You spotted him across the poorly lit subway station. He carried a small cane suitcase held together with rope. You watched him step near the edge of the platform and look across the tracks at a black and white advertisement for a downtown hotel. 

You weren’t surprised when he asked you which car to take to the university. This was your destination. Though he stepped away and walked some distance down the platform to wait for the train, you realized he would come back.

He ended up standing next to you in the crowded car, his left arm stretched to grab the overhead metal bar. Several minutes later, he slid his hand down to grasp the seat rail close to his crotch. His face was etched with deep crevasses. 

He never said his name, though you dubbed him Carlo in your mind. His skin was a light shade of brown. He was from New York. The collar of his lime green knit shirt was large and buttoned all the way up. He wore a brown corduroy jacket with wooden buttons and dark patches at the elbows.

In your mind, you watched a man hand him that pressed shirt, freshly laundered and folded flat. Carlo reached out his hands to accept the jacket and a pair of brand new jeans, dark blue, almost purple. The guard behind the low wooden counter painted green, one hand on the bottom of the flat stack of clothes, one hand on top, said, “Here you go, Carlo.”

And for the first time in seven years Carlo put on street clothes, then turned to see himself reflected in the glass. Outside the warden’s office, he waited for the words that would echo in his head again and again. “Carlo, we don’t want to see you back here.”

He was a good six inches taller than you and slouched when he spoke. Everything fell apart, he said, the winter he signed the papers sealing his divorce. He moved to a bare studio on the top floor, of a building where the elevator was always out of order. That winter he lost his job and starting making stupid mistakes. His last five hundred dollars went for a used Chevy Nova. He headed south on the highway to Florida.

The afternoon had grown so dark it could have been night. Rain beat steadily against the metal car. Wind slashed rain across the window. A dog howled in answer to a siren’s cry.

“I have no place to stay,” Carlo whispered. 

You knew, of course, that everything had been leading up to this. The rain and wind played a part. The temperature dropping steadily. And Christmas approaching.

The clean faces of the other passengers looked at you from around the car. You couldn’t help but notice the cheerful red, yellow and green rain slickers and wet umbrellas. A glance to the right and you saw where someone had drawn a smiley face in the center of the steamed-up window.

For a moment, you let yourself imagine Carlo in the morning, a cantaloupe colored towel wrapped and folded over at his waist. His chest was damp, the black hairs curled tight there and glistening. His brown hand carefully slid a razor above his lip.

In your mind, there was also a dark room where no objects were visible, except the poorly lit, scratched face of a clock. You had just been woken from sleep, yet you quickly sensed someone was moving in the room. It was five a.m.

You heard the whine of his zipper and the clanking of keys as his pants fell to the floor. Afterward, you felt the bed sinking with his weight and smelled whiskey from his breath, as his warm arm pressed the back of your neck. This, too, was Carlo, and in the morning you would get up alone and dress for work, listening to him snore. When you came home that afternoon, Carlo would be gone, his clothes in a crumpled pile on the floor.

The breath of the passengers continued to steam the windows in the crowded subway car. You let yourself look into Carlo’s dark brown eyes. He took your hand in his calloused palm

“I know it would be good with us,” he said.

And you nodded and smiled, remembering that the leaves glisten brightest in the first moment after the rain stops.