EM Forster once wrote about the difference between round and flat characters. In a similar vein, any Melburnian worth their salt quickly develops an instinctive ability to distinguish between round and flat days.

Round days, when the wind blows in squalls, the rain turns on and off with scant regard for seasonal constructs or human dignity, and clouds arc across the sky at astonishing speed.

And flat days, when the sky seems utterly impervious to provocation, a curtain of blue like the top half of a default screensaver, or a seamless blanket of textureless grey cloud.

Sunday was a round day. It had started off with a flawless blue sky, but now the wind had picked up, and a foreboding grey fringe had appeared at the edge of the chalk-blue, as Titus stepped off the tram at the Arts Centre.

He did not expect to find that Fraser was already there waiting for him, standing among the crowds of tourists milling around, head down, looking at his phone. He was wearing a multicoloured tracksuit and black track pants.

He felt the old inadequacy resurface. For a brief moment he considered turning tail and going straight home.

Then Fraser noticed him and waved, and the feeling melted away.

"Nice shirt," he said, by way of greeting, as Titus approached.

Titus glanced down at his worn-out graphic tee. "Yeah, thanks. I guess it is a nice shirt."

Fraser shot him a perplexed look. "You didn't even look at it before you put it on?"

"What?" Titus sounded equally surprised. "It was the closest thing to my bed this morning. I just slapped it on. Why?"

"Never mind." Fraser looked around. St Kilda Road looked beautiful, dappled sunlight filtering down through the canopies of the plane trees. The shadowed greenery of the Queen Victoria Gardens stretched out on the opposite side. The sidewalk around them pulsated with tourists, from interstate and further abroad. Parents pushed prams. Kids put their hands on the water running down the glass curtain wall at the entrance, the grey mass of the National Gallery looming above them all.

"So how was Seconds cricket?" Titus decided to start the conversation, for once. He wasn't sure if he was doing it right. Was he too abrupt?

"Nothing happened. We had a bye. I just stayed home. How was-"

"Fourths volleyball? We went all the way out to fucking Corio just to lose to Geelong Grammar." Titus bit his lip. "At least the bus ride was good. One of Bayside's new Volvos. Irizar i6S body. Absolute dreamboat."

"I thought your interest was in trains."

"Oh, I'm into a bit of everything. No preference."

"So... tell me all about that bus." Fraser pointed at one of the tourist coaches parked on the curb.

Here we go again, Titus thought. "That's a Denning Landseer. I didn't know there were any still around. Must be over 30 years old now."

"What about the bus behind it?"

"Volgren Endura. Volvo B8R chassis."

Fraser whistled. "Neat." They walked past the entrance and kept on going.

"Hey, Fraser reminded him, gently. "We just went past the entrance."

"We're just going around the block," Titus replied.

"But you said we were going to the NGV."

"I did say that we were going to the NGV. But I didn't say we were going into the NGV."

"So we're just going to stand outside and admire the architecture or something?"

"I said that we were going to see a historical exhibit."

Fraser realised at this point that the argument was pointless. So he decided to just follow Titus.

They turned right, down Southbank Boulevard. Workmen were putting the final touches the new green corridor. A Route 1 tram glid up towards the intersection at St Kilda Road, heading for East Coburg.

"What about that tram? Is it a-"

"Are you just going to ask me about every single fucking vehicle that goes past? I mean, we could stand here and play this game all day." Titus stopped and started pointing at the parked cars. "Nissan Juke. VZ Commodore. Mazda 3 SP25. Mitsubishi ASX. Holden Barina. Honda CR-V."

"You're into cars as well?"

Titus sighed. "Shall we do the trees next?"

"I was just curious."

"That's everybody's bloody excuse, isn't it? We were just curious. You're just a curiosity to us." Titus' mouth formed a thin, straight line.

Fraser realised he had inadvertently touched a nerve. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Titus seemed to calm down. "I didn't interrupt any plans you had with this, right? You didn't have to push any of your friends out of the way to be here?"

"No."

"That's good," Titus said, quietly.

***

They turned right again, into Sturt St, into the shadows of the back of the National Gallery, Plane trees, bluestone, concrete and asphalt greeted them, the four fundamentals of the Melbourne streetscape. It had been a nice, elegant thoroughfare once, but now the sidewalks were deserted and the scene was dominated by the drab masonry posterior of the Arts Centre, with the gaping maw of its carpark and loading bay, where a bunch of tough-looking security guards were having a smoke.

They came to the intersection with Kavanagh St. Faceless office blocks lined the other side of the street. Far above, the skyscrapers of Southbank stood sentinel. This was a place that tourists rarely ventured, for obvious reasons. Further down, the sounds of traffic emanated from where Sturt St disappeared into the underpass that carried City Road under St Kilda Road.

There was no nature strip on this side of the road, and Fraser felt rather exposed as the cars rushed past. One of the security guards was giving him the once-over. He averted his gaze.

They stopped at a forlorn-looking silver-painted pole, standing by itself, embedded in the asphalt pavement among the plane trees. "Ta-da," Titus announced. "Historical exhibit number one: our illustrious tramway past."

"Is that what we came here for?" Fraser studied the pole. There were quite a few spots where the rust had bubbled to the surface.

"It's exactly what we came here for." Titus looked quietly triumphant.

"It's... a pole."

"There's another one across the road." Titus pointed to the other side of the intersection.

Fraser nodded. He was wondering what was going on in Titus' mind. He really wanted to know.

"When they first built the tram line to South Melbourne Beach in the 1930s, they used to turn off St Kilda Road at City Road." He pointed towards the underpass. "Then they turned left and ran along here. And then in the late 1960s they rebuilt the intersection of City Road with St Kilda Road into an underpass, and they had to reroute the tram to the next street down. Nolan St, which is now Southbank Boulevard."

