I woke up realizing that I had had my allotment of sleep for the night, and that was that. The window was next to the bed, and I got out and pulled back the curtain to see a full moon over Sydney. Then I looked at the digital clock near the bed. 4:45 am.

My usual first act in the morning is to make coffee. The room had Nescafe, but I hate the stuff and besides, making it might have disturbed Michael, who was still asleep and fighting a cold. Maybe there would be an urn in the lobby. I showered and dressed as quietly as I could, and went downstairs.

The second floor desk was manned only by a young fellow who, in the manner of all skeleton shift employees, was loudly playing his favorite music over the sound system (fairly inoffensive pop with a slight bad-boy edge.) There was, of course, no coffee to be had. Around the corner in a little lounge, a flatscreen TV silently showed weekend morning fare, in this case Adam-12. (Australian TV seems rife with stale American shows) After watching that for a brief, vaguely nostalgic moment, I went over to the window overlooking Darlinghurst Road.

It was just before 5:00 in the morning. The street below was alive with people, cars, and trash, all lit by street lamps, headlights and open storefronts. I’m sure the street was loud with music and voices, but all I could hear was the turned-up pop from the lobby.

Below me men and women were moving, walking, talking in little clumps, gesturing, hugging, leaning against each other, edging between the long line of cars that inched slowly down the street, bumper to bumper, every one of them either a taxi or a police car. On the sidewalks, trash blew about everyone’s feet, either blown or kicked, white fluttering pages of flyers and crumpled fast food wrappers. What I took to be an especially thick pile of this paper suddenly took wing and flew a few feet down the pavement. It was a small flock of seagulls scavenging scraps of food behind the crowd gathered in front of a kebab counter. The only storefront that wasn’t lit was the dark door to the Bada Bing Nightspot, and that was flanked by two burly looking shadows.

The men were generic, a mixture of suits, slacks, and jeans, but the women were so similar they might as well have been in uniform. All were slender or at most, slightly plump. All had longish hair worn either loose around their shoulders or piled up in an elaborate coif. All wore painfully tight and painfully short skirts, with dark clunky heels so high they seemed less footwear than implements of torture. A few of them could manage a dignified stride, but most of them moved in short, bouncing steps with their knees slightly bent. There were a handful of men in business suits, but the majority were dark slacks and white shirts. The only exceptions I noticed were a couple in the midst of the crowd gathered three deep in front of a kebab counter, a slender girl in jeans and her bearded boyfriend. Both wore backpacks and I suppose they were an adventurous couple from one of the nearby backpacking hostels.

I sat there and watched the street churn. Women who weren’t paired with men tended to go about in threes. I saw a trio of them kiss each other on the cheek in quick, businesslike pecks before climbing into three different taxis. Another three veered into a tobacconist shop where they tried on hats and wigs near the entrance, giggling and making a fuss until some men paused to watch them. After a minute they left, each paired with a man.

The sky over the buildings grew lighter, the crowd thinner, the cars more widely spaced. The kebab counter had turned its lights out and all the food was removed so there was nothing left but empty chafing dishes. Now when did that happen?

The couple in jeans stood a little down the pavement from the closed kebab place, talking animatedly to another, much younger couple in jeans, and the shadows flanking the door to the Bada Bing Night Spot were no longer shadows but two tired looking, heay-set young men, one smoking a cigarette. Three women emerged from the Bada Bing, the lead one hailing a taxi and climbing in beside the driver while her friends piled into the back.

And suddenly it was morning, and nobody was left, except that younger couple in jeans who were now sitting on the sidewalk, their backs against the closed doors of the kebab joint, their arms around each other. They looked to be still in their teens. The girls eyes were closed, and she rested her head on the boy’s shoulder. Trash blew down the sidewalk.

The lobby pop music was now replaced with soft musak and women’s voices. The boy behind the counter had been joined by two girls, and the lobby was crowded with Japanese stewardesses and their trundle cases.

Still no coffee. I went back into the lounge.

On the flatscreen, Adam-12 was long gone. Instead a woman demonstrated how to use some new kind of scrub brush on a screen door. I looked out the window. The boy and girl were gone. So was all the blowing paper. The sidewalks and street were pristine.

It was only then that I noticed that the window I’d been looking out was decorated with small, empty picture frames, and a small postcard with a note:

“Kings Cross Moving Art:

King’s Cross is a constant evolving

place with never

a dull moment.

See Kings Cross through a different angle!!!

Whether it be the good, bad, ugly, or Beautiful, it’s always Colorful.”