The interior of the hospital is chilly and when you step outside the sweltering, heavy air of the city attaches itself to you. Slows you down like a weight. Becomes something you have to carry through the day.
And all up and down University avenue, in front of all the hospitals, people are out over their lunch breaks. Workmen sit on a cement embankment smoking. They’re grungy, hung-over, covered in tattoos, their construction vests hanging open. There is a leanness to these men that is both in the eyes and of the body. Glistening with sweat, they watch everyone who passes before them. Every woman walking by knows this. Every man. Everyone judged. Everyone sized up.
It’s aggressive, but diminished by their happiness. They are where they want to be. Happy with the companionship of the physical and the immediate pleasure this life offers. They eat and drink what they want. Do what they want. Turn the music up louder. Fuck you if you don’t like it. For the moment they’re lions running at full potential. Their bodies have not yet failed them, the world they see before them prey. Still, it’s like they’re from the past, immigrants from a country that no longer exists on any map. And then the sunlight above them shifts, moving them into shadow, and like ghosts, they begin to recede into the past.