Another week has passed since I last visited the park. So, with life’s obligations fast filling my calendar, despite Tuesday’s 90-degree heat, I ventured out.  In the shade of Central Park West, half the begonias have been replaced with coleus, their thirsty green and burgundy leaves already parched.   The roses behind the benches struggled to produce a second crop, but those across from the so-called Peace Rock bloomed abundantly, pink and red, singles and doubles in profusion.

Dominic, the big-bubble man, shook the soapy water from his hand and gave me a fist-bump.  “We were just talking about you, me and Colin, where’ve you been?”

It was just noon and Colin, the cowboy, wasn’t there.  Perhaps he had sense enough to come in from the sun.  Many tourists, sensibly, chose cool marble museums over Bethesda Fountain in this heat, but not all.  My first hula dancers weren’t even tourists, but an au pair and her 2 young charges, a girl of 3 or so and her older brother.  Brother wouldn’t dance, but the girls had a ball at the hukilau; the au pair tipped me with a fiver.

A tall young woman from Montreal got through the vamp to “The Hukilau Song,” and was starting to remove her lei, when a 60-something woman walking by began singing along.  She knew the hand motions too, so I quickly got a lei around her neck and directed the Montrealer to follow the older woman’s lead.  She told me she’d learned it in grade school, in 1959, when Hawaii became a state.

There was a large group of high schoolers from Argentina, many of whom danced a hula and threw money in my case, and another slightly less large group of scouts from Sweden, who neither danced nor donated.

I was relieved to get to the end of my set.  I sang my last few songs to no one, and, precisely at 1:30, said “Aloha, New York” and sat down.  The change was too hot to count, so I dumped it in the shade of my ukulele case and counted the bills, $13.  I packed up the solar-powered hula girls, the leis, CDs and other paraphernalia, by which time I could handle the coins, $3.68.

“I see you counting your money,” the ice-cold-water man said with a grin.  He was hauling a cooler behind him; it bounced over the uneven bricks.  “See you tomorrow.”