A WARM MONDAY NIGHT in Chicago, and I’m feeling flush and contented, departing a parking lot with my wife, beginning our walk to the Emperor’s Choice, our favorite Chinese restaurant on Wentworth Avenue. A guy in his early thirties, in jeans, a well-worn cambray work shirt, and a white hard hat, with a phone in his hand, asks, “Do you speak English?” When I tell him that I have been known to do so, he begins a long and detailed story, which I shall provide here in a much-shortened version. He works for his father’s construction company–the name is beautifully vague, like Acme or Delta Development–and he’s been driving one of the company trucks, which is stalled nearby. The towing company won’t take a credit card, but insists on cash, and he is twenty-seven dollars short of the sum required. Could I help him out? He promises that “Nancy,” in the office, will cut me a check for the sum in the morning. “If you are conning me,” I say, “at my age I shall have to repair to the Gobi Desert, to live out my days as a hermit, forever disappointed in humankind. You wouldn’t do that to an older gent, would you?” He shows me his hands, palms turned outward, which are calloused, a cut on the left one. He offers to get someone on his phone for me to prove his bona fides. I shake him off. How much does he need? He says, eyes looking down at the pavement, the whole twenty-seven bucks. The towing company won’t do business with him for less. What the hell? Why not? I take my money clip out of my pants pocket and realize I have only twenties. If I am going to trust him for $27, why not trust him for $40? Between a twenty-seven-dollar fool and a forty-dollar fool, there is only a thirteen-dollar difference. I peel off two twenties and hand them to him. He exudes a look of extreme gratitude, says thank you, hugs my wife lightly, then hugs me. “Did you ever see the movie ‘Pay It Forward?'” he asks. We haven’t. He explains that in it when a person has been the recipient of a good deed, he must turn around and do a similar deed. He wants us to know that he will not forget to do so. “Please,” he says, “write down your name and address, so that I know where to have the check sent.” After I do so, he asks if I would mind also writing down our phone number, so that he can have his wife call up to thank us. He wants to know what’s the latest he can have her call. He shakes hands with me, and smiles. I note he seems to be missing the back teeth on the upper right side. Not a good sign, I fleetingly think. “Thanks again,” he says, “I won’t forget this.” And, clapping his hard hat on his head, he walks off briskly in the direction of the nearby Dan Ryan Expressway. Surprise: His wife didn’t call that evening, nor did he the day after. Now, nearly five weeks later, “Nancy” seems to have forgotten to mail the check. I have, indubitably, been conned and taken, shaken and nicely baked. I choose, however, not to go to the Gobi Desert. For some reason, I am not as depressed about this as perhaps I ought to be. Why, I ask myself, don’t I feel, in the language of my people, more of a schmuck than I do? Part of me admires the sheer style with which I have been taken; it entailed, after all, costuming: that hard hat, the phone, the calloused hands, the whole bit. Bringing up the movie “Pay It Forward” was a fine touch; so was the request for our phone number and the nicety of asking what was the latest that his wife could call. Our man, it suggested, was well brought up. Forty dollars is a little more than the cost of my wife’s and my Chinese dinner that evening. If the money had slipped out of my pocket, or if I had even been pickpocketed, I think I would have felt more aggrieved. Instead my wife and I were presented with a show of fairly high quality. Fewer than eighty bucks for dinner and a night’s entertainment–by current standards, not all that bad. Panhandling is becoming more and more widespread in America. Sometimes it can be menacing. Not long ago I was stopped in a supermarket parking lot by a guy with what I believe are known as felony muscles, who told me he had just got out of jail and could I let him have a buck? I forked it over without hesitation. Sometimes it can be truly affecting: men horribly crippled in motorized chairs selling newspapers for the homeless. But for the most part I shell out my dollar or two only for the really impressive and well-made cock-and-bull stories, extravagant tales of sadness recounted with flair. “You know,” I remember my father saying, “it doesn’t hurt to get conned every once in a while. Keeps you sharp. Reminds you of your own fallibility.” He was no dope, my father. –Joseph Epstein
