It’s a quarter to 5. There are 89 people and eight dogs on the upper level alone, dozens more on the lower sports fields. Someone wonders if the helicopters have something to do with the President of China being in town.

Three girls and two guys are lawn bowling with colored balls.

A guy is sitting on the edge of one of the outdoor chess boards playing the violin. “I was playing an ode to this guy,” he says when asked, gesturing to the much older guy with enormous white whiskers next to him.

A guy in a Raider’s cap is sitting on the lawn, listening to Guru and eating a turkey sandwich from Subway.

“Are you Mormons or Larouche people? Do you sleep in bunk beds?” says a dude in a porkpie hat, sitting with friends among upside-down bikes. They’re drinking beverages wrapped in bags (the guy in green striped socks has Admiral Spiced Rum—shhhh).

A man on the path, who bears some resemblance to Michaelangelo’s David, walks his golden dog Kona.

A woman on the path has her pug’s leash in one hand and her pug’s poop in the other. The pug’s name is Olive.

Hula-hoopers exhort passersby to choose a hoop and gyrate to the dancehall beats of a boom box.

A beautiful woman who’s bolstering her system with Vitamin Water (c + calcium) and who’s been waiting for a phone call for hours looks up from her book (In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan) and says, “It’s pretty active out here.”

A young woman walking with a young man responds to the question “Where are you headed and how do you feel about each other?” thusly: “We’re co-workers at the W hotel. I love him to death. We’re boy watching.”

A guy with curly hair, huge sunglasses, shorts, and flip flops, closes his cell phone and says, “Everyone else is like, You’re wearing shorts? And I’m like, Hell yeah, it’s sunny.”

A young woman over near the swings, also on her cell phone, is talking to her mother in Toledo, Ohio about her sister.

A Spanish two-year-old named Mara presses her belly against a swing and reaches in the direction of the fountain at the far corner of the park, which someone happens to be climbing, like a giant scaling a watery volcano, and squeals, “I want the fountain!”

A 20-year-old named Mike, in the middle of writing a poem on a yellow pad, declares James Agee’s A Death in the Family “probably the most beautiful book I’ve ever read.”

Two wrinkled, quiet-looking people sit on a bench, the woman with a bright red hat and the man with a cane, watery eyes, and a baby blue cap. “We’re neighbors,” she says. “And friends.” He stares fixedly at the hula hoopers. Later, they will watch TV together. Probably the Hallmark channel. She likes the Hallmark channel. “They have the nice movies.”