ like a dream that recedes the more awake I am. We met on the train from Lyon to Paris. There was a faint smell of cigarettes when he sat down, and cologne, I remember that. He looked overly warm in a thick hoodie on an early summer afternoon. His hair was dark and wavy. European, I guessed, maybe Italian.
He sat opposite me, leafing through a newspaper, trying to be quiet when he turned the pages and folding them into quarters each time he finished a section. Every time I uncrossed my legs he moved his knees sideways a bit to make room. At one point he asked me which book I was reading.