of passers-by rushing in the sun shower morning. Ice junkies with peeling skin and scales lost on their trample back to the Cross. Toddlers on electric leashes flailing in the air on the remote control navigation that freed their mother’s hands for mobile phone and latte cup necessity. Content pastel gays arm in arm, with linking sweaters tied at the neck, on pilgrimage for the new organic lunch that comes in smokable form. Yoga housewives wobbled along the concrete with spaghetti limbs and secret desires for coke and cake. Businessmen, pumped up with dissatisfaction, hulking out of their suits with lonely slack faces downturned to the pavement, lost in the moment when no one was calling them. Twenty-somethings mulled in outside cafes gesturing about art, travel, the universe and everything! wrapped in their sharp scarves of nostalgia. Real estate agents with air brushed blazers and manic white teeth shepherding anxious couples down the street, he in graphic design, she tourism. A shaved head teen makes proclamations about the inherent rights of the lizard from the street corner. Matthew’s doorbell sang out two notes. * Lily rocked back and fourth on the heels of her boots, snapping in the wrought iron lacing of Matthew’s terrace home. She found the peeling lavender paint and rusting window bars ever so quant. She’d always had affection for the benign yuppie culture of the inner city. “New money” her father always said. “Throw the best parties”, she’d always finish. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She liked the new short do. She felt it gave her an air of sophistication. And anyway all the high fashion models looked like boys these days. And all the male models look like girls. It was progress she’d been told. “Gender fluidity is the mark of our generation,” she’d read in Vice or something or other. But boys still couldn’t marry other boys and her parent’s still said that trannies are gross so she didn’t know what good it was all doing. She swiped her iPhone up a volume setting. She liked purposefully ignoring her phone when it would moan and shriek for her attention, so that Matthew would know she valued his time. They’d met a few months ago at some dinner-then-drinks-then-clubbing event of mutual friends and hit it off right away. He had told her she was beautiful immediately, which she was used to. But it was clear he wasn’t gunning for her panties, which she wasn’t used to, especially from very talented photographers who’d love to use her in their next art piece and make her a famous model. He had rather interesting things to say, unlike other members of that evening’s brigade who spent the night banging on about which online petition they’d “signed” and their new revelations about something called Marxism. No, Matthew was genuinely intriguing. And he didn’t wear
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