Refraction

Light rain was falling.  Tiny drops somwhere between mist and actual rain hung in the air.  If Whorf was right and Inuit did have thirty or fifty or seventy words for snow, then Vancouverians must have an equal number of words for rain.  This was a sneaky rain, with drops to small to feel different than the humidity in the early, early morning air, and then congealing at the top of the stairs once home into general wetness.

Light refracts between the neon signs on Granville and me across the street.  Red and green, yellow and blue split into a thousand shards of color, splitting once, twice, three times, a hundred times.  People wander on sidewalks, entering and exiting doors, laughing, shouting and disappearing into clubs.  I'm somewhere next to them, near them, refracted myself into shining, broken beams.

'Excuse me, sir.' 

I'm crossing Thurlow, following my familiar path down Robson.  I'm in the middle of the street, stopped, turning, recognizing the incongruity. 

'First of all, let me thank you for stopping when I said 'excuse me'.' 

A gray-brown face is looking back at me.  Dreadlocks fall past gaunt cheeks.  His eyes are too large, luminous in the broken light of the street.  He's sick.  But the voice doesn't fit.  British, an attempt at received pronunciation, something out of Major Barbara or Pygmillian.  I turn around and he guides me over to the curb.

'I wouldn't ask this but, you see, I'm...'  His voice is drowned by a car passing.  I excuse myself, pointing to my ear. 

'Right, I'm dying...'  Again, the white noise of tires in the rain.  This must be the most common sound in Vancouver.  I apologize, feeling terrible that I still can't hear what he's saying, but very interested in whatever it is he wants to say, not because of what he's saying, I guess, but because of how he's saying it.

He shouts, 'I'm dying of AIDS.'  I get it then and understand.  'And thank you ever so much for not recoiling when I said that.' 

I'm in a universe where David Copperfield and the Mad Hatter have merged with a bum.  I'm still standing there.  Why not? 

'I could use a five or ten, sir, if you please, to buy some food.'  Right, I knew this was coming, but it was worth it.  This was the cost of the entertainment of the real.  I reached for my wallet and his mania peeked through.  'or a twenty of 1.5 million for a new brassiere!'  I laughed and handed over the bill I was going to pay for beers with.  It could buy him food, or meth, or a couple of tokes.  His choice.

I turned and walked, considering my day.  A friend spoke of fate earlier.  I wasn't so sure about that, but I was filled with a certainty that walking down this street was exactly the right thing to do.