The other day while taking the dog for a walk I stopped into a convenience store on Bloor where a young woman was talking to the man at the cash register. She was telling him what a crappy day it had been for her, “Yeah, I was supposed to see my boyfriend, he’s in prison, but when I got all the way out there they told me the jail was on lockdown and sent me home. Fucking drag.”
The guy at the cash seemed kind of impressed, “ In jail, eh?”
This pleased the girl. She had a secret, and this secret gave her a kind of social power.
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad, “ and then she paused for dramatic effect,” first degree murder,” she added, her eyes now shining. She sounded so very proud. And then she and her friend, all tattoos and cleavage and youth, splashed out on the street, thrilled with their gangster lives and this small but bright moment of being somehow more than was expected.
On our way home the dog and I passed the renascent center at the end of the street. As usual there were about a half dozen men– all wearing their cleanest, most hated church clothes– smoking and looking deprived on the steps of the place. A young and beautiful woman then pulled her expensive car into the driveway of the center. She did this quickly, with a kind of indifference that suggested a lack of consideration, maybe even contempt, for the world around her. She waved her hands about, as if trying to dispel the smell of cheap cologne that hung over these men like a cloud of sorrow. Wearing yoga pants and designer sunglasses she cut wordlessly through them, in the process becoming the physical manifestation of the world beyond their grasp, and they went silent for this parting, their minds racing.