Understanding

When I left my apartment this evening, a cover band was keeping adults entertained in a church parking lot while their children painted the streets with sidewalk chalk, wandering into and out of mysterious inflated caterpiller labyrinths.

When I returned, everything was deflated. The band announcd their final song (then did an encore) while parents gathered their children and fireflies spotted the skies.

Here's what happened in-between.

*** I was midway through a 15-mile bike ride when I stopped for a drink of water and a spot of people watching.

Nearby along the lake, friends were playing soccer as a Jack Russel bit at their heels. I rested my bike against a concrete ravine and checked the time on my cell phone, the simple act of which invited a girl (who I'd noticed crouched with her face down) to approach me.

She was in her early 20s, wearing a baseball jersey (there was a game today) and reeking of major league beer. Her face was dirty enough that I could tell where tears had cleared a path down her cheeks.

"Do you have a phone I could use?" she asked, keeping her face askew.

In the split second between her question and my response, I imagined her trying to run away with it (but figured I could keep up with her). Imagined her dialing some sort of secret code into my phone that would later deposit large sums of money into a Nigerian bank account.

But I handed it to her all the same.

She dialed and kept the phone away from her face (which I appreciated for germ-related reasons) while she spoke, enabling me to hear both sides of the conversation.

From it, I was able to infer that she had set out to meet someone "at the ferris wheel," which was about a mile south from where we stood.

"It's still so far away," she told him. "I can see it, but I'm tired."

He was audily angry, and made sure to let her know she was "so f*&!ing stupid" before he said he'd come find her.

"I'm sorry," she said as she returned my phone to me, "He's a bit of a douchebag."

"It's OK," I said, considering the permutations of my full response.

"I know the type."