Sitting in a restaurant on a sunny evening. Outside is a man wearing shorts, a jacket and a black top hat like a magician’s. Both the jacket and the top hat are sewn with shards of mirror, sparkling with them, scintillating. The man is parading back and forth on the sidewalk. Back and forth.

Another man walks past him. This one holds his hands behind his back in prayer pose, palms meeting an impressive distance up his back.

They don’t acknowledge one another. The man with his hands in prayer pose crosses the street at the traffic light. The man in the mirrors continues to parade.

***

Walking up the stairs from the Queen subway station in a less-used entrance. A man sits halfway up the stairs shooting up. Another man in a bright yellow and orange construction vest stands at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall and watching.

The man who’s shooting up calls, “It’s not the best shit I’ve ever had, but it’s not bad.”

Construction guy nods.

As I reach the street, a chic woman in business clothes and heels rushes past me, throwing open the door to the subway and racing for the stairs. Before I’ve gone half a dozen steps she runs out again.

“They expect women to put up with crap like that,” she tells me. “How brave are we supposed to be?”

***

In our local pharmacy, two intertwined kids, a teenage girl and guy, stand waiting in line behind me at the prescription counter.

The girl points to the flask of Pepto Bismol on the counter.

“Doesn’t your dad just drink that stuff because he likes it?”

“Yeah.”

“Because he needs it or because he likes it?”

“Both. I mean, he kinda needs it. Like, stomach. He chugs the whole bottle at once, though. Which isn’t.”

“Oh My God. Parents. I mean…”

***

Across from me on the streetcar is a woman reading something on a Kindle. She wears a button saying, “Support the Oxford Comma.”

***

Getting on the subway, I take a seat near the back of the car. The guy sitting kitty-corner to me is pretty wasted, swaying to the beat of music from his earbuds. He’s scrolling and tapping on his phone screen like everyone else, except that the phone screen is blank. I wonder if there isn’t any music coming out his earbuds, either.

The guy fishes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, takes one out and rolls it between his thumb and forefinger so the tobacco–what’s the word?–extrudes from it. He picks this off and puts it neatly on the floor while continuing to hold the cigarette in his other hand.

A couple of stations along, two guys get on the car, one upright and normal-looking, one completely out of it. The out-of-it guy leans against the door between the two subway cars with his eyes closed, looking as if he’s about to pass out. The upright guy stands beside him.

Upright guy asks the guy sitting near me if he’s got a smoke. Guy hands over the package, and the upright man takes out a cigarette and hands the package back.

“Nah man, keep it. I’m trying to quit.”

Upright guy thanks him a holds the pack out to the guy leaning against the door, who doesn’t seem to see it. Instead he starts sliding down the door.

“Hey man,” the upright guy tells him. “You gotta stand up. You gotta keep standing.”

The sliding guys stands, still without opening his eyes.

It’s my stop. I get out and use the nearby stairway to get up to the concourse level. At the top, I find that the upright guy and his friend have come up the escalator. The upright guy is now physically holding up his friend.

“You keep it going, man,” he says. “You keep it going. There’s a drugstore near here. We’re gonna get some naloxone. You hear me? You’re gonna make it to the drugstore. You do that for me?”

Out-of-it guy leads against the upright man and they stagger toward the street.

***

I’m taking our cat to the vet, sweet 16-year-old Archie, who has been losing weight and looking unwell. Another symptom: he’s shedding so much hair that I have to vacuum his favourite rug every day.

“Everybody who comes in here lately says that,” the vet tells me. “Their animals haven’t stopped shedding since the spring, both cats and dogs. I’ve never seen that before. It must have something to do with the climate.”

We exchange an uneasy look.

***

Quote scribbled in my notebook from a biography of writer Karen Blixen by Judith Thurman:

“There is probably nearly always one moment in life when there is still a possibility for two courses, and another, the next moment, when only one is possible.”

***

The test results come in showing that Archie is hyperthyroid. The vet says that elderly cats tend to be hyperthyroid, while older dogs become hypothyroid.

The chart on the wall says a 16-year-old cat like Archie is 80 years old in human terms.

I have to give him two tiny pink pills every day, the colour of Pepto Bismol.

***

The subway is fairly crowded but not packed. In front of me, a not-so-attractive man sidles up to a very attractive young woman and says something I can’t hear. Whatever he says obviously makes her uncomfortable, but she only says “Thank you” and steps aside.

When the train approaches a station, she walks away and stands by a door at the other end of the car. The man continues looking at her. When the train stops, the woman gets off the car. When he sees this, the man goes out the door nearest him.

I watch the woman standing on the platform. The man is coming toward her, and I wonder if I ought to jump out and stand beside her.

Just as the doors are closing, the woman jumps back on the train. The man is left on the platform. He looks completely pathetic, and I loathe him.

The subway pulls away.

Lesley Krueger’s new novel, Far Creek Road, is set in North Vancouver, not Toronto. In any case you can order it here.