Tar

I heard a scuffling out my window this morning before 7. I looked out to see a pony-tailed man in an Adidas shirt lengthening an aluminum ladder he'd pulled from the rack of a truck. When he leaned the ladder up against the building and began to climb, like some bar graph heading for its max, he would have passed two feet from my window, had I not given him a stout "who goes there". I knew the roof had been re-tarred last year, and told him so. "Number 24, right?" he hollered down to his mates. Yeah, well number 24 is next door, and I told him that too. Down he went. Much reverse scuffling with the ladder. By the time I'd folded my Toronto Maple Leaf PJs and gone for an orange, ponytail was about to climb again, one building over.

PS: The tar looked like pudding, the kind you can believe.