Carter's Time In The Rain

Under the fortunately placed canopy of the Beacher Cafe, young Carter was trapped by thunderous rainfall with somewhere important to be for the fourth significant time in his young life.

The first such time was coincidentally in the same area of town, back several years earlier when Carter was a teenager. He had agreed to meet a girl he was sweet for on a date at a coffee shop near her house in that same neighbourhood, next to the old Fox Theatre. But the intense rain rinsed that plan away quickly. Protecting himself from the downpour in a streetcar shelter, Carter borrowed a cell-phone from an impatient transit passenger and called his potential squeeze, informing her of the situation. Instead of irritation, which younger Carter expected, she was extremely impressed by his 'courage' to even adventure to her part of town at all. Her parents were away for the night and so she invited Carter over to her house as a substitute for their failed date. It was perhaps the most lucid and enjoyable nights of younger Carter's life, as he and his 'potential squeeze' at the time became fast friends and planted a friendship the older Carter often kissed the stars for.

His second significant moment of being trapped by rainfall was not as happily memorable for Carter. He was now a few years removed from high school and eager for new opportunities. After two months of hard work he'd managed to clinch an interview at a high end marketing company on Bay Street. It was a lucrative position, though challenging, but one that would allow him to move away from his parents home and out on his own within a month or two. He spent three days prepping himself for any potential questions, didn't drink anything remotely smelly for a week and got a solid nights sleep so to wake up three hours before he'd have to leave.
And so he did, fixing himself a quick dirty breakfast of fried eggs and leftover french fries. He walked out the door with a grin stronger than Heath Ledger's Joker (a character he would later sympathize facial expressions with). The rainfall began instantly once he left his parent's house on Bayview. The streets quickly flooded, buses stopped running, and poor young Carter was left to stand under a crappy bus shelter (which was crappy enough to leak drops of water onto his head) while the minutes of his dream job ticked before him in a flash, and then disappeared. Numbers and incompetent bureaucracy... poor Carter fell into a spell (fueled by particular intoxicants) for a period that shattered his belief in positive outcomes happening to him.

The third significant moment was many years later. Carter had rented a basement spot in East York (kinda Cosburn and Linsmore) and was eager to meet a lady he was sweet on at a pizzeria. He walked a solid hour west to get there, paranoid that transit would let him down again, only for a heavy rain to assault him once he locked his front door. He attempted to trek through it for several minutes but it was too much, so he took shelter under a gazebo in a parkette near Danforth and Pape. There was an older gentleman in tattered clothing there as well.

'This is quite a downpour! Don't see too many like this anymore...'

'Yep, that's for sure...' Carter replied, scrolling through his device to find an album to play.

'Yep yep... a real storm it is... you by chance grow up in the city, my boy?'

'What? Um, yeah. I did. Sure.'

'City boy! Yep yep. Grew up in Richmond Hill myself, moved here at sixteen to make it big! Yep yep.'

'And how's that working out for you?' Carter asked, casually but with cruel sarcasm.

'Sometimes life doesn't happen the way you expect... it's just a bend in the story, is all.'

The man stepped out from the shelter of the gazebo and into the heavy downpour. Realizing his rudeness, Carter called out to the man to come back but it was too late, he had disappeared into the haze of the storm.

Now, it was nearly two years later and Carter was once again trapped by rainfall, with somewhere important to be and someone important to see. But this time, he didn't feel any agonizing impatience. This time, he would let the rain tell the story.