Early in the morning, before the crowds, Paul gets ready for the parade. The city glows pink with sunlight and neon. Headlights replace starlight, and Paul leaves his apartment and walks into the city. He and the streets await the coming people.
His vantage point is a small ticket booth in the metro station at St Clair. He stays in his chair and travels the world every day. Paul wipes a fingerprint from the bulletproof glass and settles in to his chair - exclusive box seating in a cocoon of security monitors. He will see them, even if they do not see him. Paul sits alone, but he has the best seat in the house.
The parade begins, gradually at first. The marchers don their costumes and leave their homes. The front-runners warn of a mass of humanity behind. There is no whistle, no count-off, no unique indication to alert the participants, but they still arrive in unison. And they make music with their feet and their voices that is chaotic and lively. Paul listens as the tune echoes off the stern tiled walls, standing in achromatic contrast to the variegated by-passers.
The patterns of the parade feet overlap in Paul’s ears. He closes his eyes for a moment and tunes in to a heavy foot - a thudding bass drum guiding the tempo. The other paraders seem to match his step, following its cadence through the hallways and down the stairs. Soon the bass drum is out of earshot and a sharp heel provides rim-clicks with staccato accents at each step.
The costumes and hairstyles are as bright and colourful as the light from a stained-glass window. There are acrobats and clowns, straight-men and villains, leaders and followers. There are representatives of every cause. There are nobodies. Some hurry down the stairs, wild-eyed and desperate. Others pause for a moment at Paul’s ticket booth to buy their parade pass before they march back into the fray. The city parades on, oblivious to Paul’s watchful eyes.
An extravagant parader stops to change a ticket. She passes Paul a crumpled five dollar bill. He pauses for a moment to consider the other parades it must have seen. If only, Lincoln, he thinks to himself before passing the bill to the drawer to await an uncertain future. Paul smiles and considers the price of admission to be quite reasonable for such consistent entertainment. The woman walks away with a flourish of her cape and a drift of lavender perfume.
Paul rarely marches in the parade. His grey ticket booth and grey uniform are equally unremarkable. He is happy to be an observer, and has been in the chair for 17 years. He likes to watch the young men and women dance past his post, and to imagine where they will land when the parade spits them back out. He wonders how many of them, like him, will find themselves sinking deeper into their chairs each year until they shrink out of sight. As he follows the marchers with his eyes and his ears, he follows them into imagined futures where the parades are joyous and the music is all-encompassing.
When he was a young child, Paul would sit on the edge of the tub and count the tiles in the bathroom mosaic. There were 5,206 of them. Now he counts faces in a new mosaic with chameleon colours and infinite shapes. He a gift for patient observation, and an amazing memory for things. Paul doesn’t mind the ticket booth. He goes home at night and re-creates the whole world in his mind, playing out the parts of the people he has seen. He follows them through their lives until their time runs out and their universes end in instant collapse. And he dreams of their movement through the city.
Paul likes to imagine the station breathing like metropolitan lungs. Each morning, it inhales the paraders deep into its chest, where they energize its heart and march out its rhythm. Then at the end of each day the station exhales them. The heartbeat slows to match the tempo of the marchers. Paul watches from the airway that ejects them back into the atmosphere.
The evening parade is different. The march home - subdued, but pleased. Perhaps impatient. Paraders hold each other in slightly lesser regard, and there is a palpable sense of longing. Paul shifts impatiently. The show is ending. Many of the colours are shielded by long coats and the spikes have been replaced with flat black slip-ons. The steel-toes lift and fall at a slower pace. The tone of the march is lower, and the key has changed. Shoulders and chests are slumped and withdrawn. The sharp snare rolls of high-heeled shoes have given way to brushes, and they drag gently across the taut drum of the station floor.
Paul’s eyelids are heavy. He feels the vibration each time a train blasts through the tunnel beneath his feet, and his knees are beginning to stiffen. He manages a friendly smile for a mother in green who patiently watches her tumblers perform their routine. He stands to stretch and his hips ache. He wipes his brow and hangs up his hat. His pace has slowed to match the paraders, and he will soon straggle behind them, punctuating their daily sentence with a prolonged ellipsis.
The city’s fading glow recedes from orange to pink to deep purple. Headlights point away from the parade, flashing a red tail of warning. The colour disperses and dims. And late at night, after the crowds, Paul meets with the street again to bid farewell for a very short while.
