They were walking down Oxford Street, and Alan was seeing it with fresh
eyes, casting his gaze upward, looking at the lines of sight from one
building to another, mentally painting in radio-frequency shadows cast
by the transformers on the light poles.
"Just moved in on July first," Alan said. "Still getting settled in."
"Which house?"
"The blue one, with the big porch, on the corner."
"Sure, I know it. I scored some great plumbing fixtures out of the
dumpster there last winter."
"You're welcome," Alan said.
They turned at Spadina and picked their way around the tourist crowds
shopping the Chinese importers' sidewalk displays of bamboo parasols and
Hello Kitty slippers, past the fogged-up windows of the dim-sum
restaurants and the smell of fresh pork buns. Alan bought a condensed
milk and kiwi snow-cone from a sidewalk vendor and offered to treat
Kurt, but he declined.
"You never know about those places," Kurt said. "How clean is their ice,
anyway? Where do they wash their utensils?"
"You dig around in dumpsters for a living," Alan said. "Aren't you
immune to germs?"
Kurt turned at Baldwin, and Alan followed. "I don't eat garbage, I pick
it," he said. He sounded angry.
"Hey, sorry," Alan said. "Sorry. I didn't mean to imply --"
"I know you didn't," Kurt said, stopping in front of a dry-goods store
and spooning candied ginger into a baggie.
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