Shall we start with the recent playful miracle? How fast a migraine can clarify to the buzz of good champagne. I am riding a taxi toward La Guardia airport, I’m hurrying to the old house I now occupy. My ticket to North Carolina is nonrefundable, I feel glad to be headed south. I sit studying the purple turban of a driver whose name is, according to the card depicting him, Krishna.

Suddenly my forehead—from just over the eyebrows to where the hairline once reigned—goes exquisite and sneezy as with some ice-cream headache. I look to the left of Krishna’s orderly topknot, I see a peeling decal: “I (Heart) New York.” I know.

“Excuse me, Mr. Krishna, sir? We must do a U-ie. I am going to miss my plane. We will now be heading back into the city. There’s a little downtown street. I can help navigate. You will double-park, please. In thirty seconds I’ll know if it’s still there. I bet you anything it is.”

“Is, is vhhat, szir?”

“One chip of paint from the back side of a radiator near our table at the coffeehouse. We all wrote on it. That chip is lying on the tile floor underneath. Piece maybe five inches long. Tomorrow, she will sweep it out. I’m this sure. —Look.” And, through the open plastic panel, I shove my very-white-man-in-his-forties hand. It is trembling, that happy, wobble wobble. I feel proud of my hardearned uncontrol.

Dark eyes in the rearview mirror gauge my blue-gray ones (brown can “go into” blue more often than blue’ll ever fit brown). Mr. Krishna tells me, “Szir, you are having veesion. I vill join you in showing I know what veesions are. Am off-duty. Krishna he believe your veeeesion.”

I cannot say how much it meant to get a free ride, forty dollars’ worth. Of course, I later paid him anyway. That’s part of what you learn. From taking care of people. To accept whatever they can offer. Then you try and pay it back quick. That helps them to give more, which helps them.

He speeds into the web of nighttime Manhattan; things either flash or hide; he finally stops, he activates the blinkers. I dash into a store all new to me. No coffee smell, no crowd. It’s become one of those shortlived shops selling African crafts. The entrance stands guarded by wooden giraffes, near-lifesized, spotted in darker shellac. A dashikied clerk chats up her only customer. I fake shopping. I pass bright crocheted hats you could fit over world globes. I find four bolt holes. Here our group’s table once stood. Behind it, the old bowlegged radiator we sat on during our worst winters.