As I stumbled through the laneways and backstreets, I caught the occasional snatch of conversation and dice rumbling. The awnings were still out, despite the dark hour, and just as I realised I had taken a wrong turn to the left the rain began to fall again, unannounced and with great speed. I froze beneath the temporary shelter of the intersection and the stiarway leading down to the tunnel that ended in the underground station, its neon glow barely visible down the tunnel’s hollow length. I waited in the streetblasted tunnel entrance and watched the black sheets waterfalling prismly through the postfuture premorning, levitating slightly on a memory of Shanghai. Our midnight run through streets awash with rainwater frothing up like beer from the gutters, sprayed in an arc across the bottom half of your jeans as you dove headfirst into the electrocab. By the time we fell laughing in each others’ arms in our cubicle lovenest, the morning light was falling through the apartment block’s central courtyard, and the sound of mah jonng was already there, like the sond of rain on a corrugated iron roof.