“Colonel Zimmermann, sir,” Mr. Barlow began; he was struggling with the two platters, trying to shield the paper bowls and paper plates and paper napkins from the wind. A telltale trail of fallen plastic spoons marked the snowshoer’s path along the Park Avenue sidewalk. “Sir,” Elliot Barlow said a second time, as a paper plate was blown away in the wind, “your Matthew was a good shepherd.”

“Good soldiers are good shepherds, Mr. Barlow—thank you for noticing!” the colonel warmly said.

“For God’s sake—give me all that, Mr. Barlow,” Elmira said. She took the two platters with the paper and plastic stuff, hugging them to her capacious chest—the soup ladle held fast in her fist, like a mace. “Adam, give those sandwiches to Talib—he’s a good soldier; he can carry them,” the housekeeper told me. Talib took the platter of egg salad sandwiches from me—he was clearly used to taking orders from Elmira—then the good soldier who’d been saved from combat spoke to Colonel Zimmermann.

“I doubt, Colonel, that I am dressed appropriately for the party upstairs,” Talib told the retired commanding officer.

“You are most appropriately dressed, Talib—someone in fatigues should be there,” the colonel said to the dutiful soldier.

Ayla was keeping her distance from the egg salad sandwiches, or she was worried about her close proximity to the eggs in the elevator that would take her to the thirteenth floor. Yet the colonel also considered that the pregnant younger sister may have doubted the appropriateness of how she was dressed for the party upstairs. “And you, Ayla—you and your baby—look wonderful. There is no one at the party upstairs who looks as wonderful as you do,” Colonel Zimmermann told her. The hooded sweatshirt Ayla was wearing was probably Talib’s, I thought, but everyone could still see the sizable bump in the skinny young woman’s belly.

The doorman held the door open for the colonel and Elmira; he looked relieved that only Talib and Ayla followed those first two into the lobby. The snowshoer and I were left on the Park Avenue sidewalk with Fernando and Lucy, and with Mary and Felix—a couple of unlikely couples.

Mary was old enough to be Felix’s mother, but she wasn’t. “Where ya goin’?” Mary asked the boy, in a less-than-motherly way.

“I got nowhere to go,” Felix told her matter-of-factly.

“I’m goin’ to a nowhere I know somethin’ about—if you wanna come,” Mary said to him. The boy hesitated a long time; I thought the snowshoer was going to take him down and rub his face on the sidewalk. But Mary just started walking away; Felix quickly followed her.