The first day of school found me back in the park. Yesterday was a record high 97; today was better, but still topped 90. The fountain hosted the cowboy, naturally enough in the western reaches near water. Meta sat on a bench on the eastern edges, where there still was shade. She didn’t look happy. “I asked him very nicely to turn it down,” she said with a sweet smile, then, with a wide-eyed frown, “and he got very aggressive. Besides, there’s no one here, and it’s sooo hot.”

To the south, someone had forgotten to water the hydrangea, whose leaves had turned russet, and drooped like the arms of an exhausted boxer. What once were flowers were now only skinny sticks, with a petal here and there as a reminder of what once was.

The maple provided some relief from the heat, and every now and then a cool breeze would waft over the water, or, so it seemed, rise up from the tunnel under the roadway nearby. Two Belgian girls from Antwerp rode up on their bikes. One of them gave me 57 cents. She could speak English, occasionally translating into Dutch for her friend. She was surprised that an American took any interest in her country.

A pair of Central Park Conservancy volunteers headed my way. “Remember me?” one said.

I looked at the name tag around her neck. “Hi, Joan, good to see you.”

She explained to her friend, Carol, that she had heard me singing the verse of “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking,” and it had set off memories of a musicale she had performed in as a child, decades before. As she explained, I did indeed remember her; we had sung the song together at the fountain, probably when I first learned it years ago. Today, we sang it again. “Have a good day,” she said, walking off.

Meta walked by with her harp. She looked into my case. “You don’t even have carfare.”

A young woman walked by and gave me a dollar. She politely declined to dance. Later on, a young man did the same. When I packed up, at the reduced senior rate, I had one way carfare, with a buck and a quarter to spare.