I live in an area crowded with old brownstones from the ’50s, low-rises with big windows, balconies, and narrow streets between them. The illusion of it being an intimate neighbourhood is exceedingly well done.
For all its lack of imposing, stacked up against the major metropolitan downtown that’s only a few kilometres from here, it’s amazing how little I’ve met the people I’ve lived around for a decade. Maybe a third of those in my alleyway have lived here for the decade I have. Of them, I know perhaps five.
For three months now, I’ve wondered where one of them, the neighbour I overlook from my kitchen, was. I assumed some big trip around the world, since more than a few people around here have turned out to be travellers.
But then I saw her Friday for the first time in three months — more than 100 pounds heavier, looking 15 years older, tired, worn, and just about to quit — life, not just her job. My heart went through the floor. Continue reading
Tag Archives: walls
Of Walls, Waits, and Wistfulness
It was a warm and spring-like evening when our heroine sat tapping away at her keyboard, clad in unsightly short shorts and a 15-year-old concert t-shirt that never would live to see the streets again.
Tom Waits wailed in his gravelly splendour as a breeze softly batted the bamboo blinds. She peered over the rim of her glass at the words before her, unsure where the fuck any of it would go.
But with the right music on the right night with the right drink in the wrong clothes with the tapping toes, well, who needs luck? She shrugged. Continue reading