Nobody else on earth knew them.

There is no recording.

I have never played them for a soul except her.

It is not a song, it is four lines and a tune, and it existed in exactly two heads in the world and one of them was mine.

A boy of about seven was singing it on a corner outside a bank with a nine-dollar Bluetooth speaker on the concrete beside him.

He was good, actually.

That is a strange thing to have noticed in that moment and I did notice it.

He had the phrasing right, the little hitch before put your feet on the dash, which is a thing I do and which is not in any way obvious.

He finished, and a couple put money in a hat, and he turned around and said something to a woman on the planter, and she looked up from her book.

And it was Carmen.