Romance

I’m in a nightclub, dimmed lighting, maybe fifteen tables. I’m wearing a gray plaid skirt and my white Jantzen sweater. On the table are drinks for Mark and me, a round, clear glass ashtray, a candle in a glass holder. It’s my second drink and I’m in that perfect state where everything I say seems witty but I know enough to not talk too much. I’m twenty-two and I haven’t been in many nightclubs but I am comfortable here. In the chair close to me is my tan prince wearing a herringbone jacket and a two-inch maroon tie. He is speaking to me in a low tone about someone at a nearby table. The piano player behind the small hardwood dance floor is playing quietly, Gershwin maybe, and he is very good, but people are talking and not paying attention. It is April, but Colorado April, and it is cool outside with trees just budding. Then something is different in the room and I look to the front and a young woman is standing by the piano holding a microphone and she has begun to sing. She is wearing a white evening dress, low cut but not strapless, and her long dark hair and gray eyes shine in the small spotlight above her. She is small, demure, mostly looking at the piano player but sometimes shyly glancing at the audience. It is as if she hasn’t done this before but she has. She is too good. The lights dim more and others realize her presence and the room quietens. She is a torch singer. Her song has already begun and the first of it is lost, but then I pick up the lines.

And when two lovers woo
They still say, “I love you.”
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by.

She looks up then, as the song continues, and it seems like she is looking right at me through the smoky haze. At the same time Mark puts his hand on top of mine on the table. I look at him and he is watching the singer, but then he turns to me and his eyes are glistening. I squeeze his hand and we hold the glance for a few seconds and it seems like something is swelling in my chest. He raises his glass to me and in his Humphrey Bogart imitation, which isn’t bad, whispers, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and I smile back at him.

When the song ends the audience applauds but not loudly. No one wants to spoil the mood. The singer invites her audience to the dance floor and when the next song begins some of us go there. As we begin to dance my face is touching Mark’s and I am more intoxicated by him than by the bourbon I have had. As soon as I hear the first lines I know this song is different.

Each place I go only the lonely go
Some little small cafè
The songs I know only the lonely know
Each melody recalls a love that used to be…

She sings it so hauntingly that I think no one can sing the song that well if she isn’t hurt, and I open my eyes and I see that a single tear has tracked down her cheek. For just a moment I feel badly for her, but then Mark pulls me closer, moving slowly with the music. I can feel my breasts against his chest and I move my lips on his cheek and I know I will never feel exactly like this again, and somehow I will always remember it. I don’t want this time or this song or this feeling to end. I think of all the songs of lost love. Sad people write them and sad people listen. There has been a time that I listened to them too. I wonder if what Mark and I have now will last. Mark moves his head back and he looks in my eyes and I don’t care where we are, I kiss him, a sweet kiss that goes on and on. For now… for now… nothing else matters. Nothing else.

Anonymous (A classmate)

Advertisement