Buffalo jump

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I woke well before my alarm was due to go off, my hair damp and my skin tacky with sweat that had already dried. Why did I bother setting one? A dream almost always woke me near dawn. This morning’s was about Roni Galil again: Roni and me in a hot, dry place, waiting for something to come around the corner. Sensing it, hearing it, dreading it. Our weapons at port arms, straining to see through eyes stung by whipping dust and sand.

On this morning, for once, I woke before the dream climaxed. My lips were cracked and stuck to each other and my eyes dried out from having a fan pointed at them all night. I had a small air-conditioning unit sitting on the floor of my bedroom, its plug curled around it like a snake. I’d brought it with me after the breakup but it didn’t fit the window in the new place and I didn’t have money yet for a new one.

I got out of bed and opened the door that led to the concrete balcony and stepped out. Stretched my right arm until it ached-which didn’t take long. I had an unobstructed 180-degree view of the west side of the city, from Lake Ontario at the south end to the forested ravines that line the Don Valley Parkway heading north. Not even July and we were three days into a lung-buckling heat wave, with a great humid mass hanging over the city like a tent. The sun was a weak lamp behind damp muslin, smog diffusing its pale light into a harsh glare.

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