This evening, walking home, I spied an acquaintance just sitting down at the bus stop in front of my neighborhood's gargantuan Safeway supermarket.

"Hugh!" I said in greeting. He is the sing-along teacher at the school where I substitute, a master of guitar and voice.

"Hey..." he said, hesitating while I removed my hat to reveal my true identity. "Ezra!"

"Yeah, how you doin', man?"

"Good, good. What you up to?"

"Oh just coming back from rehearsal." Knowing that his next question would be, "What do you play?" I struck pre-emptively: "Theatre."

"Oh." Slight pause. "Do you want to see August Wilson?"

Within fifteen seconds, we were boarding a bus, he handing me bus fare. On the bus, he explained. "I've got two tickets," he said, "and my friend—I couldn't get in touch with him."

"Cool." We talked about Hugh's various bands for a time.

"What if your friend meets you there?" I asked.

Hugh had not considered this possibility.

"Nah. What are the chances? I called him fifteen minutes ago, no answer."

The ticket woman's first words were, "Well, you already have a friend in there." Hugh and I blushed—subtly of course. But the cosmos was gentle this eve, and the ticket woman extended two comp tickets to us—standing room only, natch—in surfeit of the one she'd already given under the now-infamous name of "Hugh."

No matter. We stood in the way back of the second balcony (bloody Rep has the worst house in town) for a two-and-a-half-hour storytelling session courtesy of one of the world's best living playwrights, and certainly the best playwright ever to create a ten-play cycle covering the African-American experience in each decade of the twentieth century. More on which, later.

Afterward, we met the friend and headed out to a bit of a pub for a pint. On the PA played the second album I ever owned, Blind Melon (after Life's Rich Pageant).