Queen Street East, Toronto
In the Starbucks at the corner of Logan and Queen, sits a young blonde woman. She’s by the window and she’s wearing her one professional suit, the one she carefully shopped for at Winners and not impulsively splurged on at Holt Renfrew. She wants to make a good first impression, her crossed legs smooth and glistening, her teeth shining and optimistic. Believing in the potency of her youth, her almost glowing beauty, she’s trying to look busy, flipping through reams of lined paper all filled with her girlish handwriting as she waits for her meeting to arrive. She looks up for a moment and her eyes cloud, falling to some unseen horizon, and then the door opens and she startles back to composure, hoping the man walking in will see the potential in her she’s not quite sure is there.
Across the street in front of the TD Bank stands a tall, thin and beautiful black girl. Her hair is a palace. She strikes poses for her less tall, thin and beautiful friend. Hiding her shyness behind the camera, this girl takes photographs as if grateful to be invited to the same party as her exotic and confident friend who seems right at this moment to be capturing the light. “Oh, Laetitia, these pictures are going to be stunning!” Laetitia smiles, her cheeks autumn pinched, the scent of expensive perfume and skin cream spilling as if from her lips and into the street, “Thank you, Emma, thank you.”
At the east end of Jimmy Simpson Park pigeons feast around the feet of two elderly women sitting on a bench. There’s a bird feeder hanging in the make-shift garden behind them and a little sign that says, “Outlook Good.” The women share photographs with one another, each one leaning in closer, exclaiming at the beauty of the Liberty Bell, the dog wearing the sweater knit for him last Christmas, the grand daughter blowing out her birthday candles.
