CarrollBlog

The subway doors open and a crowd of people pour in. One of them is a man wearing a long beige winter coat covered from top to bottom with blood. It takes seconds for the realization to hit you—THAT’S BLOOD! Then your eyes jump up to his face. A raggedy street person, he’s clearly been in a fight and didn’t fare so well. There are cuts all over his face. One of his eyes is already beginning to swell. But it’s the bloody-massacre coat that is most shocking. I peer around at those nearby to see what their reactions to him are. Mostly it’s sneaked peeks/look-look away-then look again. Manners or decorum or simply embarrassment, almost everyone who has seen him cannot look directly for more than a few seconds. Except for the beauty. There is a really beautiful young woman standing in the corner who cannot stop staring at him. Her eyes are almost bugging out in wonder or incredulity and she obviously feels no shame looking directly at him for as long as she likes. It is such a contrast—beauty and the beast, but it is the beauty who is fascinated not the other way around. The tattered man hasn’t looked her way once.