...and late, down another avenue in this borough where idle wandering is ill-advised. But I was getting close again. Within a block -- east, this time. I tried distracting myself by academically interpreting graffiti, so as to ignore what a rationale person might garner by my dilatory manner. And The Money. ("Don't forget the money.") As I approached the remnants of a bus shelter, a man passed singing a familiar, yet unrecognizable, tune. His rhythmic gait was only mildly impaired by morning intoxication, and his voice was quite good. Provocative. Maybe he was professional. Once. Then I turned north, and a toothless woman with a tattoo on her face asked how I was doing. Without waiting for a reply, she told me with eccentric urgency she needed a dollar to get her car from a gas station up the block. (She gestured in the direction from which I had come, without noticing a service station of any kind.) Unable to resist the irony, I told her I could use a dollar myself, and without so much as a "God bless," she hobbled away continuing a different conversation with herself. Resigned, I turned west. And proceeded back towards the pay phone I had passed thirty-nine minutes ago.