His vantage point is a small ticket booth in the metro station at St Clair. He stays in his chair and travels the world every day. Paul wipes a fingerprint from the bulletproof glass and settles in to his chair - exclusive box seating in a cocoon of security monitors. He will see them, even if they do not see him. Paul sits alone, but he has the best seat in the house.
The parade begins, gradually at first. The marchers don their costumes and leave their homes. The front-runners warn of a mass of humanity behind. There is no whistle, no count-off, no unique indication to alert the participants, but they still arrive in unison. And they make music with their feet and their voices that is chaotic and lively. Paul listens as the tune echoes off the stern tiled walls, standing in achromatic contrast to the variegated by-passers.
The patterns of the parade feet overlap in Paul’s ears. He closes his eyes for a moment and tunes in to a heavy foot - a thudding bass drum guiding the tempo. The other paraders seem to match his step, following its cadence through the hallways and down the stairs. Soon the bass drum is out of earshot and a sharp heel provides rim-clicks with staccato accents at each step.
The costumes and hairstyles are as bright and colourful as the light from a stained-glass window. There are acrobats and clowns, straight-men and villains, leaders and followers. There are representatives of every cause. There are nobodies. Some hurry down the stairs, wild-eyed and desperate. Others pause for a moment at Paul’s ticket booth to buy their parade pass before they march back into the fray. The city parades on, oblivious to Paul’s watchful eyes.
An extravagant parader stops to change a ticket. She passes Paul a crumpled five dollar bill. He pauses for a moment to consider the other parades it must have seen. If only, Lincoln, he thinks to himself before passing the bill to the drawer to await an uncertain future. Paul smiles and considers the price of admission to be quite reasonable for such consistent entertainment. The woman walks away with a flourish of her cape and a drift of lavender perfume.
Paul rarely marches in the parade. His grey ticket booth and grey uniform are equally unremarkable. He is happy to be an observer, and has been in the chair for 17 years. He likes to watch the young men and women dance past his post, and to imagine where they will land when the parade spits them back out. He wonders how many of them, like him, will find themselves sinking deeper into their chairs each year until they shrink out of sight. As he follows the marchers with his eyes and his ears, he follows them into imagined futures where the parades are joyous and the music is all-encompassing.
When he was a young child, Paul would sit on the edge of the tub and count the tiles in the bathroom mosaic. There were 5,206 of them. Now he counts faces in a new mosaic with chameleon colours and infinite shapes. He a gift for patient observation, and an amazing memory for things. Paul doesn’t mind the ticket booth. He goes home at night and re-creates the whole world in his mind, playing out the parts of the people he has seen. He follows them through their lives until their time runs out and their universes end in instant collapse. And he dreams of their movement through the city.
Paul likes to imagine the station breathing like metropolitan lungs. Each morning, it inhales the paraders deep into its chest, where they energize its heart and march out its rhythm. Then at the end of each day the station exhales them. The heartbeat slows to match the tempo of the marchers. Paul watches from the airway that ejects them back into the atmosphere.
The evening parade is different. The march home - subdued, but pleased. Perhaps impatient. Paraders hold each other in slightly lesser regard, and there is a palpable sense of longing. Paul shifts impatiently. The show is ending. Many of the colours are shielded by long coats and the spikes have been replaced with flat black slip-ons. The steel-toes lift and fall at a slower pace. The tone of the march is lower, and the key has changed. Shoulders and chests are slumped and withdrawn. The sharp snare rolls of high-heeled shoes have given way to brushes, and they drag gently across the taut drum of the station floor.
Paul’s eyelids are heavy. He feels the vibration each time a train blasts through the tunnel beneath his feet, and his knees are beginning to stiffen. He manages a friendly smile for a mother in green who patiently watches her tumblers perform their routine. He stands to stretch and his hips ache. He wipes his brow and hangs up his hat. His pace has slowed to match the paraders, and he will soon straggle behind them, punctuating their daily sentence with a prolonged ellipsis.
The city’s fading glow recedes from orange to pink to deep purple. Headlights point away from the parade, flashing a red tail of warning. The colour disperses and dims. And late at night, after the crowds, Paul meets with the street again to bid farewell for a very short while.
Word count: 943
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