The word from the street
TONY
“So what do you think of my $140 coat?”
PHILIP
“You look spectacularly Darth Vader-ish, I have to say.”
TONY
“One of my customers got it for me. He said ‘I’m tired of seeing you out here shivering all the time. So my wife and I, we went and bought you this coat — you’ll be warmer now. You know, he actually bought me a new coat and he paid $140. I can’t believe it.”
PHILIP
“Do you know his name?”
TONY
“Nope. But I’ve actually known him for a while.”
TONY
“You remember the lady who slagged me on the blog a while back? The one who said I had a nice apartment and I had a van and all that?”
PHILIP
“I think so.”
TONY
“Well she just gave me a toonie and a smile. Now explain that to me.”
TONY
“Look at the sidewalk here. All that shovelling. I did it myself when I got here.”
PHILIP
“Good job. That’s very nice of you.”
TONY
“Well, they let me sit outside their cafe all day and they don’t bother me. Of course, I buy coffee from them too sometimes. So it’s a mutual thing, if you know what I mean.”
TONY
“You see my sign? I’m letting everyone know how close we are to Christmas. I’m starting to think that some people don’t want to know. No one has any money; let me tell you, I can tell.”
TONY
“Did you hear about the fire last night?”
PHILIP
“No. Where was this?”
TONY
“Just up the street there on Howard Park, just this side of Roncesvalles. The big one, the new one. You know the building.”
Later the same day …
PHILIP
“That fire you told me about, the one that’s supposed to have happened yesterday, the one you told me about.”
TONY
“Yeah the one we were going to write up on the blog.”
PHILIP
“I googled for a news story about that fire but I couldn’t find anything anywhere.”
TONY
“Sometimes I think that it should say in the Bible that not everything is on the Internet, if you know what I mean.”
Homeless Man Speaks 