Sometime in the fall of 1997, workers secured a pair of big red eyes to the top a squat building at the corner of North Clark and West Ohio. Much later, I learned that the Eckleburglike stare, hovering just above a trickster’s grin, belonged to a fun-loving tree frog named Cha! Cha! This was after I had become an unlikely regular of the River North Rainforest Cafe, the exteriors of which presented a psychedelic fantasia of mushrooms, palms, and jungle animals to passersby. All were enticed to come in, glory under a mist that simulated a rainstorm, and stay for a volcano brownie.
Today, Cha! Cha! and his friends Ozzie the roller-skating orangutan and Rio the sultry toucan haunt me like Cathy’s ghost across the moors. Between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-six I took every date, every friend, every neighbor I ever had to the Rainforest Cafe. I insisted that my dining companions lie about their birthdays, finagling our table a dessert that had been set on fire. The frequency of cake, of sparklers, of “Happy Birthday to You” serenades got to be ridiculous. I suspect…
