On Friday I went to Queen West and ended up at a store called Boomer, where I was looking at some suits. Coldplay was on the speakers and two impeccably and unkindly dressed gay men stood at the cash trying to impress the handsome young Asian who worked there.
“ Soujan, I’m sorry I freaked you out with my shoe trees, I have so many of them! But Joseph, wouldn’t you agree that they’re essential, especially for the Italian products?”
Joeseph, who appeared to run the store, certainly agreed.
All suit alterations were referred to Mina, a middle-aged woman who worked upstairs. She had a slightly melancholy, or maybe just a tired-end-of-the-week manner to her and wore a girlish little necklace with her name on it. While she pinned my pants, we talked a bit and I found out that she was from Iran and had been living in Toronto for seven years. She said that she loved the city, but when I asked her where she would live if could be anywhere in the world, she sighed.
“Oh, home, I would like to go back to Iran. We always miss our homes, don’t we?” And then she smiled, her eyes now just a touch softer, a touch sadder.
Next door at Rudsak, one of the employees leaned against a cement pillar that was designed to look industrial. She had a tattoo of some Roman numerals on her wrist, and I asked her if it represented a passage from a favourite literary work. No, it was just her mother’s birthday, she said, as if she thought I would be disappointed with the answer, but I wasn’t, and when I told her I thought that was a lovely thing to have done, she smiled, as if grateful.
On the streetcar home to the east side, I sat in the seat behind a girl with thin, sour lips. Her posture grew rigid and defensive when I took my place and she kept looking back at me, as if to scare me away. Between her lips she clenched a long, unlit cigarette, her thumb worrying the pink lighter she held in her hand– just itching to get off the car and hit the street.