Parliament when the ears hurt because it’s so cold

Sometime around 1:30 AM tonight while walking/running quickly up the super-cold and windy Parliament Street just north of Dundas, by the part of Regent Park that’s been turned to rubble, I found this smashed bus shelter (right about at Oak Street). As I was taking this picture a bunch of people walked by quickly, but one guy in the group stopped, and later I figured out he probably wasn’t part of that group, and was more of a freelance follower. He had a very runny nose and only a baseball hat on, but said to me “A composer that starts with B…..B…..B….Bach!” Then he said “C….C…..C…Chopin.” Then he stuttered and asked me about A — “what about a composer that starts with A?” — and I thought for a few cold seconds and said I didn’t know, but added that while B and C are easier, A is hard. He looked me in the eye and said “Amadeus.” And I nodded and said “You’re right, but I was thinking he’d be called Mozart” but then I was sorry I said that instead of just admitting I couldn’t think of Amadeus. Then I looked back at the bus shelter and wondered aloud who smashed it and he said something I didn’t understand, but I nodded anyway, and then he said something else I think I understood but I still said “what’s that?” and he repeated: “can I please…just I need a sleep and shower and that’s it, I’ll leave in the morning.” I lied and said my house is small and I couldn’t and he repeated again and I said sorry twice, and he nodded and said OK and ran across the street and then south on Parliament towards the bars where the cab drivers always are parked out front and the music from other countries pours out onto the sidewalk in the summer. Then I turned around and cut across the existing part of Regent Park to Sackville, and then up and into Cabbagetown where nobody asked me anything else.