X, Germany

"Excuse me, do you have 50 cents for the telephone?" he bent over and disingenuously asked the American male in black skinny jeans and black hipster glasses. X had entered the train seconds just before.

No one would help. His begged entreaty may have seen better luck if two other homeless people -- one unenthusiastically selling the homeless newspaper and one, obviously mentally disturbed, guided through his haze by yellow paper-cup torches in each hand -- hadn't gone through the wagon between the previous stop and where X boarded. X may also have improved his chances if it weren't so pungently clear he'd recently ingested a kebab, likely purchased for 2 euros from the Turkish place just below the stop. He fills the wagon with the strong smell of raw onion and a faint undertone of coconut oil. (Hair tonic perhaps? It is unlikely he has smeared his dark skin with Hawaiian Tropic.)

X sits down across the aisle from the hipster and his German companion, sighing resignedly.

Below his gritty tee-shirt collar, his chocolate back leaks through the cheap weave of the white fabric, giving it a bluish tinge. His perfectly-formed earlobes draw taut circles at slight angles to his large head. The train enters a tunnel, and X catches his reflection in the darkened window. Unabashedly, he examines his face. He frantically wipes at the corners of his mouth with both hands, then looks back into his own eyes calmly.

Starting, as if he's forgotten himself, he looks around the wagon nervously -- the hunted look of those riding black, without tickets. At the next stop, X follows the hipster off the train.