Evening Walk
Lemon-yellow,
white almond-eyes: pointed leaves slick the dark sidewalks and pattern
the windshields of the parked cars. We walk up the street, my arm in
yours, past the lace-curtained doorways, the night glow of late suppers,
readers, bedtime stories. The car wash is buttoned up, the grey
concrete rinsed and swept, hoses hung in wide arcs on the wall. A
doorway; hunched knees of a long-haired girl smoking a joint, and here,
past the seminary-now-condos, a grey kitten interrupts our stride with
sharp cries for affection. Autumn vines twist on wrought iron; a mother
descends, the child stops, coughs.
After
the dark, tree-lined side-streets, lights glare on Mont-Royal. In the
Jean-Coutu, the smocked cosmetic-girls head for the back exit, leaving a
window of plastic pumpkins leering beneath oversize, flying masks. A
blonde girl in pink sateen walks a black dog. Lunettes sleep in their glass cases; rattan baskets hang empty beneath white-lettered chalkboards: “asperges”, “champignons”. In a café, a final patron cradles his coffee, the stools already on their backs for the evening, legs in the air.
Back
onto a side street: the dull red of overgrown begonias cascading from a
windowbox, a tree encircled by a knee-high forest of nasturtiums. On a
third floor, a girl bends forward, straightens up against warm beige
walls, making a bed. We look down the empty alley, past the chainlink
fence and its sign: terrain privé.
Your hip sways against mine, our walk a familiar dance, a little slower tonight. No need to speak; we see the same things.
