The first time I saw him it was raining and I was late for work again. I had just emerged from the mouth of the station, simultaneously attempting to adjust my hood and avoid getting poked in the eye by a dozen quickly expanding umbrellas as we trudged lock step up the puddling staircase, a single mass of wet angry humanity. This was a regular occurrence for me on rainy days, an unfortunate combination of being both tall and accident-prone.

The first step out onto the sidewalk was the best part of my morning thus far, and was likely to remain so until I returned home again that night. The rush of cool air that greeted me carried with it profound relief, lifting and separating me from the pack, and scattering us all like ashes to be strewn about the city streets.

It was a cold rain and it beat down steadily, returning me to my previously soaked state, having nearly dried off while hurtling towards Manhattan for the past twenty-five minutes. It felt better to be completely wet again.

I almost missed him while I mentally accessed my sum total of cash money, linking the potential bills in my wallet with remembered loose change in my right pocket from the night before and weighing that against the cost of two buttered rolls and a cooler drowned plastic bottle of cranberry juice cocktail, my daily breakfast for the past three and a half years.

He was walking away from me, and you would think he would be hard to miss, with the big red cape and all. But it was the day before Halloween, and this was the East Village, and I felt some allowance for the possible was required.

I know that I was skeptical. Of course I was. It was simply a good costume. A lot of people here could afford a costume like that, and hadn’t I seen literally hundreds of people in costume, both on and off the stage over the past few years? It wasn’t the costume that bothered me. He wasn’t carrying anything. Not even a plastic-wrapped paper tucked under his arm or a wet cup of coffee in his hand.

It was pouring the kind of rain that floods gutters and he didn’t have an umbrella. I didn’t have one either but my coat had a hood at least. Why go to the trouble of buying, or worse, making a costume like that and have it get drenched on the way to work, assuming he was even heading to work.

The way he walked. I was skeptical. I walked faster so that I could get a better look at him, thinking and maybe even hoping that I was hallucinating. But then an old lady, a stock old lady straight from central casting, almost bumps into him. And he stops. And I mean stops, not on a dime but on the first micron of a dime. And then gently, so gently, he holds out his arms taking hers in his and she keeps her balance.

This was the moment. He turned his head, just a bit, the slightest of glances to make sure she was on her way, and I saw his face. I saw his eyes. They were, inhuman. They were beautiful in a way that no human’s could ever be. I knew it was him.

He kept walking down Houston and I fought my own programmed urge to turn left onto Lafayette. We crossed the street together, me a few strides behind him. Did he know I was following him? He must have. The sound of my steadily increasing heartbeat was a pounding drum and my footsteps implosions on the puddles below my feet. He could smell the sweat forming beneath the film of water that had permeated my clothes. My dim reflection in the glass of the bank across the street was a billboard. But could his X-Ray vision could penetrate my soul?

All of this paranoia was thoroughly examined by the time we reached the corner. He kept walking straight down Houston as I became later with every step. I knew I had to say something. I had to close this gap between us.

But he was farther away now. Much farther. My first thought had been Super-Speed but then I realized that I was standing still and hadn’t moved from the corner, my body leaning down Lafayette like a plant to the sun.

I started to feel overwhelmingly foolish and when my stomach rumbled and I considered how good my buttered roll would taste, soggy or no.

I kept watching him, about to cross Bowery, when I suddenly shouted, “Hey, Clark!” and that was when he turned.