Three blocks away, a small woman in an orange dress tied up the laces on her new trainers. On her lap was the half-eaten croissant she’d been nibbling on, wrapped in a flyer for a one-woman comedy show about subsistence farming. A fine mist of grease was soaking through the paper.

The boy with the keys checked his watch. He was pretty early so he had no grounds for complaint. He watched the cars zoom by to the left, inspecting the drivers and the passengers and wondering where they were going and what they’d had for breakfast. And then he looked to the sky and watched the clouds floating gently to the right, and wondered where they were going, and what they’d had for breakfast.