Tree Leaf
He smoked. That was enough to set him off from the crowd these days. He lit the cigarette and took the first drag with deliberation as if aware of the handful of passersby who glanced at him with faces unknowingly tensioned into disapproval. He blew out the smoke with his eyes half shut and it would be hard to tell if the slight smile came from enjoyment or uncaring amusement at the transitory frowns. His smoking had not the matter-of-fact feel of mere habit, and lacking furtiveness, it was not apologetic. It could be said to have the air of defiance and the slightly upturned corners of his mouth could have been an acknowledgment of the ridiculousness of trying to defy a society that obviously controlled you by your very need to defy it.
He walked differently, too. The mob around him flowed more or less in one direction on the street side of the sidewalk and in the other direction on the sidewalk next to the tall buildings with their hopeful window displays of sundry goods that no one looked at. Without seeming to have chosen it, or even being aware of it, he walked near the middle at the confluence of the opposing streams, not exactly slowly, but at a leisurely pace that seemed to match the aura surrounding him.
For the most part, the people passing him on either side were not aware of this invisible field around him. They continued on their way, eyes on their mobile phones while their chatter added to the street noise of heels on concrete, rusty mufflers, and loose fan belts or resolutely turned away from their fellow man in a pretend version of privacy, but really just to avoid having an accidental interaction. There were a few who looked at him by mistake or because they sensed something, and these walked a little wider around him and worked a little harder at ignoring him. He might not have felt like a predator to them, but just the same, he was different, and that was enough.
His clothing too, was different. Or rather, not the clothing itself, which was unremarkable, but the way he wore it. Surely a solid-color shirt over a very white tee above dark denim were nothing so unusual. Nor was the navy windbreaker. Then why did it all seem like some kind of uniform? Crisp, well cared-for. Simple, but having a bit of unlooked for elegance because of the simplicity.
His navigation of the human flood eventually led him to a metal bench overlooking the river, though the view was often temporarily obscured by runners and walkers, people with dogs, and people with children, and people with both. He had finished the cigarette and left the extinguished butt in a public receptacle. Now he sat with his hands in his windbreaker pockets and let the damp air off the water breeze over him. He looked at the pigeons dancing with one another, heads bobbing, and clucking conversations moving from path to grass and back again in an unending pavane. Tiny yellow and orange and red leaves of Japanese maples fell about him. One landed on the bench next to him and he picked it up carefully between forefinger and thumb. He held it aloft until it blocked the cool sun. If he had somewhere he had to go, it did not show in the slow way he regarded the leaf, its veins, its signs of incipient rot. If he compared the leaf to his life, that did not show, either.
