Rommel happened upon a befuddled old man kneeling before a low table next to Pablo's Adult Newsstand. Arranged rank-and-file were dozens of origami swans, cranes, frogs, unicorns and pegasuses folded from the pages of Pablo's discarded stacks of yesterday's smut. The old man looked between his table of creations and a nearby trashcan in despair.

“Those are pretty nice,” said Rommel.

“They suck,” replied the old man, “I can't play basketball with these.”

“I've got a ball at my place, if you want to go to the courts over in Mr. Belvedere Park.”

“No, no, no. I just want to take a shot at that trashcan, but every time I try to ball up a piece of paper, I get one of these instead.”

He demonstrated, seeming to crumple the paper then roll it in the traditional paper ball-making manner, but when he opened his hand a tiny geometric swan spread its wings. He set it in line with the other swans, and looked up with the innocence of a child in the grips of a hopeless pursuit.

Rommel bent down and ripped a page from the New Porker, and in one smooth motion enclosed his hands around it as if in prayer. The paper obediently disappeared in his palms, commanded into shape as much as sculpted. He closed his eyes. After a few seconds his hands released each other and he showed the paper ball to the old man.

It was the most perfect sphere ever created. The heart of every stickball player in the city stirred in that moment, and soon a crowd of ragged looking 10-12-year-old boys fanned out behind Rommel to pay homage to that morning star of makeshift athletic equipment.

“It doesn't even need tape,” said one.

“So much for my knuckle ball,” said another.

The wide-eyed old man smiled broadly, and took the ball gingerly between his fingers, though the paper had been pressed to such a density that no mere man could damage it. He looked at the trashcan with vengeance in his eyes, and threw. The ball sailed three feet wide, straight into a drain.

The streetballers looking on knew it was the thrower and not the ball that had sent it on its errant path. The arc was true. From the instant it left his hand, they knew it was headed for the sewer.

Their souls still aflame with the memory of the perfect paper ball, the boys dispersed to their usual neighborhood streets and began playing stickball. Hours turned to days to weeks to months. The tournament lasted all summer with games 24 hours a day. When teams weren't playing they worked on making tape balls, always aspiring to that model of perfection glimpsed for a few seconds before it was lost beneath the city. Nothing its equal was ever created, but their skills improved and the quality of that summer's tape balls exceeded that of any other time in history.

The prepubescent crowd gone, the old man gazed at Rommel.

“Will you make me another one?” he asked.

“Not today. I'll bring you one tomorrow.”

“I might not be here.”

“I'll leave it over there.” He pointed to the back of Pablo's stand.

“Thanks”

“Don't hate you swans.”

The old man chuckled, and then jogged off down the centerline of Flotsam Street.

And that's why every morning Rommel leaves a paper ball in the shadow of Pablo's Adult Newsstand.

-----

Next: "crepe paper," the robot said