A Bit More Detail

Back in summer, I passed a restaurant once. It was, and is, the sort of restaurant that has tastefully dim lighting and modern slim-legged Scandinavian tables and floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows separating the customers from the hoi polloi. The plate glass windows had been taken out because it was summer, and the planters had been filled to a decent level with greenery to compensate.

I was in a hurry that day and only saw the couple for a few seconds. From what I saw, I could tell that she was beautiful, a long-legged blonde in a body-clinging dressed with manicured fingernails and blonde hair set in an impeccable hairstyle, seductive body language and a politely interested face. He wasn't as good a sight--overweight, with badly-cut hair, leaning forward too much at the table--but he certainly looked happy.

- Business has been good, he said.

And that's when, for just a fraction of a second, I saw her look so terribly bored.

I walked on.

I was heading south, Vermont Square to my right, when I saw a pair of bicyclists speed by. He was trim slim and tall in a green windbreaker, leaning back on the seat and holding onto the handlebar with one hand, complaining about his health to his partner: "I'm so out of shape, I can only do ten chin-ups."

It was a bright spring day today, if perhaps not the best weather in which to wear long shorts. The increased insolation is to blame for this: I was pleased by the warm golden light of the early evening, visible even as late as 6 o'clock from the 511 Bathurst streetcar that I took south from the Bathurst TTC station to Queen Street. The wind might have cut at my calves a bit, but it looked warm.

That apparent warmth may be why I saw the photographers outside of the Beer Store on Queen and Markham. It was a bizarre sort of advertising shoot, something featuring a woman in short shorts and a white fur coat standing next to a man dressed in actual pants, a clothiers' dummy torso between them with a knife embedded in its heart. If I ever see the photo online, I'll surely link to it.