Down the street, workmen sat on the grass, mostly in the shade, breathing easy after lunch. Cross-legged, they occupied the sidewalk and lawn like protesters. The expressions on their faces suggested that they did not want to be made to feel like they should shuffle over and free up the sidewalk, and they immediately softened when Heidi and I toured around them.
We ordered some curry for take-out at Thai Basil, and then sat on the steps at the side of the Brunswick House waiting for it to be prepared. Last week, from that vantage point, we watched as a young woman, who was sitting on a bench, wept into her hands. One moment she was sitting beside another woman, chatting happily, and then when I looked back a few minutes later, she was sobbing. The other woman remained there, but was now slightly distant in posture. With an expression on her face that suggested she did not want to be assuming this role, she rubbed her crying friend’s back with one hand. She looked kind of responsible for what was happening, and I wondered if she had said something in particular to upset her, if she had, in fact, just broken her heart.
Nothing so dramatically poignant happened today. Instead, a guy who works in the Brunswick came out for a smoke. We’ve chatted before, and there’s some quality, a charisma about him that I like. He’s handsome, in a rough-I-work-in-a-tavern kind of way, and is probably in his late 20’s. He has an easy, confident manner that’s not at all pushy, but is in fact, accommodating. I asked him how he was doing, and blinking, squinting into the sun, he said, “Living the dream!” I imagined that he was, thinking that he moved to Toronto from some place with limited options, and is now making tons of cash at the Brunswick, saving up for his two-year trip around the world, where he would gather material for his first novel and fall in love with a girl from Indonesia. “Yep,” he continued, “stuck in here doing paperwork on a gorgeous day,” and then he flashed that smile which would make the Indonesian girl fall in love and follow him across the globe.