"Dunno if I've ever met somebody who wasn't."

He gives a rock in his path a kick into the grass.

"But — yeah. Met a guy in Houston who came in from Vietnam in, like, the 80s, he basically grew up on a crab boat...apparently his dad helped sue the Klan?"

"The -- oh, like Ku Klux? Cool."

There's a little cluster of students by the stoplight, waiting to cross Guadalupe. Camillo glances around at their ordinary faces, looking for a double-take, for the reflection of heavenly light. There's nothing.

"Right? God's work. I guess they were getting a lot of crab-related harassment on the coast back then — we crossing here?"

The light has turned.

"Yeah. If we walk south down the other side we'll probably see something that rings a bell, and if not we can turn around and walk back north."

The crowds are flowing across the intersection all four ways and across the two diagonals. Camillo joins them.

The stranger sticks close to his side.

As they cross, and turn to make their way down the street, he looks between the storefronts and the faces of passers-by, drawn back and forth fluidly from one to the other.

There's a 7-11 and a pizza place and a Jamba Juice. None of them seem particularly promising. Someone's bike, unwisely parked, is missing its front wheel.

"So who are you meeting?"

He looks sympathetically at the harvested bike as he passes.

“Couple people traveling with me. And maybe somebody’s fellowship group, if they show.”

"Huh. Like a Bible study thing?"

“Yeah, ish. I don’t think there’s an agenda, it’s, like…a church hangout. Somebody just asked me to check up on her people when we got to Austin.”

Camillo is desperately curious about his denomination but can't quite find a polite segue into it.

"Are you, like, a missionary or something?"

"Kinda. I'm mostly doing my own—"

"—oh, Medici coffee," he says, staring up at a sign a few windows down.

He's out of time.

He's a fool. This is it, his one real brush with holiness, and he can't figure out how to ask anything he wants to ask -- who are you? what is it that's special about you? what should I know about God? what are you doing? how can I help?

"--I didn't get your name."

"I'm Z. You?"

"Camillo."

Be normal. Be normal.

"Have a good -- Bible study or whatever."

Don't leave him. He doesn't want to lose this already.

He smiles at him, 

and, then, just before he goes, he takes a step to close the space between them and hugs him, briefly and tightly.

It's a really good hug.

He lets go and takes off before Camillo has a chance to follow up, waving over his shoulder.

By the time he makes it back to his bike, the streetlights have turned on, and the air is redolent with the scent of night-blooming jasmine.

He sings Come Holy Ghost, softly, as he pedals home.

The next time he meets Z, he's sitting up on a backpack under a live oak, addressing a few students spread out on the lawn.

"—because it's not helping anybody. And, yeah, you can do better. Which of the assholes in your mentions need help? Fuck, you don't even have to go there, who in your dorm needs help? Who's sick? Who's broke?"

There's a man watching from the back of the throng, knelt on the ground, who looks like he must hit his forehead on a lot of door frames.

And, from another bench, a woman watches, types on her laptop, occasionally scans the crowd.

Camillo lingers, and tries not to hope.

(It wouldn't be -- parsimonious -- for him to receive another miracle. He's already learned whatever it was that he needed to learn. God has never seen the need to speak to him purely for the sake of comfort and consolation, and seems unlikely to start now.)

As he passes behind the onlookers, he can see the sketchbook of a scrawny boy in the back.

Z is loosely outlined in red pencil in front of a grey crowd, with a halo around his head.

Oh.

Camillo stops by him, touches his shoulder.

"Hey -- sorry -- uh, I like your drawing."