Walking home tonight in the mercifully cooler night. It's been so humid that tonight, the t-shirt I wore to the gym was almost as damp as the one I took off after my workout.
Too, the AC at home has been busted for the past 5 days. As unpleasant has it's been for us, it was worse for old Beckett, who's been panting on the floor a lot more lately. But it got fixed tonight, thank God, and the house will be cooler when I get home.
I met a middle-aged tourist couple just north of the Marriott. The husband had the "dad" mien of a man who was used to knowing where he was, and how to get to where he wanted to go, brow furrowed, alternately glaring at his phone and looking around, trying to place himself. It's a visitor look I've seen a thousand times, especially in summer.
His wife was stunning. She had beautiful cornrows, green contact lenses, and a chunky diamanté pendant spelling out QUEEN in bold letters. In spite of decades of committed gayness, I confess my heart did the tiniest flip. There was a trail of Dior Addict perfume in the air when she moved,
I asked them politely I might help them find what they were looking for.
Unsurprisingly, the husband said they'd be fine, but the wife told me they'd seen a large Toronto sign on the way in from the airport, and were trying to find it. She thought it was nearby—was it? I told her it was a few blocks south, at Nathan Phillips Square. "Not too far to walk?" she asked. I assured her I'd just come from there.
"Welcome to Toronto," I said as they turned and prepared to walk the 3 or 4 blocks to the big Toronto sign.
The wife said, "We're from Jacksonville." She paused, then added "Florida," placing her hometown in case I wasn't sure which Jacksonville it might have been.
"You brought the weather with you!" I said brightly, with a general wave towards the drift of residual lower-hanging clouds.
"We're sorry," she said, smiling a smile so white and dazzling that my heart did that little flip again as she and her husband walked off, hand in hand, into the vast humid night twinkling with garlands of coloured neon lights.
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