A man and a woman walk towards each other, both blind, canes gently swashing a pendulous path before them on their intersecting trajectories. The Market Street crowd flows around and past them. I hesitate for a moment to watch, wading out of the stream of people pouring down to BART. Canes scrape brick softly as they close, capsize imminent, and I think each hears the other's. They draw up and halt, face to face, an instant before canes cross. Briefly anchored, they stare through one another. I can almost feel them searching out. A speck of time stretches before them in the silence of cars splashing puddles and wet shoes squeaking down stairs.
The moment ends. The woman moves around him and continues up the street, cane scraping its soft arc once again. The man, too, resumes his course, but pauses and turns back the way he came. The way she went. He takes three half steps towards her, stops again. Swept into the current of the busy crowd, she washes farther and farther away. The man cocks his head for a moment and listens.
He swings around and sets his course down the street, a slight spring marking his determined gait. His pendulum ripples to and fro across the soggy bricks.
I take a deep breath and plunge down to BART.
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