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closed his eyes after he’d checked and seen hers already closed.
    Whatever wasps there were buzzing around the gutters, he couldn’t hear them, whatever terrorists lurked in the shadows, whatever high winds and assassin viruses or cancers waited for them in the future, everything was laid to rest in their Here and Now, all Evil quelled, squashed, cancelled, in a general moment of truce, amnesty, absolute Grace, Shantih, shantih, shantih, the Peace that Passeth Understanding.

2
    â€œC OME ON ! L ET’S just take a cab!” said Buzz as they walked out of Midway in Chicago into the arctic wind.
    There was an “L” (as in “elevated”) train that you could walk to, but it was a good block’s walk, covered, enclosed, to be sure, but nothing could keep out the arctic cold. And he was impatient. It was already noon. Friday. The big reunion began at seven-thirty that night and it would take an hour to get downtown, another hour to get out to Ellen’s in Grimore Park so that they could drive from far north all the way back to far south. Not that it made any sense, but if that’s what Ellen wanted to do, in all her smother-mother sense of protectiveness, OK. Who was he to resist the hard hand of benevolence from someone he’d known for almost sixty years?!?!
    Sixty years! Jesus … the sixty years seemed like they stretched back to the Paleolithic.
    Crunched down to the head of the line of taxis waiting outside.
    A very black driver in a very yellow cab.
    He turned around and smiled and they got in.
    â€œOK, my friend, “the driver said, a somewhat thick accent, “where to?”
    â€œThe Art Institute,” said Buzz.
    They’d go to the Art Institute. Have lunch in the Member’s Lounge, the snobbiest restaurant in the world, not just Chicago, the menus in French, period, you knew French (or faked it) or you didn’t eat.
    And he wanted to look at the Neolithic Chinese pots. All sorts of links to the South American Neolithic. And there was one Old Fire God from Oaxaca (which his students always insisted on pronouncing O-AX-A-CA instead of what it was—WA-HA-CA, no matter how many times he said it) he wanted to re-examine. Not really a Fire-God at all, but Sun-God. Sun-God + Fire-God, because in ancient times the Sun-God-Fire-God was also the Master Smith when making metals was pure supernatural MAGIC …
    â€œOK, my friend,” the driver said and lurched out into traffic.
    â€œYou’re Nigerian, aren’t you?” Buzz asked the driver, “Not Ibo or Hausa, but Yoruba.”
    The driver actually pulling over to the curb in a paroxysm of surprise.
    â€œHow the f … how do you know THAT?”
    â€œI don’t know,” smiled Buzz, extending his hand over the front seat, shaking the driver’s hand, “I dabble in anthropology a little.”
    The driver pulling out into traffic again.
    â€œI’m amazed. Do you write books?”
    â€œA few.”
    â€œWhy don’t you give me your name. I’d like to read them.”
    â€œWell … they’re not published … at least most of them aren’t. Just a few,” said Buzz, going into his wallet and handing the driver a card.
    â€œAnd the little lady?” the driver asked, looking at Malinche through the rear-view mirror.
    â€œPakistani,” said Malinche with a smile.
    â€œWell, I never … ” said the driver, pulling out of the airport into the thick, impenetrable traffic, everything blanketed in white except the dirty, slushy streets.
    For Buzz it was like re-entering the dream (nightmare) of his frozen Chicago childhood. Remembering how he’d get into his father’s car and his ass would hit the seat and he’d feel the cold go up his spine like a frozen sword. What were all these tropical flowers doing in this mechanized deep freeze?
    All the way downtown talking to the driver about his wife (still back in Nigeria)