23, 78, 102, 107

Each morning I would stand and wait for my bus on William Street while the remote, jovial city yawned, stretched and readied itself for another December day. I'd stand on the grimy bricks outside McDonald's watching the homeless man rummage through the bin for fatty scraps. Numbered green buses would rumble past towards the slick river, leaving puffs of choking smoke to mingle with the meat and oil smells coming from the glass doors behind me. Business women emerged from the take-away joint clutching cheap hot coffees with sincere dependence, their clickity-clack heels carefully stepping over drains.

The puffy clouds parted and a blanket of pure golden light instantly warmed the street, thrown off the great glassy skyscrapers and sending weary, warm just-woke-up workers reaching for sunglasses. German tourist girls with backpacks and deep yellow tans passed the knick-knack shop across the street where the Korean worker was arranging wheeled tables in careful rows. To my right, the mobile phone shop guy was emerging for his third morning ciggy, brune and angular with a dramatic lean against the doorway and a gaze that had seen it all.

I turned away to join a commotion and when I looked again, I met his eyes from my bus, two background characters within the short story of a small beachside city with an azure winding river and a history yet to be written.