Rain, Vancouver

Eleven months of the year this city is being rained on and about six weeks of that is the good kind.

Tonight is the good kind. Fine, straight down, no wind, warm enough that nobody has a hood up.

The street is doing the thing where wet asphalt takes the neon and doubles it, so the block is twice as lit as it should be, half of it upside down.

Under the awning at the café on the corner there's a couple who have just come out of an argument, or a party, or both. She's laughing with her whole head back. He's holding both coffees and can't do anything about his face.

I go past close enough to hear what it's about, and it's about a movie.

My umbrella is broken at the third rib so the whole thing sits crooked and rain runs off the low side onto my shoulder. I've had it that way two winters.

At Venables the streetlight is out and for most of a block there's nothing but the wet and the sound of it.

Then it's the Drive again, and the pho place, and the guy who's always outside the pho place.