Moses' hand touched the bag with the coat, tentatively.  I wasn't sure whether the intended motion was to take it or to push it away.

As I looked at his hand, the similarities to Howard Hughes grew stronger.  His fingernails, yellowed and filthy, grew at least an inch beyond the ends of his fingers.   It took a certain amount of effort to remember that what I was looking at was a human hand.

"Come on,” I finally said, " it's cold.  You'll freeze without a coat."

I looked back up at his face.  Nothing I'd anticipated prepared me for what I saw.

Quite possibly the man was stark mad.  Quite possibly he hadn't comprehended anything I'd said.  Still, something was animating his eyes.

It was malevolent.  It was probably the closest thing I had seen to pure hatred.

I made as good a recovery as I could.  I put the bag down on the sidewalk.  I said, "Well, I'm leaving it here. What you do with it is your business."

In the remaining block to the office, I had to deliberately force my walk down to a normal speed.

I said "Good morning" to my officemates, hung up my coat, and immersed myself in reading irrelevant memos that I would have normally thrown out.

After almost an hour I trusted myself to write something, and was relieved to discover that my handwriting didn't look like somebody's electrocardiogram.

I did some more of it.  Normal office affairs came to occupy my attention.  Eventually, the day passed.