[Chris Wright would like to point out that Mr. and Mrs. Wright, at least the Mr. and Mrs. Wright featured in this story, are not, to the best of his knowledge, related to him in any way.]

"But then along came the Wrights to remind us of what is good and decent and fair, and how regular people with average ambitions can puncture a blanket of gloom....

"And the rest of us have something else. We have the knowledge that the Wrights and thousands like them will quietly make this city sane and humane once again."

— Brian McGrory in the Boston Globe, May 3

"[H]uman speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity."

— Gustave Flaubert, quoted in the May 6 New Yorker

FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2002 — Before the Wrights came along, many of us in this city had forgotten what it was to be good and decent and fair. In recent months, gloom had settled over this city like a blanket, and that blanket needed to be punctured. The Wrights, as their name suggested, were just the people to do it.

But it wasn’t going to be easy.

"How do you puncture a blanket?" asked Mr. Wright. It was a fair question. The two pondered it long and hard. A pin? A pocket knife? "A screwdriver!" suggested Mrs. Wright, who was, despite being average of ambition and quiet to the point of near-silence, almost too good to be true. Finally, these regular-yet-extraordinary people agreed that they would puncture the blanket of gloom with the fork of decency.

"What this city needs," said Mr. Wright, "is to be reminded that things need to be made sane and humane once again." The pain, the Wrights agreed, was a drain, a stain, a mark of Cain, a runaway freight train.

"Decency," said Mrs. Wright.

"Humanity," agreed Mr. Wright.

But decency and humanity were in short supply these days in this city and in this world. Indeed, as the Wrights opened up their morning papers, the blanket of gloom thickened, until it seemed more like a duvet of dread. Devastating disaster, sickening tax hikes, crooked cardinals and pernicious priests. Fascists gaining ground in France, ancient hatreds making a mockery of peace in the Middle East. As Mr. Wright read of the funeral for Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, he wept. As Mrs. Wright pondered Bill Clinton’s potential chat show on NBC, she beat her breast.

"So much potential!" wailed Mr. Wright.

"Fifty million dollars a year!" sobbed Mrs. Wright.

Where was the humanity? Where was the sanity?

The Wrights looked at each other across their low-fat, high-fiber breakfasts, and gloom seemed to hang in the air like a particularly strong aftershave. Because everything that was good and decent and fair and good and decent in this world was slipping away like a wet fish on a greased-up griddle. Indeed, it would take dozens, perhaps thousands, of regular people with below-average ambitions to make any sort of hole in this gloomy blanket.

But then along came the Wrights, and now the rest of us have something else. We have the knowledge that all it takes is the slightest perforation, the teeniest tear in the most baneful bedspread to let a little light into this sad and solemn city of sin.