The younger one this time, proudly pointing his filthy hands toward the top of the stem. The other one just keeps banging away relentlessly: tock, tock, tock, tock. He’s slowly enlarging the space in which the weed proliferates, brow furrowed with effort. He doesn’t care about allergies. I let them do what they want. I don’t have allergies. And I’m not about to make them kill this plant whose growth they must have been following for weeks. The sun is high in the sky. I leave them to their gardening.

I haven’t taken more than five steps when I hear a woman yelling to bring the hammer back before their father shows them what happens when you take his stuff without permission. She bursts into the alley. Her skin is unnaturally tanned. She has that dry, brittle look of people who drink instead of eat. Stick arms, visible tendons in her neck, even though she’s young. She’s wearing a white T-shirt that says “Everlast” at tit level. If I weren’t so surprised, I’d laugh out loud.

“Damn it, what are you two up to now?”

She gives the older one a hard swat on the arm, and he coughs up the hammer without a peep. The younger brother instinctively retreats toward me. That’s when his mom sees me. She stares a second then goes on her way. Yanks out the allergenic plant and goes back into her yard, dragging her kids by the shoulders. The hammer stays on the ground. I move along.

I walk by a bar whose aroma of urinal cake smell wafts all the way out to the sidewalk. A limping grey cat scurries off to cower under a porch. It licks itself in vain. Its wound is bleeding, and it’s suffering. When the cat lifts its leg, anyone can see that there’s nothing natural about the angle. Down the street, three kids are pretending to shoot each other with empty water pistols.

I quickly make my way through the neighbourhood, which isn’t proving welcoming. One last graffito bids me goodbye: “My brother’s dead. I didn’t even like him.”

I discover a secret shortcut. Someone has cut out a section of the chain-link separating the tracks from the rest of the world. I count five crows querulously pecking. Despite the sun and the fresh air, there’s something sinister about this place. I don’t stick around. What interests me is what I’ll find on the other side of the tracks. This enclave is just an escape route for once my work is done.