"Nothing happens by accident," he said

"You're a plantiff's lawyer?" I said to the snappily dressed young black man facing me from the port side of the Chapel Hill bus this morning on my way to work. His brown loafers shined, his socks looked expensive, his light-weight sports jacket possibly tweed.
    "No," he said, "but it's an honor to have you say so."
    "So," I said, "you're not in the UNC Law School?"
    "No," he said, "I'm in Health Care."
    "You said it would be an honor to be a plantiff's lawyer, though," I said; "could you have missed your calling?"
    "It could be," he said. "Nothing happens by accident." And he tapped his shoulder, which I understood to suggest that he believed my remark might have been arranged by his guardian angel.
    "Ah," I said, "hmm."
    "This conversation might appear in a book someday," he said.
    "Shall I tell you my name, then?" I said, "so you can identify whom it was with?"
    He reached out his hand and said his first name. It sounded Arabic, or Muslim.
    "Morris Dean," I said. "And your name, does it have an apostrophe?"
    "My last one does," he said, and said his whole name.
    "Are you a retired professor?" he asked.
    I smiled. I always love to be asked that question by a young person. "No," I said. "I work up here at UNC General Administration, where President Ross's office is."
    "The Spangler Center," he said. "I know it."
    "You've been there?"
    "No, but I'm at Harvard, and Dick Spangler has an office there."
    At my stop outside the Spangler Center, we both rose and shook hands again. I repeated his name.
    He repeated mine, too. In case he needed to remember it for his book?
    "Good meeting you," he said.
    And I bounded off the bus with a little more energy than usual, today's log just handed to me, as though by angelic intervention.