not an unlikely event

Last night I went to a party put on by some jazz musicians, who played frenetic music all night. It was in an apartment at the top of an eight-floor building, and there were stairs leading to a nice flat roof with a three hundred and sixty degree view of downtown Montreal. You could see the buildings crawling up the south side of Mount Royal, the skyscrapers built along the St Lawrence, and the flatter residential areas heading north-west from the city's core. There was breeze, beer, and a fellow party refugee playing jazz violin.

After that I headed to another party up north, past the mountain, in the apartment I lived in last year. Two cops arrived at around 2:00 and asked us to keep it down; another two arrived as I was leaving, with drawn clubs, but I talked them out of knocking on the door. The other guests had all left by then anyway.