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showing off their shirts and accessories than in fending off cold. The Market comprised a square area enclosed by four roads in the downtown core. Cars moved slowly to accommodate the people who didn’t wait for “Walk” signs or streetlights to cross over, crowds who were strolling around and browsing merchandise in the windows or in booths erected outside, their owners bundled up and sipping coffee, children and adults with snacks in their hands: a glass of lemonade, a caramel apple, a chocolate bar, or a fried pastry. The Market was buzzing, and we swarmed around the clusters of fresh foods and handmade jewellery, tourist shops full of postcards and T-shirts, the cafés and restaurants lining the square, the electric lights with their hum calling us in. I wasmesmerized. A night out in the city, and I was without an adult and with a group of girls I desperately wanted to call my friends. My need was as immense as the city itself, with its hand-to-hand exchanges of money and goods and services. My father had said that the city of Ottawa was built in a valley. It had become the capital of Canada because it was a centre geographically.
Anything that gets inside, stays inside,
he said.
The cold, the heat. The city contains it.
The city grew in front of me, in the dark-blue twilight, opening its hungry mouth.
    Rachel and Caroline tried on silver jewellery in front of an old woman who sat stiffly behind the table, counting out change in her pockets, a baggy beige coat puffed out around her. She kept one eye on the change in her hand and her other eye on them. Francine and I rifled through a rack of colourful cotton dresses from India, monitored by a dark-skinned man who wore a white turban on his head and smelled of strong spice. There were so many things to attract my eye that I couldn’t concentrate, unlike Francine, who picked out an orange and purple dress with embroidered stitches resembling fruit along the hem and edges of the sleeves. She paraded in front of the mirror nailed to the makeshift wall of the booth with the dress held in her arms, dancing with the cloth as if it were an invisible woman. Rachel and Caroline laughed, discarding their jewellery to circle around her mockingly. “I’m an Indian princess,” they chanted. “Look at me!” The dark-skinned man rose from his seat, agitated at first, but relaxed when he saw their jabs weren’t directed at him.
    I had my money in my pocket. Twenty-five dollars. I didn’tknow how to spend it, if I should offer it up all at once, or if they would ask me for it when they wanted to purchase something. Everything in the Market was for sale, and everything pleased me with its novelty and up-to-date style: the synthetic fabrics and cheap designer copies, the pungent food fare encapsulating all. I had been to the city nearest our old town and realized that markets in all cities were probably alike, but to me this was the grandest and most exotic market I had ever seen. It was Rachel’s market, and she and her friends were showing it to me. The girls were content just to look for a while, retracing steps from previous weeks, accustomed to the regular merchandise and searching out newer, just-in necklaces or shirts. We walked around the square, past flower stands of irises and pink roses, carnations and sunflowers, and vegetable stands with baskets of squash and corn, large pumpkins lining the sidewalk waiting for holiday tarts and pies and salted seeds.
    Rachel suggested we visit an Italian café on the corner where they had desserts and coffee, and which was one of the few establishments besides the restaurants that would admit underage girls in the evening. The circular glass case in the window turned electrically and was filled with treats, the slices carefully removed by the young woman behind the counter, who seemed less interested in the chocolate and caramel cheesecakes and the bowl of whipped cream into which she dipped her