The man was sitting alone in the kind of place where no one sits alone, noisy on Fridays because over half the community is Catholic and on Fridays you eat seafood, and this was Nimbeaux’s, a Cajun seafood restaurant and it’s always slow and packed on Fridays. His silence impressed me which is rather ridiculous since, sitting alone, most men would be silent. But his stillness, the absence of fidgeting or distraction had impact in a place filled with human noise and motion. He stared ahead with a kind of forlorn intelligence. I wanted to hear his forlorn story.

His profile was neither regular nor brutish, but had gravity. His skin not smooth nor gristled. His jaw not soft nor hardened. I then saw with my one eye that was not blocked by a lunch companion his one eye gazing back, and I slowly looked away.

I wanted to know him. He was casually dressed in well-worn clothes, but what convinced me that I wanted to know him were his shoes. The shining leather dressy newness incongruous to his jeans intrigued me. Not the shoes but the incongruity. I think now it was that his shoes suggested he has more than one life, or that perhaps he is a traveler who has not brought a spare pair to go with his casual clothes, or maybe he is someone gone undercover.

He watched/didn’t watch me as I rose to leave. I watched/didn’t watch him until the very last chance as I was walking out with my gang of six. I looked at him directly with two eyes to see him looking at me.

For that part of a moment it's possible I did know him.