Summer in the City

‘Summer in the City
Back of my neck gettin' dirty and gritty’

The roar of air conditioner compressors and fans competes with the background rumble of the city outside for supremacy. After a night when it barely cooled at mid-morning the thermometer is climbing rapidly toward 90+. Already this week there has been a smog advisory.

‘And I’m stuck in this city
Ain’t going nowhere’

Tomorrow I get driven to the Oakville Hospital, pick a number, and begin the waiting process all over again. In the meantime life goes on and I get myself sufficiently respectable to cross the street for bread, OJ, and cream for my coffee. It being the first of September and Labour Day Weekend approaching returning students are tying up our elevators with their futons and desks. Traffic on Trafalgar Rd is backed up all the way to the QEW  by construction but that doesn’t stop cars from careening around the corner onto my street.

Bread, how does a commercial bakery manage to burn a batch of bread and why was is shipped, Dempster’s should know better. Fortunately I found a loaf that wasn’t scorched. The 24-hour variety store has ‘Lots of Pulp’ orange juice and after some looking I find my Table Cream. The staff all seem to be young, squat, and middle European bappering away in some strange language. I pay for my  purchases and persuade the cashier to use my shopping bag and leave noting that Blockbuster now sports cross-hatched guards in all its windows and doors. The heat assails one the moment one exits cooled space. Litter mars the landscape straws lying in the grass and fast food napkins decorating the garden.

The heat pump above the building entrance still drips water right over the main entrance, inside the floor of the elevator looks like something out of a slum tenement. At the end of my hallway the fire exit sign still hasn’t had its burnt-out light replaced after almost a month.

‘I gotta to get out of this place
If it’s the last thing I ever do’