Empty Nest

While walking from our hotel to Caesar’s Palace for a Sting concert last spring, we passed a child in distress. He was two blocks in front of us, zigzagging across the sidewalk in our direction. Pale, dirty face. Greasy, shaggy hair in need of a cut. He wore ripped, grimy jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt that was once white but now gray. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. He moved like a rabid dog, swaying and lurching around the pathway, practically foaming at the mouth. It was the bare feet that got me. The boy stopped twice to kick at the sidewalk, oblivious to his vulnerable feet. Enraged and oblivious to the strangers around him. I looked down at my shoes, and blood rushed to my head. When I looked up, he was six feet away. But he did not see us. His eyes were fixed on something beyond, something that seemed to erase everything. After a few seconds, he swayed past us, our group of six empty nesters, dressed in sequins and luxury sneakers, out to enjoy a night of gin and tonics and live music. My girlfriend, Laurie, asked me about my youngest child’s freshman year in college and whether his social anxiety had improved. Just as I was about to answer, He’s better now, the boy passed us by. 

I am told Sting opened with “Roxanne” and ended with “Fields of Gold,” but I don’t recall much of the concert. What I do recall about that night is looking over my shoulder and watching the boy stumble away, his small, dirty feet leaving bloody prints that looked like bird feathers along the sidewalk.