Two years ago, to feel good about myself, I decided to volunteer. But things went bad right from the start. I’d get lost or drop the food containers. Then they made me a “jumper,” substituting for other drivers. So add unfamiliar streets to the rainstorms and hallway lurkers.

If that had been the limit of it, I could have wallowed comfortably in self-pity. But there was no one to talk to either. Few clients came to the door. You drive, you deliver, you drive again.

“Well, at least the jumpers get variety,” said Molly as she patrolled the pots, “not doin’ the same route.” Easy for her. She works in the same warm kitchen every Friday night.

Then I had a wonderful idea! No more questing for self-praise. I would do this because, well, “someone has to help the less fortunate.” I would be noble.

Nobility, it turns out, is elusive if nobody’s noticing, like when I’m in traffic, struggling to read a darkened street sign, and some petulant driver mashes her horn and makes said noble person want to beat her senseless with the same metal food container he uses to bear comfort to the sick.

And so I abandoned nobility for my one last refuge: I would “just do it.” A grim phrase, that. It reeks of self-improvement.

“Just do it, just do it” is my pitiable mantra as I squint to see if Carlos’s light is on. Carlos lives above a laundry. I honk the horn to wake him. He’s told me people steal his food if I drop it off while he sleeps.

“Who’s stealing his food?” I ask Molly.

“Well,” she says, stirring a vat of pasta, “he thinks some very small people sneak up the stairs and snatch it.”

Yeah, right. Little intruders with mighty big appetites, since more than once I’ve had to double back to the kitchen and deliver a second meal to a wailing Carlos. “Just do it” is not motivating me. It is making me angry.

The north route is different from my usual city haunts. It winds through some choice real estate. Yes, the rain does indeed fall upon rich and poor alike, but it is hard to accept that the well-to-do need food. “Can’t they just hire a gourmet chef?” I say to Molly, a bit annoyed.

“Oh, it’s not the money,” Molly replies. “Some of them don’t like to be seen… ah… in their condition.”

Last stop on the north route is client No. 16. She’s about 40, very beautiful. I’ve delivered to her for two years. Her illness is irreversible. One Friday night her name’s not on the list anymore. It could be she moved. I don’t ask.

On another Friday night, I’m doing the last stop on the central route–a neighborhood crowned by overhead freeways. I’m fighting the hypnotism of the windshield wipers, looking for a client who lives in his car. He’s a drunk. He’s dying.

Pickled as his brain is, he can still both please and irritate me. Sometimes he calls me brother; sometimes he’ll look at his broken dashboard clock and spit: “Hey, where you been?”

Anyway, one night I make up my mind. I’m quitting, enough’s enough. So I bring the empty food containers back that evening instead of on my next shift.

The kitchen is clean and put away. Molly’s just finishing tomorrow’s shopping list. I’ve rehearsed my resignation. This is, after all, my last opportunity to speak with this mysterious woman who has gently pushed me toward so many dark destinations. Suddenly there is so much to say.

“Molly, why do you think people turn out the way they do? Like [the client in the car]. When he was 5, he didn’t look up and say, ‘Oh, universe, what will I be when I grow up? I know! I’ll be a drunk!’ "

She is pensive. “I haven’t much thought about that. I suppose everyone grows up with a hundred thousand influences that make them a certain way, and then, if they’re fortunate, they set about sorting it out.”

“So what chance,” I say to Molly, “did client No. 16, 40 years old, have to sort things out?”

“Maybe enough, Joe.” Molly’s green eyes shine upon me. She is still and warm, like a summer pond.

I draw a breath but say nothing.

Molly switches off the lights. We step outside. Only a hair’s difference lies between Molly’s view of the world and my own, and yet it’s enough to separate heaven from hell.

She locks the kitchen door and drives off.

You see, Molly says “yes” to every Friday night, and I am still out here saying “yes, but…