From Lincoln Center, after the ballet, we walked the few blocks to Nick and Toni’s, arriving at the same time as two large men who announced that they were meeting friends. Spotting one of those friends, they pointed to a table and said, almost together, “There’s one of them. That guy. The little guy.”
    Miranda and I took a table near the windows. The table we chose was near the one at which the two big men joined the small one.
    “I’ve got the solution to global warming,” the small man declared before the big men had even taken their seats. He was beaming. He had the look of a boy who rarely commands the attention of the group but knows that on this one occasion he possesses the bit of gossip or startling news or the bright idea or outrageous joke that will make them pay attention to him now.
    “What’s that?” one of the big men asked.
    “Not yet,” he said. “Wait till the others get here.”
    They began arriving. The little man could hardly contain himself. He bounced slightly in his chair, struggling with the urge to make his offering to the evening’s chatter before the full audience had assembled. When, finally, they had all arrived, there were four big men. I could see that for the small man they were the only four who counted; they were his circle. To be more accurate, they were a circle, and they tolerated him as an addition to it, the odd man out, the fifth wheel.
    “Jerry’s got the solution to global warming,” said one of the two original big men.
    The announcement seemed almost to be ignored, but in the mirror behind Miranda I saw that the little man had what he wanted: the attention of all the others.
    “Nuclear winter,” he said.
    There was a little laughter. The big men seemed to assume, as I did, that the little man had made a not-very-funny joke, and that was that.
    “So, what’s good here?” asked one of the big men, moving on from nuclear winter.
    Another man said, nodding at the dish that a waiter was carrying my way, “Vongole pizza—”
    Little Jerry, however, wasn’t finished. “All it would take would be one missile, one nuke. Wherever it was headed, somebody would see it coming. They’d retaliate. Somebody else would see that coming, passing over their space. They’d launch. Bingo! The cycle would be underway. Retaliation, retaliation for retaliation, vengeance for vengeance, an eye for an eye, until the entire worldwide stock of nuclear weapons was in play. The dust of annihilation would fill the air, and rise to the upper atmosphere, and in the opinion of many of those who ought to know, the result would be nuclear winter, the solution to global warming.”
    A silence followed, a silence that I am tempted to call thoughtful.