“Perhaps I should scrape together a few grand and buy something used. Something good enough that I could resell it when my car comes out of the shop. Or a motorcycle—you know—we’ll see the world from my Harley!”

“Don’t go buying a Harley,” Mr. Contreras begged. “One of my buddies, before your time, old Carmen Brioni, he used to ride a big old Honda 650 around town, thought he was a teenager all over again, until a semi run him off 55 down by Lockport. After that he never talked again, lived like an eggplant for seven years before the good Lord was kind enough to pull the plug.”

We studied the ads in the paper together, which left me more discouraged: anything roadworthy seemed to run three or four thousand. And would take a good day out of my life to hunt down.

“Why don’t you leave car–hunting to me?” Mr. Contreras said. “I sold mine when I moved here because I figured I couldn’t afford all that extry for insurance and whatnot on my pension. In fact, you know that’s why I moved out of the old neighborhood when Clara died, besides, most of my friends had got scared and left the city, so it wasn’t like I was missing my pals. Here I figured I’d be close by the L and walking distance to the stores. And of course it saves me all that parking aggravation, but I still can tell whether an engine runs good or not. What do you have in mind?”

“A Jaguar XJ–12,” I said promptly. “There’s one here for only thirty–six thousand. Standard shift, convertible, the old body before the Ford engineers got their hands on it.”

“That ain’t practical. Those ragtops don’t have any backseat to speak of, and where would the dogs sit?” He startled me into laughing, which made him beam with pride.

“Oh, yeah, the dogs,” I said. “You know, it’s going to have to be a beater. Unless I decide to junk the Trans Am. But I only want to buy something if it’s a reasonable alternative to renting.”

He started running a black fingernail down the page, whispering the words under his breath as he read, his eyes bright with interest. He has his own friends, and he tends a garden in our tiny backyard with painstaking care, but he doesn’t really have enough stimulation in his life—it’s why he gets overinvolved in my affairs.

I skimmed the news sections, trying to see if our accident victim had made the morning edition, while Mr. Contreras worked the ad pages. Commonwealth Edison’s inability to provide the city with power got a tiny mention, as did wildfires in Florida, but Global’s television debut took up most of the front page.