“I’m sorry if I seemed distracted at the filling station.”

“Oh,” I said, “no, I didn’t think that at all. That you were distracted, I mean.”

“I was just surprised to see you. That’s all.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I won’t keep you,” she said. “I just came by to ask a favor.”

My grandmother had entered the kitchen and returned now with a tray upon which rested a small teapot and a plate of sugar cookies. Where the latter had come from I did not know for I surely would have eaten the entire package had I come across them during one of my forays into the cupboards. She entered the conversation now, and so it turned to news of Evelyn Wilson’s family and my own, that my parents were living in Southern California and that she, Mrs. Wilson, lived alone, her husband having suffered a fatal heart attack several years before.

“That must be very difficult,” my grandmother said to her.

“As you know, Jenny,” she said, “you get accustomed to it in time.”

I had stopped wondering what favor Evelyn Wilson had been preparing to ask me, thinking that it must certainly be something very minor, like cutting her grass or doing some small repair to her home, or even taking a look at her Pontiac, since she had seen me employed at the filling station and might then assume, erroneously, that I knew something about the workings of automobiles. Her question, when it finally came, indeed seemed connected with just such an assumption, asking me, apropos of nothing, if I was a good driver, to which I replied that I supposed myself good enough.

“I wondered if you’d do me a great favor,” she said then. “I have to meet someone in San Jose. I was hoping you might drive me.”

“To San Jose?”

“My eyes just aren’t what they used to be,” she said.

I did not respond at first, if only because I was confused by the request; driving a distant relation I hardly knew to a town that must have been something like two and a half hours away was a significantly greater time commitment than I had anticipated. Not that I was particularly occupied with anything meaningful, although of course I still labored under the misguided impression that my book project was well under way.

“I’m sure he’d be glad to, Evelyn,” my grandmother said then.

I was caught now, of course, and so I could only parrot her sentiment. “Sure,” I said. “Sure I’d be glad to help.”