The torch singer was back, as incoherent and screechy as last time. The cowboy was still working. At the rim of the fountain, a young man in a neatly trimmed beard was standing with a guitar at his side. “Are you planning on busking here?” I asked him.

His name was John, from Melbourne. He’d been traveling in the States for 10 months, had bought his guitar in San Francisco, and had busked in different parts of Central Park for the last few days. “Where do you play?” he asked.

“Right here.”

When the cowboy signed off, John left me to chat with him. I stood and started my set. Soon enough, a woman walked by and dropped a half dollar in change. Moments later, another woman did the same.

A girl from Georgia was most eager to hula. She pranced around through 2 verses, then walked back to the bench, where her friends were waiting.

“Have you got time for a hula today?” I asked a lone stroller. She did, but after 8 bars, she handed the lei back and walked away.

The crowds were thin, no school groups, no guide-led scrum of tourists. For extended moments, I played to the puffy white clouds and green pennants snapping in the breeze. A photographer captured a minute or two of my act, then gave me a dollar.

Two women were listening from the northern bench. They kicked in $3 when they left. Another woman, from the south, kicked in a buck.

Toward the end of my set, a father carrying his toddler daughter bounced to “Get Out and Get Under the Moon.” When dad put his girl down, I doubled up a lei and put it like a crown on her head. She walked rhythmically to the song, to the delight of passers-by. They appeared to be Middle Eastern or North African. When dad gave me a dollar I asked where he was from.

He thought for a moment, then answered, “D.C.” Perhaps he was attached to a foreign embassy, or in New York for the opening of the United Nations.

By the time I packed up, $7.31 to the good, the crowds again had disappeared, leaving me almost alone by the fountain. John from Melbourne reappeared. “How’d it go?”

“As good as I expected.”

“Maybe I’ll just practice here in the sun.”

“Sounds good. That’s what I do. If you’re here for the money, you’ll starve.”