I took a taxi to the waterfront and left it there. I’d started to feel guilty about stealing it because I was thinking about the driver, whose tag said his name was Tayib. I figured he probably had a wife named Jarita, and a son named Ravi, and another one named Saleem, and a daughter named Gipsy, who he loved most of all and who caused him the most heartache. When I’d gotten all their names down I parked the cab and set out on foot again.

As I passed by a restaurant with wealthy people sitting outside at tables draped with fine white linen, I noticed a young man standing next to the cordon, his eyes darting between the busboy and a plate with a half-eaten piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream. The busboy was trying to keep an eye on the young man, while simultaneously gathering up dirty plates and lipstick-smudged wine glasses.

He eventually left for the kitchen, and when he did the young man darted at the pie and began fingering off the whipped cream and eating it. I watched with satisfaction and frustration – by now I would have been long gone with the whipped cream, the pie, the tip, and maybe even the silverware.

“Why don’t you take the pie, too?” It was the busboy. He had returned from a different direction and had surprised both the young man and me. The busboy had obviously lived on our side of the cordon at some point in his life. Maybe he still did.

“I’m not a thief!” replied the young man, spraying whipped cream indignantly.

“I know,” said the busboy. He handed him the plate, along with a fork and a napkin. The young man took it all. When the busboy made a little motion with his fingers, the young man reached into his pocket and gave him a quarter. The busboy glanced at the coin and then at me, looking exasperated, as if the young man and his manners were my responsibility. I walked up, gave the busboy a dollar, put a hand on the young man’s shoulder, and led him away from that scene.

I learned that his name was Michael, that he was from Ohio, and that he’d come to the city to make it as a harmonica player. He finished the pie, stashed the plate and fork in a jacket pocket, and from another pocket took out his harmonica. He told me his specialty was blues versions of opera arias. He played a sample for me: a medley from Madame Butterfly, Aïda, and the Magic Flute – as if played by Son House, John Lee Hooker, and B.B. King. I applauded politely.

“I’m Lemal,” I said, shaking his hand, “I’m also from Ohio.”

We talked about our home towns, and I told him what I was doing in the city – that I was an ethnobotonist who, like him, was in search of a gig. The former was mostly true, and the later is what we all are.

“See those fancy buildings down by the waterfront?” I asked him as we walked along. “Where the rich people live?” He looked and nodded. “See how the wind turbines mounted on their rooftops are turning, generating electricity for them and their bourgeois lifestyles?” He nodded, and instinctively looked up at the wind turbines on the rooftops of the older buildings in the neighborhood where we were walking.

“These are barely moving,” he said about the wind turbines of the poor. I won’t call them middle class because there is no middle class anymore. He looked back at the spinning turbines of the rich.

“They even take the wind from us.”

I nodded. “You’re catching on.”

We walked for a long time and wandered into the theatre district. Outside of a show there was a man who reminded us of ourselves, or the busboy, really, because he was wearing a uniform. We stopped and talked and learned that he worked for the theatre as a valet. He told us his name was Ricardo, and that he’d grown up in Puerto Rico, but that he was originally from Ohio. Michael and I thought this was an amazing coincidence, and we all became friends.

The show was in progress and Ricardo had nothing to do, so we all sat on the sidewalk with our backs to the wall. Michael played his harmonica, and we ate sunflower seeds that Ricardo shared with us, spitting the husks into our hands and placing them in our pockets rather than onto the sidewalk, as none of us wanted to be called a litterbug.

Ricardo told us that he was also a musician, and that he was writing a rock opera based on the writings of Sir John Mandeville, the 14th century knight and traveler. He also told us that he had a wife named Deb, and he invited us to come to his apartment for dinner. He called Deb on his cell phone to check it out.

While we were sitting there talking about what kind of sailboat to use for an around the world solo cruise – a sloop or a trimaran ketch – a famous couple emerged from the theatre. Ricardo jumped up and the man grumpily tossed car keys at him.

“Car!” barked the famous man.

“Wax!” shouted Ricardo. He threw the car keys as hard as he could at the man’s head. The keys made a soft thud as they embedded into the man’s neck. The man immediately turned to wax. The woman with him, horrified, also turned to wax.

Ricardo made a call on his cell phone to his friend Leonard.

“Oh Leonard,” Ricardo said in a sing-songy, teasing voice. “It’s 9:00 p.m. Do you know where your figures are?”

Michael and I could hear his friend swear over the cell phone. Ricardo laughed and hung up. He explained to Michael and me that Leonard worked as a security guard at Madame Tussauds, and that frequently the wax figures would self-animate and escape. It was Leonard’s job to round them up. Ricardo theorized that when ghosts of famous dead people see their wax bodies they infest them like termites or mildew, and then walk out of the museum and try to live “normal” lives in this world again.

“Why would they want to do that?” asked young Michael, peering closely at the faces of the hyper-realistic wax figures. Ricardo and I looked away because we had no answer for him.

“They almost look like they’re alive,” said Michael. “They look like they’re almost alive.”

We walked to Ricardo’s apartment, which took us a long time. His wife, Deb, was happy to see him and she greeted Michael and me as if we were old friends. We had a nice dinner of lentil soup and potato bread, and a small bowl of whipped cream for each of us for dessert.

We then sang songs, accompanied by Michael on his harmonica and Ricardo on his guitar. We had fun making up funny and sad lyrics to “O mio babbino caro”, “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta”, and “Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pagena”, while doing our best impressions of Blind Willie, Enrico, Muddy, and Maria.

After that we talked: about cenotes in the Yucatan, ayahuasca, dreams, bromeliads, refrigerator magnets, dialectical materialism, mirrors within labyrinths, species of finches on the Galapagos Islands, flated thirds and blue notes, infamous pilots, and whether or not Homer, Cervantes, and Borges were actually the same person.

Eventually we all grew tired and Ricardo and Deb asked us to stay the night. We all slept in their bedroom: Ricardo and Deb in bed, Michael and me on the floor. Yes, it was cozy, but there was nothing improper about it. Michael quietly played a Slim Harpo version of “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana”.

My penultimate thought before falling asleep was that Deb spelled backwards was bed, and that therefore Ricardo had everything he needed for happiness in this world.

The last thought I had, as I slipped into a pleasant state of hypnogogia, was that more than just astronauts and Presidents come from Ohio, but also angels, and that all of us here – and maybe Tayib the cabbie, too – were really angels from Ohio. Except for Deb, an Oglala Sioux angel from Pine Ridge. She sang softly to us – “Casta diva” – until we’d all fallen asleep.