In the caffe

"I'll always figure out a way to make it happen."

This might be his epitaph.

For at least fifteen minutes he had been sitting alone. He had an old yellow Sony portable music machine with him, but he hadn't been listening. He was staring out the window. He seemed to be looking at or seeing nothing, except perhaps what was in his head.

Big, square-faced, handsome in a dull, blank kind of way. He was "reasonably" dressed until you looked a little closer and noticed that his pants were dirty and that he was wearing grey work socks with his black brogues. Later, when his "guest" had finally arrived and they were deep in negotiations, he scratched nervously at his ankle under the rolled down sock.

The guest was Ichabod Crane. A reed, a wisp with a beard. And he came equipped - pen, notebook, questions.

Turned out this was an interview of sorts. The man was a framer and he needed work. Maybe they found each other on Craig's List.

The man listed all his skills. And he did this with a vigor and aggression that you couldn't have seen coming when you observed him in his silence.

Availability?

"If you look out the door and it's raining, chances are I'll be sitting at home watching a movie."

This wasn't reassuring news. Outside, a man had spent much time in perfectionist, obsessive deliberation parking his red and black Bugatti motorcycle. He was wearing matching red and black bike clothes, sleek and shiny and rubbery. When he took off his helmet, he was half-bald. What hair remained was pure white. He was easily in his sixties. Slim, pug-nosed, intense.

Do you remember Michael Mann's 1986 movie, "Manhunter?" It was the first attempt to film Hannibal Lecter. Never as good as Jonathan Demme's great success with "Silence of the Lambs," but still a chilling, scary movie. (It was later reworked as "Red Dragon," with Hopkins and Ed Norton.) Well, an actor named Tom Noonan played the psycho-killer, Frances Dollarhyde, in "Manhunter," and this is exactly what our motorcyclist looked like.

"But I'd love to work for you - inside or outside, it doesn't matter."

Ichabod smiled and wrote in his book.

"I may not be the best framer in the world, but I'll be there at 7 in the morning, and I'll be the last guy to leave."

He was smiling and loud and gregarious and happy. You could almost smell the disaster of his personal life, his eating habits, his furniture.