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.

That left the no-less-indecisive Fernando and Lucy. The bright sunlight was cruel to Fernando’s facial tattoo. The bleeding heart, stabbed on Fernando’s cheek, bled more profusely in the sun; the name of Fernando’s onetime true love, MYRTLE, was easier to read on the pierced heart. Lucy looked at him, then looked away. She was an underage girl with missing teeth. Whatever else Lucy was missing wasn’t clear, but it seemed evident she had not thought through the repercussions that could come from her licking men. “I’m goin’,” Fernando said, looking at Lucy, but she wouldn’t look at him. “You comin’, or what?” Fernando asked her, but Lucy shrugged; she kept looking away from him. Fernando was half a block away, and walking faster, when Lucy called to him. Lucy’s voice and her thoughts were clearer than the snowshoer and I were expecting.

“I do know the difference between what I want and what I don’t, Fernando! Sometimes, I do know what I mean—sometimes, I do know when I’m bein’ encouragin’!” Lucy called to him, but he just kept walking. “I know why Myrtle left you!” Lucy screamed after him. Fernando appeared to trip, or he staggered for a second, but he kept walking. “Because Myrtle found out about Buddy!” Lucy screamed. We watched Fernando veer west, across Park Avenue; speaking strictly for myself, I was hoping he would be struck and flattened by something. “Buddy left him, too—everybody with half a brain leaves Fernando, eventually,” Lucy said to the snowshoer and me.

“Did you know Buddy?” I asked the girl.

“I wasn’t around when Buddy was around—I just heard about her,” Lucy told me. “Buddy isn’t around anymore, or nobody’s seen her around here,” the girl said.

A taxi whizzed by, the windows open, the radio blaring—or Simon and Garfunkel, unseen, were somehow singing “Scarborough Fair” in the cab’s backseat.