No Tomorrow

As I struggle between the five and the twenty, I notice a man with a food cart across the park. Yes! Food is much safer. I toss my salad container into my lunch bag and head across the park.

“What’ll ya have?” the guy behind the cart asks when I approach.

Contemplating the plastic menu taped to the front of his silver cart, I wonder whether guitar guy is into hot dogs or hamburgers. What if he’s a vegetarian? I finger the heart charm on my necklace nervously. Maybe cash would have been better, after all.

“Ma’am?” he urges, though there’s no one in line behind me.

“I’ll take a cheeseburger, a hot dog with no bun, a bottle of water, and a sweetened iced tea,” I say quickly. “And can I have an empty cup or a bowl?”

He throws me an irritated glance as he flips a patty on his miniature grill. Minutes later, my stomach growls loudly as he wraps the burger and puts it into a plastic bag with the rest of my order. The tiny garden salad I packed for lunch can’t compete with a juicy burger, but I’m determined to stick to my goal of healthy eating.

After I pay, the hunger pangs turn to nervous jitters as I walk down the paved pathway toward the musician. I wait off to the side until he finishes the song he’s playing, not wanting to interrupt. The couple watching him smiles, praises him, and then walks away hand in hand. They don’t tip him. I wonder what that feels like for him. Does it feel like rejection? Lack of appreciation? Or maybe it doesn’t bother him at all and he just likes to play music for people.

He squints up at me as I awkwardly hold the bag out to him. Now that I’m standing closer to him than I was in the gazebo, I can see his perfect white teeth and the tiniest dimple in his left cheek. “I got you a hamburger and a bottle of iced tea. And a hot dog and water for your dog.” I try not to get lost in the endless realm of his eyes as he studies mine. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” I continue, hoping I haven’t offended him or gotten him something he doesn’t even like. “I just kind of guessed.”

A smile tips his lips. “You guessed right. I’ve been dying for a burger. Sitting here smelling the food coming off that cart every day has been driving me crazy.” He stands, towering over me and making me feel even shorter than my four feet eleven inches. “I almost moved to the other side of the park, but I didn’t want to give up the view of my favorite bench.”

I follow his eyes, and my heart skips a beat or two or twenty when I realize he means my bench.

Is homeless guitar guy flirting with me?

“Sit with me while I eat?” he asks.

The invitation bounces my thoughts around like a ping-pong ball. Although he seems nice, I’m wary of sitting with a homeless person. I have no proof that he might not be a thief, a murderer, or any other brand of criminal. He may just hide it really well, as some do.

At least that’s what they do in books and movies. Maybe I watch too many late-night movies… someone is always a victim or a suspect.

I scan the park surroundings, knowing I should politely decline, but I’m too intrigued by the tiny spark of excitement I felt when he asked me to sit with him. Other than a pizza with every topping imaginable or ice cream in a waffle cone, not much really gets me excited lately.

“C’mon,” he urges. “I could use some real conversation.” He rubs the dog’s head affectionately. “He’s a great listener, but he doesn’t talk much.”

His pleading smile convinces me to give in. I hold the bag of food while he packs up his guitar and shoves his Mason jar in his duffel bag. I follow him and his dog to a spot farther away, to a picnic table near an old stone bridge that arches over a road that hasn’t been in use for years. My heart beats a little faster with apprehension as I glance behind us. There are about twenty people in various areas of the park, most of them still close enough to hear me if I let out a blood-curdling scream for help. I finally join him at the old wooden table.

The truth is, though, I think the slow realization that I might actually like this guy and want to spend time with him is making me far more skittish than the possibility that he might have plans to hurt me.

The beating of my heart calms to a normal pace when he fills the paper bowl with water and breaks the hot dog into bite-sized pieces for the dog. Then he unwraps the burger for himself. It’s the second time I’ve seen him show special care for the dog, and I find it very endearing. It proves he’s not an asshole and, in my naïve twenty-one-year-old mind, also that he’s probably not someone who would hurt me. Serial killers torture animals. They don’t worry about them getting wet, and they wouldn’t feed a pet before feeding themselves.