By late afternoon I was back at Kings Cross. I wanted to check my email, and I’d noticed a library branch just down the road from the hotel. It proved to be a typical inner city library, upstairs in a storefront, a single floor of books rather bare bones, but there was a space on the mezzanine that offered free WiFi. Every chair in the little room with the table was taken, so I sat in the waiting area and turned on my Ipad.

“Excuse me.” I looked up. A tall man with a shaven head was standing beside me. He wore a white shirt, a tie, and dark slacks. “You speak English?” he asked, with a slight foreign accent.

“Yes.”

“Could you please look at my letter. I have a letter. There.” He gestured back at a computer. “And it must be correct. Could you perhaps look at it and correct?”

I could think of no reason to refuse, so I walked over to the empty chair he indicated and sat down in front of the computer.

My default, probably unfair assumption when I get a request like this in a public space is that the person asking for help is cracked. Maybe he was, but it wasn’t evident in the letter, which, though long at eight paragraphs, was fairly well organized and scanned logically in spite of a few errors in punctuation and syntax. It seemed to involve some legal dispute about benefits he felt he was owed. There was none of the sulpherous rage I associate with crazy people’s letters, though there was a sprinkling of irritation over points he felt he’d already gone over in an earlier letter. Of course, it could all have been bullshit. If I actually knew what was going on, I might read it and shake my head and say, “this guy is nuts.” Who knows? I made the corrections and then, after the file was saved, he offered me the computer. I could use the rest of his time if I wanted, he said. I explained that wasn’t necessary, that I had an Ipad, and he thanked me profusely again. I returned to my chair in the waiting area and updated my email.