It is wonderfully windy this afternoon. I sit gingerly on the curb between two market stalls. One, a pasta cart. The burly Italian couple standing behind it yells at the crowd, bellow about their wares. They're shouting in Italian. I smile. Hearing Italian always makes me smile, though I fear I've lost the touch for speaking it. The woman shouts louder than her husband. He tries to match her volume, but the robust woman is screeching so that a banshee would be jealous. The street is full of the daily din. Shouting. Yelling. Dogs yipping. Children screaming, crying, taunting, laughing. My fingers brush against the cloth of my shirt, toy with the hem absentmindedly. Through all the street noise, people of all shapes and sizes shove to get to the pasta cart. They throw a few coins at the wife while the husband fills a brown paper bag overflowing with the floury stalks and beads of dried food. Children eye the jar of candy by the wife's elbow. Some tug at their mother's skirts. Some walk away, sticky mouths giggling.

I sit there for some time, wind tousling my hair. No matter how much I rake my fingers through the mess, it makes no difference.

The Irish stall on my opposite, though much quieter, is profiting from all the commotion caused by its Italian neighbor. The soft-spoken woman who tends it is easily talked into lower prices for her distressed produce. When she has a moment, I notice, she turns her back to the street to stroke the cheek of a very old woman who sits in a wooden chair not far from me. She tucks the old woven blanket gently around the old wrinkled skin, and the look on the younger woman's face makes my stomach drop to my knees.

"Olive."

I turn. Smile. Lean back against the pair of legs that stand behind me, cuddling my cheek against the coarse corduroy fabric of his trousers.

"C'mon, I got the papes."

He offers me a hand up, slides an arm around my waist.

"You alright?" he asks of my faraway daydreaming. "Need anything?"

"An apple?" I offer, and he reaches into the depths of his newsbag, extracting a tarnished nickel.

"Let me get you change, lass." The kind-faced woman lilts as she turns to a sagging cardboard box by her side. Spark stops her with a grin and picks up another apple from the crate.

"We'll take two."

"Your change, three cents." "Keep it." I state.

"Really." Spark articulates through a large chunk of the fleshy fruit. Juice is already running down the corners of his mouth.

The Irish woman's face alights with a quiet smile as we turn and walk away.

The wind whips the cloth of my skirt around my ankles. Spark catches his cap from the sudden breeze and stuffs it down into his newsbag.

"T'ree zebras escape the Brooklyn zoo!" he hollers.

"Monkeys spotted in Central Park!" I join in cheerfully.