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hair behind one ear; it immediately fell back down. She said, “He’s not into converting people. He doesn’t label, don’t you see? Ask him what religion he is and he’ll say he doesn’t care. But he has peace of mind, Otto, adeep, deep peace that nothing can shake. Can you say the same thing? Since Mom and Pop died, especially, can you? You said yourself it will only be a few days. And he has his own money and is very easy to be with. So could you do this for me? Just this one small thing? Please?”
    W HICH IS BASICALLY the story of how, after another half hour of pleading, on my sister’s part, and attempting to resist, on mine, I ended up agreeing to drive Volvo Rinpoche from NJ to ND. When we went outside to give him the news, the Rinpoche seemed interested, mildly curious, amused, but not in any discernable way grateful. His luggage consisted of one cloth bag that looked like an oversized, well-worn pocketbook with leather handles. He accepted a minute-long embrace from my sister, bowed to her in a tender way, and settled himself in the front seat as calmly as if he’d been making the insurance payments for the past six months. My sister hugged me double-long, a double-long spinal massage included.
    I was behind the wheel, seatbelt on, without knowing quite how it had happened. I lowered the window. “You said you had a dream about Rinpoche and me,” I said to Cecelia. “What were we doing?”
    A gorgeous smile lit my sister’s face. She leaned toward me, happy as a child, and said, “Bowling!”

SEVEN
Between Cecelia’s house and the interstate on-ramp, somewhere among the tattered wood-frame triple-deckers and boarded-up topless joints (Doctor’s Cave Lounge, Go Go Girls!) of Paterson’s vibrant downtown, Rinpoche and I got lost. Probably I should take sole credit and say “ I got lost,” but it is true that the presence of a Rinpoche there in the car’s front seat acted as a significant distraction. Or, as Anthony used to say when he was in grade school, “a major annoyment.” Getting lost did nothing to brighten my mood, which had been somewhat sour to begin with, and which turned bitter around the edges when I realized, driving away from my sister’s house, that she had manipulated me expertly.
    I knew it was only a matter of a few minutes until we found the road we were looking for, but it was an annoyment all the same. I thought I’d been retracing my steps from the interstate to Seese’s house: We went past the same park I had seen on the way in—metal wastebaskets chained to the benches; we looped around behind a familiar line ofrehabilitated factory buildings. As I knew we would from memories of other visits, we soon saw the sign for Interstate 80 East, but, for some reason, there was no corresponding sign for Interstate 80 West, and all this, on top of the fact that I always felt a twinge of guilt there, seeing people living in such a rough, poor, dangerous, noisy place, while my family and I lived in safe comfort, had me banging the bottom of my fist against the steering wheel.
    And then, in front of another red brick factory building, I came upon a thirty- or thirty-five-year-old man with very black skin, white sneakers, and a neat pair of blue jeans. He was sweeping the sidewalk with an attentiveness and care that caught my eye as we passed. I must have caught his eye as well, because he looked up and smiled, as if I were a regular traveler on that route, a cousin or neighbor or friend. I made a U-turn in a bank parking lot, pulled up alongside him, and asked directions, talking to him across the front of Rinpoche’s berobed body.
    “You were goin’ the wrong way, man!” the fellow said, and he was so sunny, so unabashedly helpful, and so precise with the directions, that my mood sank a little further. This happens to me on occasion in the presence of especially friendly and well-meaning souls. I do not know why. I am a friendly and well-meaning soul myself, optimistic,