After 2 weeks away, I quicken my pace as I enter the park, eager to get back on center stage. Garish cleome have shot up like fireworks behind the roses and played-out cosmos. The homeless guitar men still occupy the Imagine mosaic. The chestnut tree, I’m sad to report, looks terminal. There are more brown withered leaves on the ground than on the branches. Only a few black and blackening clusters of fruit depend from the upper limbs. I stomped on one that had hit the ground; the nut inside was bright and shiny.

I started out slowly, trying to get my fingers to move through the chord patterns without fumbling, or forgetting altogether. By the time I got to “Ukulele Lady,” digits limber, voice tuned, I was rocking. A nicely dressed woman, who had been sitting in the shade for a few songs, walked up with a dollar and thanked me for the entertainment. She would not hula, nor would a preteen boy who also gave me a dollar. Three mid-teen girls had been watching all this from their bench; with a little coaxing, first one, then all of them had picked out their leis, waved their arms and went to the hukilau.

A kid on a bike lost control and wiped out right in front of me. The front wheel smashed into my case. The kid ran crying to his mom, while I straightened out the seat and handlebars, engaged the kickstand and rolled the bike to the side. A moment later, a mom (or au pair) retrieved the bike, returned it to the crying child, then collected her 3 charges and treated them to a hula. She gave me a dollar, and when the dance was done and the kids wanted to dance again, she gave me another.

At minute 85 of my set, I was out of water, it was hot, everyone seemed to have found shade on the other side of the fountain, and I was ready to go home. A young man approached. “I really like your music,” he said, “but do you think you could move somewhere else? We’re taping an interview. It’s for ‘America’s Got Talent’ on NBC.”

“I’ve got talent. I’m American.”

“This is the last episode for this season,” he said. “But you can fill out an application to be a contestant next season.”

“All right,” I said. “Give me $5 and I’m outta here. Can you do that?”

He thought for a moment, realized, I think, that he was getting off easy, and pulled an envelope from his pants pocket. “I can do that.”