My grandma had just died.  Did I tell you that already?  That may be something you would want to know.  My grandma had just died and I had been feeling quiet lately.  Some days, you want to drink vodka and meet everyone in the bar, and other days, you want to drink tea and listen to Leonard Cohen sing.  So I left the bar early and walked home even though it was snowing.  It was snowing even though it was the end of March.  I felt cheated by that.  I was having one of those days when you feel like you deserve something really good.  Every ATM I passed I imagined might spontaneously spit twenties if I looked at it right.

I kept looking across the street, expecting to see someone I knew walking in the same direction as me.  It was Bloor Street, in between Lansdowne and Dundas West, and I imagined calling out to the person I knew on the other side of the street.  It was midnight on a Tuesday, and it would just be us and the snow coming down between us.

“Where are you going?” I would ask.

“I’m going home.”

“Me too.”

Neither of us would cross the street.  We would have our conversation double volume over cars and under bridges

“Where did you come from?”

“I had to work late.”

“Oh, I was at a bar.  I needed to leave though.”

I was a little drunk, but only because I hadn’t had dinner.

“I can feel myself dissolving.”

It would matter what we said.  It would be the saying it that mattered.  At Dundas, I would go south and my friend across the street would keep going straight.  We probably wouldn’t even say goodbye, just drift apart to be absorbed by the night.