As we are moving into the apartment last August, we keep encountering an elderly man who enjoys perching on our building’s front steps or standing on the corner across the street, hands contemplatively behind his back, apparently watching traffic and passersby. He appears to live in the senior-citizen apartments a half-block away, and emerges for these walks in warm weather to stand and bask in the sunlight, like a Galapagos tortoise. The one time I try to speak to him, he furrows his brow and shrugs in incomprehension and says something in a language I don’t recognize. We privately refer to him as Pablo because he looks like Pablo Picasso in his later years (c.f.). He disappears for the winter. We know that spring has arrived because last week Pablo makes his reappearance, back standing at the corner observing traffic with his implacable, Buddha-like calm, in what looks like always the same shirt.