This morning when I pulled the curtains back in the front room, I saw a man lying in the grass in front of a neighbouring building. He had shaggy hair and a beard, a look of distress on his face and was holding something up to his head. I was unsure if he had passed out from drinking, or if he was the product of something else. The fact that this mattered to me was embarrassing, as it was clear that he needed help, regardless, I gave him a long look through the window, hoping to find some excuse not to get involved.
This realization shamed me, and I charged out in my housecoat armed with my cell phone and the best intentions. He was a deliveryman, and a piece of wood that was part of his cargo had fallen on his head. He was fine, actually, and help was coming for him. He needed no assistance, but in talking to him, it was clear that he didn’t want to be alone, that he wanted to talk and be distracted from his throbbing head. I stayed with him for ten minutes, and then apologizing and feeling like a cold Torontonian who had to hurry off to a meeting, hurried off to a meeting.
The cab driver took me past a small group of Tamils that had assembled in Queen’s Park, past a small group of primary aged children standing in a circle around their teacher. She held up a piece of construction paper and had their complete attention, each one looking up at her, perhaps learning, for the first time, how to write a poem. We passed Adelaide and Bay, where workmen sat in the sun. One of them picked his teeth after lunch, another ate grapes, one by one with a fork, lifting them delicately from a plastic container his wife had packed earlier in the day, and one other worker just sat there smiling, grateful for the sunny day.
On the subway back, four women in their mid 50’s laughed and talked about last night’s episode of 24. They looked like they might have had some wine with lunch. They hadn’t been to Toronto in 30 years, but got together to see a show and relive old times. One of the women said that it was the first time she’d been on a subway in 30 years. She giggled as she said this, glancing around at all the other passengers. One of her group gave her a cold smile, “ Well, I haven’t taken one for awhile, either, but we used to take it all the time. In Paris.” When they got off at the Bloor stop, the woman who had said this walked ahead, quickly and with false confidence, pretending she was just another Bay Street titan heading home, while her country mice friends tittered and tried to figure out how to get though the turnstile.