74.

She is disappointed in weather. She thought that when rain ended her troubles would be over. But the clear sky brings her more bitter cold than she thinks she has a right to expect. Walking in the alley in the crisp morning air, sharp as a just-bitten apple, she measures the circumference of the big jots of rain that sit like cushions on car roofs. They’ve driven in that morning, from Abbotsford or the Townships, with their cargo of weather. Two blocks away is the photocopy shop next to the court, where the clerk helps her make three copies of her latest affidavit: denunciations, denials, I verily believe it to be true. Her response incomplete & mistaken, no doubt, as usual. She’ll take the copies to the court registry, be told by a barely civil clerk that they won’t do, maybe be told what to do to make them right. Maybe. The clerks aren’t supposed to help her: it falls under the category of legal advice. Mercy’s opposite. She already knows she’s a fool at this kind of thing, she doesn’t need to be told again, but there’s no choice in the matter.

It was hailing at three o’clock last night, says the man in the photocopy shop as the machine whirrs and illuminates between them. Hailing and snowing.

What were you doing up?

I came down here. I had something to look after.

She brings this knowledge like a gift from outside to her own office when she trickles in later. Somebody said it hailed at three in the morning downtown.

Where’d you hear this?

At the copy shop.

And the guy in the shop told you this?

Yeah. He said he was down there in the middle of the night.

Sounds like a worried man, says her boss. Nobody comes down to his business at three in the morning, not unless he’s worried about something.