Sometimes she tries to reform them, the man said. I’ve listened to her do this. She starts lecturing them, asking why would they want to hurt innocent people, why didn’t they go out and get themselves an honest job. She’s even convinced herself that she’s had some success. Last month she told me about a guy who told her he was truly sorry for what he’d done and promised never to do it again.

The man laughed, and I laughed with him. He had finished his cigarette, but instead of going back to his mother he kept sitting there on the bench, talking. It occurred to me that she must wonder what was taking him so long, but he didn’t seem concerned. I wasn’t entirely surprised when he shook another cigarette from his pack and lit up again.

I do worry about her becoming more vulnerable, he said. The older she gets, the more forgetful she is, and things happen. Her toothbrush ends up in the fridge, she has trouble keeping the grandkids straight. And after all, people a lot younger and sharper than her get scammed every day.

I thought about a friend of mine whose mother is in a nursing home. Every time I visit her, he told me, she says something about how maybe now I’ll find a nice girl to settle down with. And every time she says this I say to her, No, Mother, I’m gay, remember? This has been going on for years. Every time my friend sees his mother he has to come out all over again.

It’s so depressing, the man in the courtyard went on. Like old people don’t have enough bad things happening to them. What a toxic society we live in. And it’s not just one or two bad apples. Seems like hordes of people are out there ready to prey on the weakest. I don’t get it. How do these crooks feel when they’ve ruined some poor person’s life? How can they enjoy whatever it is they spend that victim’s money on? Feasting on someone else’s misery—how can these people look in the mirror? What do they tell themselves?