It begins Friday, stepping off the plane.

You wait—customs, and the customs you can study line for line in a book, spine broken—how to swish the wine inside one cheek, and which smiles to make wishes upon. Who to make them for—all of it. Read; memorize; don’t offend. Wait for the carousel to dispense your dusty luggage—the organs, guts of your existence. Here.

Lisbon. A city so proud, so willing to be a city above all things. So familiar without attempt at such a feat, and the things that make it different: the sight of gravestones, gray–toned—and Citroens, compact and cascading—scattering the street’s edges. And your destination, cited in a journal—paper bound—vowels of words dancing together in a waltz you couldn’t practice. Check your list and worry. The preparation. “Take an umbrella for the rainy season.” All this “do” in fear of regret.

(How poor and misaligned these vacations can be—the trouble with talking, and the way dictionaries still overheat with use, ironically, like old oscillating fans. Blisters, missed vacancy signs, and signs of bad weather. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” Or was it the other way? Was it? The worry returning. “All you need is an umbrella.” Will it rain?)

Cast anxiety deep inside the chasm of a Portuguese church bell. Let it sound.

Eight times, tonight—now—the lore and old, bellowing tone of a single shaken mass of bronze, as if alive, yet bereaved. Tall moans, all while you clap with cobblestones to explore, eight times, and more. A rhythm.

The first night, cloudy; always jet lag and molar—holes holding pieces of peanut. The streets—how they scurry into the ocean, yearning for erosion and waiting salt. How many stones are here, sleeping, and yet churning, churning the wheels of activity above? Stirring your pace. You watch shadows twist in the cobblestone cracks, grout and years—centuries!—of whittled skin, of things dropped and left behind. And then the shop lanterns, which hold their stories in kerosene—trading the smells of cod and shellfish for incensed tall tales and campy, boyish charms. Watch it all burn into smoke you can’t hold, can’t trap. These are a souvenir you deemed too expensive; oppressing suitcase space, perhaps; too much of a novelty. Another regret.

And there it is!—bleeding between the smoke. A force opposite, heavy and downward, like a large mace. The rain. Sudden and soaking. Truer, too, than all the simple facts of life—gravity, Christmas present paper wrapping, chiming church bells and the notched, Fahrenheit inscribed oven knob. A singular thing made of many things; all water but then, at once—ricocheting between surfaces over the dimensions of the city—something more complex. An entity, possessing name and action.

You open the umbrella, but perhaps—this time—you regret it. You predict the scurry of children to the guard of striped awnings and codfish cutting tables. They are laughing, but fearful, also, of wet shoes. And you, standing there. A Mary Poppins, with that stretched out word you don’t remember quite right—the one that means everything.

(Perhaps it meant everything—just then—when you threw away convention, like an old woman sipping expired milk, alone on the cobblestones.)

An umbrella—yours, you find—upside down. Catching, catching everything like a large bowl. All the wetness, air, and the smoke of antique lanterns. The names of things you know on paper, camouflaged in Portuguese. The laughter of Lisbon’s children, caught in a shower. And your own laughter—the thing that comes in replace of disappointment.

•     •     •

Years later—sky emptying itself of captured water—you huddle your hands around a coloured, paper cup in a café. Toronto rains—mixing garbage together in the elbow–creased cauldrons of curb corners—make the asphalt smell. A man stands, half–postured yet austere, beside the blurry, water–swept street window—an Impressionist’s canvas of brake lights and dent—proof doors. He is smoking gracefully, drying out his lungs. A black umbrella hangs from his forearm; wood handle like a thick, tribal bracelet. Dripping.

Let it open—you think. You catch yourself speaking, and you’re not sure what it means. You say it, anyway. It comes in through the momentary silence of the panicked world, like a cat through a shutting market entrance.

“Sir, excuse me? Sir? If you are not feeling too superstitious—too safe and dry under a café’s roof—could you open that umbrella? There is something about Lisbon collapsed inside.”