All this past week, illness kept me laid up at home. But on my one foray outside to trudge a gauntlet of doctors' offices and x-ray facilities, the grace of the city found me on the B68 bus.

The Graces were disguised as septugenarian women in the seat behind me. One was recounting to the other the exact details--down to the long low gold velour couches--of a Halloween visit she'd made exactly 61 years ago. Enthralled by their capacity for memory, I couldn't help but break the city's cardinal rule: I made eye contact with a stranger.

And all the way from King's Highway through Midwood and into Ditmas Park, we had a wonderful conversation. They'd both been "career girls," and we talked about the publishing business, about memory, about making one's own way in the world, and about those wonderful back-in-style low couches.

For eighty blocks I forgot to cough. Graces, or angels? And what else might the city have to offer me, say, on today's walk?