Another Constellation

We have a lot of cold dessert choices in my neighborhood.

Down the street and over from Brett's Yogurt, there is another, national franchise. It sells ice cream and doughnuts: you know the one. The lady that owns it, LaRonda, is there every day in the morning with the rush, worrying in the afternoon during the lull, then speeding through the afternoon after-school rush. She does not find good enough help to be open late at night. This is a mistake on weekends.

We also have a lot of homeless people here. One of them used to buy cases of water and ice in summer, cool them down in an ice chest, and sell them. He would carry the ice chest up and down the street, or sometimes he had a wagon. Then he disappeared.

Months later, Reginald was back. In a wheelchair. He'd been at XYZ University's Hospital, getting treatment for brain cancer. Over the intervening months, he panhandled from his wheelchair, with the tumors in his head visibly getting larger and larger, his cognition poorer and poorer. Occasionally you would see him with a quart of hand-packed ice cream, getting the full good out of it. LaRonda at the ice cream and doughnut store used to give it to him freely, whatever flavor he wanted. She is struggling. She gave that homeless entrepreneur some of the last joy he had on this earth.