The little girl kept staring at the vast selection of our ice creams from the end of the long line of customers, her eyes skipping excitedly from flavour to flavour as she continued to change her mind while the queue diminished gradually. Finally, she and her mother, who held her hand in one of hers, and a mobile phone into which she was talking loudly in the other stood nearly in front of me.
I smiled at the girl as I caught her eye, and she smiled back shyly.
As they reached me, now only the glass counter displaying the ice creams standing between us, the mother simply threw a few coins in the small ceramic bowl placed next to the till and without ever pausing in her phone conversation vanished back outside, leaving the girl with me.
I counted the coins-- enough for a very big ice cream-- while I asked the little one, "So, which ones?"
She giggled happily, "Strawberry... blueberry and chocolate. Lots of chocolate."
"All... right... " I sighed, looking at her perfectly clean, white summer dress, then at her mother outside, hoping she would interfere before it was too late. This could not finish well...
When the woman did not even look in our direction, I shrugged and picked the largest paper cup we had to put the ice cream in, hoping that it would prevent the impending disaster.
"Oh no. I want that, please!" The girl pointed towards a high, wobbly pile of cones, those tallest and thinnest of all... no way they could hold all that amount of ice cream.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, please," she said even as the mother pushed her head inside briefly, urging her to hurry up, then vanished again before I could ask her opinion about her daughter's choice.
Seeing that the other customers started to pace on the spot impatiently, I had no other choice. I started to scoop and pile the ice cream on top of her chosen cone, beginning with the darkest one. That was as much as I could do.
"Here you are," I said, passing it over to her finally, watching as the topmost started to slip to the side dangerously the moment she took it from me.
The girl beamed at me, then made her way outside slowly.
I served another customer and counted to twenty in my mind, before she started crying-- she nearly made it to the door.
That finally got her mother's attention. The woman ended the phone call only to start shouting at her crying daughter.
"Excuse me," I apologized, quickly throwing the girl's choice of ice cream into a paper cup and grabbing a mop on my way to her.
"Don't worry. Here, take this." I passed her the cup winking at her and making her smile at me through tears even as her mother dragged her away, speechless.
There was nothing I could do to save her pretty white dress, though, I thought as I mopped the floor.
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******* This story was written for Imagine this... Writing workshop, prompt n.15.
