69.

Across the sky, above them, complaints of seagulls. Mommy, said her son, the first morning they woke in this apartment, on this street. I can hear the roosters howling. It was the gulls calling, far above them.

On the way to the bar a single songbird trills in a tree at the corner of Adanac and Main. Querulous, confident, the bird repeats its song. As often as necessary. The cherry blossoms are out. The SkyTrain station down the street is awash with them, on the pavement above the stairs leading down to the platform. She walks underneath gazing up in a kind of wonder. There’s no profit in this profusion, no private enterprise. The blossoms are waxy and thickly clustered, their colour the lightest, most bare blush of pink. The petals drift down a different sort of rain, a kinder one.