"And these poles are the only traces left of the tram line."

Titus nodded. "I don't know how they survived, but these date all the way back to then. And they're still here."

"How can you tell it's a tramway pole?"

"The silver paint. They're quite distinctive in that respect."

Fraser looked down the street. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine concrete tram tracks running down the centre of the road, brick industrial buildings lining the street, a green and cream W Class trundling along. "So... you took me all the way here to give me a history lesson about some poles?"

Titus shrugged. "I warned you that my life was boring."

Fraser shot him a look. "It's not boring at all. I think it's really interesting."

Something flickered in Titus' eyes. "We're extremely lucky, you know. Most of our tram history is just these kinds of small, relatively insignificant alterations. Most other cities around the world weren't so fortunate. Even the ones that still have big tram networks had fairly major stuff closed down."

"So there's other places like this in Melbourne?"

"Plenty." Titus began counting on his fingers. "Mary St, Beaconsfield Parade and Wellington St in St Kilda, Glenhuntly Road in Point Ormond, Victoria St in North Melbourne, Puckle St in Moonee Ponds, Napier St in Essendon, Vaughan St at Essendon Airport. Brunswick Road... and that's just off the top of my head. There's a lot more, with the cable trams and the horse trams that came before the electrics, and the Victorian Railways trams. And there's another one just around the corner. We'll pass it later."

"But Glenhuntly Rd still has trams."

"There used to be a section from Brighton Road down to the beach. They shut that down in 1960."

Fraser expected Titus to continue rambling. He was just beginning to get used to it. It was oddly soothing. But instead he silently beckoned him to cross to the other side of Sturt St. They continued their trek on the other side, along a carpark that formed the ground floor of an office block, towards City Road, towards the Yarra.

Past the office block, Sturt St became a dingy offramp leading into the dark cavern of the City Road underpass. There were no more buildings at the roadside, just a cyclone-wire fence on their left enclosing what looked like a construction site, and the concrete underbelly of the garden terrace around the State Theatre on the other side. The skyscrapers loomed above, panes of plate glass reflecting the sun's waning glare. Fraser gained the distinct impression of being trapped in a bowl.

They continued walking in silence, until they reached City Road itself. The traffic rushed past, almost deafeningly loud now, the acrid tang of exhaust in the air. They walked up a serpentine overpass of bush-hammered concrete that led them to the gardens around the State Theatre, down a gently sloping lawn back to St Kilda Rd, then across to Princes Bridge.

The clouds had rolled over now, and it was beginning to spit. The wind had a biting edge to it now, growing sharper by the minute. Below them the Yarra gleamed, in all its upside-down glory.

Titus pointed at one of the pedestrian bridges to their left, crossing the Yarra at an angle. "You can see there, second bridge down, that's the bridge that took the trains down to St Kilda and Sandridge. The first train lines in Melbourne, back in the 1850s. They converted them to trams in the '80s." He then directed Fraser's attention to the other side of the river, towards the promenade along the Yarra that led to Birrarung Marr, at the edge of Federation Square. "And that's where Batman Avenue used to go, along the river. Route 70 used to terminate right there. I think the tracks are still buried there. Concrete tram tracks are very hard to remove, you know. In the old days, they were often the only thing holding the road together, so a lot of the time, when they got rid of the trams, they would just pave them over."

Fraser nodded, soaking it all in.

Titus pointed a little bit further down, towards Federation Square itself. "And there used to be another train station there, where Fed Square is now. Princes Bridge Station. The Clifton Hill lines used to terminate there. Before the 1990s, you would've gotten off your train there instead of Flinders Street."

Fraser decided to ask the question that had been in his mind since they had been standing at the pole on Sturt St. "Why did you bring me here? Why did you choose to show me all of... this?"

"Why not? Sometimes the most obvious, immediate things are the things that are the easiest to overlook. It's not going to be very long until nobody knows that City Rd once had an intersection with St Kilda Rd, and that trams used to turn right there. We go past these places every day without thinking about what it looked like before, without realising how much it's changed over the past fifty years, or even the past twenty years." The sadness in Titus' eyes returned. Then it was gone.

Fraser looked back the way they had come, at the cylindrical beige mass of Hamer Hall, at the delicate spire of the State Theatre rising behind it. There was no sign of the underpass, no sign there had ever been an intersection there.

"I know what you're thinking," Titus continued. "Why didn't we just go to the movies, or just walk around the city? Surely that would be more in your, you know, comfort zone. And you know, I hate that kind of thinking, that kind of blind assumption. You get it from old people all the time. Oh, you young people wouldn't be interested in this. Oh, it's too boring for you. Oh, you're probably just into your pop music and your video games and partying. That kind of attitude pisses me right off. How the fuck do you know? You know what they say, right."

"What?"

"Assume makes an ass out of u and me."

Fraser realised that he agreed with all of the points that Titus had made. He thought his own hobbies and interests were rather milquetoast, but he would have been similarly incensed if someone had simply blindly assumed what they were.

They had reached the shelter of eaves at the entrance of Flinders St Station. Next train indicators blinked. People hurried to their platforms. The umami scent of hot food wafted from the stalls in the forecourt, and the rumbling of trains emanated from beneath. Out in the open, people were zipping up their hoodies, unfurling umbrellas, running for shelter as the clouds continued to darken above.

"You catching the 19 again?" Fraser asked.

"No, the Upfield. Less stressful, and I get to sit down."

They parted ways after they went through the fare gates, Fraser to Platform 1, and Titus to Platform 4.

Fraser caught sight of Titus again as he waited for his train, looking across the platforms. He had his back turned to him. He was not looking at his phone like the other people were. He was simply standing there, seemingly lost in his thoughts. He looked lonely.