It was the way he held the temple tip of his eyeglasses gently against his lips, pinched and not quite smiling, as if he were about to nibble them, lost somewhere in thought, or at least within the bright confusion that sometimes leads to it. It was the faux-shabbiness of the shelf behind him, filled with well-placed books for our consideration, the loosely-tied silk scarf, and the sporty blazer of no discernable color. But mostly, it was the hands -- hands that looked as though they had never lifted anything heavier than a pen and notebook, never shoveled snow or horseshit, or shingled a roof in ninety-five degree heat, never picked cotton or plucked metal shavings from them after a double shift on the assembly line. They looked, to my eye, as though they had been preserved under museum glass for this moment alone, positioned now in some uncommitted form of prayer, one index finger folded inward toward himself, as if we had somehow missed him, as if he were afraid of receding back into the silence of the page.
