“Yesterday when I got off the bus, I walked to your taxicab first. I was attracted to the black-and-white squares along the roof and the bright green paint, but otherwise, there wasn’t any reason for my choice, was there?”
“No,” he said.
“Was there a reason that you were at the bus station rather than somewhere else in the city?”
“I guess not.”
“This is the charming coincidence. When things in the world that are unconnected suddenly connect, and a pattern emerges.”
He exhaled. “But what if the pattern wasn’t what you’d call charming?”
“It’s not the pattern that’s charming,” she said. “It’s that there is a pattern at all.”