Borderlands

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” the little dude says, his voice sounding someplace between pathetic pleading and true sorrow.

Just a moment ago, he was neither pleading or sorry. He was strutting in his shades, tank top, tasteful shorts and sandals. Parading back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the Sugar Shack on 26^thStreet. He was holding a waffle cone (sucked and licked dry and empty), arm up high, looking like some tiny 21^stCentury version of the Statue of Liberty, which is nowhere near Chicago, so please forget that I even brought it up.

The Sugar Shack is mobbed on summer nights despite the fact that it has no indoor seating, four small tables and eight chairs on the sidewalk, and uncommonly slow service. An ice cream aficionado at the end of the line might wait a good half hour to place an order and wait most of the rest of the hour to get the sweet treat for which she came. The front décor, menu signs, and miscellaneous designs are repetitive and about pink as they can be. There are two signs, posted on doorways on either side of the order and fulfillment windows that request patrons to respect the neighbors, park legally, hold down the noise level, and clean up their trash. These appeals are signed at the bottom in script. “Sugar Shack,” they say. These are the only places on the building where the business is actually identified by name.

The little dude is still wailing. He has also bruised a knee or two and it’s possible that pain has contributed to his anguish. Mom is not having any of it. “I told you to stop your running around,” she says, picking up the fallen but clearly undamaged cone with which he had been lighting his way, and tossing it. He moans. It is one more small trauma the little dude must process on his way to becoming a bigger dude.

A guy holding two small ice cream cones and accompanied by a child who no doubt will end up eating one of them, makes his way back to a minivan, where a woman stands with another child. “Looks good,” I say to him, or to the kid, or to the ether, as he walks by, and the guy smiles, making the barest minimum of eye contact.

A few minutes later, I’m at the pick-up window having assumed that a long enough portion of life has passed by to justify the expectation that my strawberry shake is ready. I’m wrong, of course and I can hear the voice of my irritatingly clever youngest son say, “Assumptions make an ass of you and me, Dad.”

But I’m standing there when minivan guy come back and edges up next to me. “I bet there’s a hundred dollars in that book bag,” he says.

I take a moment to process that statement. Is he talking to me, I wonder. What’d he say, I think. I look at him. He’s smiling, but it’s not the kind of smile that lights anything up. “No, I doubt it,” I respond. “There’s nothing in it, but stuff I’ve written. I think it’s worth way more than a hundred bucks, but I’ve never run into anybody else who thinks so.”

“Just joking,” he says.

“Ah. You got to give an old guy a little bit of extra time to get the joke. I’m not as quick on the uptake as I once was.”

He looks confused, but he keeps smiling that smile that doesn’t light up his eyes or anything else. Then he turns and walks away.

Shortly after, I get my milkshake. It feels like a reward. The chunks of strawberry in the shake clog my straw and slow down my rate of consumption. That’s a good thing.

I take a seat at a curbside table. The people in line seem content to wait and ready to chat with both friends and strangers. A woman carrying a cardboard tote with four sundaes of varying description balanced precariously walks back to a car parked right next to my table. She passes the good stuff inside to three passengers, all women, who are clearly thrilled to welcome her back. She walks around to the driver’s door and hops in. Someone passes her sundae back and they sit there, eating and talking.

A minute passes and here comes the guy with the fake smile. He makes eye contact with me and looks away. He has either never seen me before, a case of mistaken identity, maybe, or he simply sees no reason for further interaction. Whatever use value I once had, it’s gone.

He walks up to the driver and says something I can’t hear, but he points at the minivan and then points further down the street. The woman in the car is clearly reluctant to respond to him, but he keeps smiling and explaining and she shrugs and nods. The passenger in the back seat slides over and he gets in. They drive off, four women and a guy I’ve already decided is a psychopath. He probably does need the help, I’m guessing. Maybe a gallon of gas?

At any rate, the driver appears to have concluded that she can do whatever favor he’s asking for and that she and her friends are taking no real risk. But I can’t help thinking that the dude will keep playing people until playing them stops getting results. What happens after that is anybody’s guess.

I finish my strawberry shake and, satisfied, move on.