Waltz Time - Entry 8 - The Morning After

 Waltz Time - Entry 8 - The Morning After

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.” 
- Emily Dickinson

The next morning, I woke to the clatter of pipes in the wall and the faint hiss of the radiator, New York’s version of a lullaby that turns itself into an alarm clock. My tiny apartment smelled faintly of yesterday’s coffee grounds, but I barely noticed. My first thought wasn’t about work or bills or the peeling paint on the bathroom ceiling. It was you.

I tried to replay the kiss, the sound of your voice when you pulled back, the steadiness in your eyes. But memory is slippery, isn’t it? Already it felt like I was grasping at something dissolving into mist, terrified that if I held too tightly it might vanish altogether.

By the time I got to the restaurant that evening, the rhythm of real life had snapped me back. The smell of garlic, butter, and wine clung to my apron. The waitstaff bantered in bursts of sarcasm between orders. Dishes clattered, and the bartender shook martinis with more flair than patience. Yet underneath all of it, I carried something that no one else could see.

Still, the environment was never gentle. In the 80s, being a young woman in a Manhattan restaurant meant navigating a minefield of crude comments from customers, the head chef’s constant stream of sexual innuendo tossed like it was part of the menu, and supervisors who thought nothing of leaning too close. It was a language I didn’t ask to learn, but I knew how to sidestep it, how to smile just enough to get through a shift, how to duck away before the joke turned into a hand on my back.

It was exhausting, but it was also the reality of the time. You didn’t file a complaint. You didn’t push back too hard. You laughed it off, went home, and tried not to let the ugliness seep in.

And yet, that night, even in the thick of it the shouted orders, the greasy kitchen heat, the chef’s voice rising with another crass remark, I found myself holding on to something else. I remembered the rain, the way your arm slipped through mine, the way the city softened in your presence.

It was strange. I had spent so many nights in that restaurant watching couples on dates, overhearing snippets of laughter, the tender pauses between words. And now, for the first time, I was the one living inside the possibility of something new.

The uncertainty pressed in, of course. 

Would I hear from you? Should I wait, or should I be bold enough to pick up the phone myself? 

The city teaches you to guard your hope, to expect little and be surprised by kindness. And yet, somewhere between clearing tables and running bread baskets to the oven, I realized I was smiling for no reason at all.

Because for the first time in a long while, the world felt different. Softer. As if even in the chaos of clanging plates and shouted orders, there was a melody running underneath it all — a melody only I could hear.

When I got home that night, the apartment felt unusually quiet. I kicked off my shoes, tossed my apron on the chair, and was about to collapse on the bed when I noticed it; a tiny red light blinking in the corner. 

The answering machine.

Yes… That’s how it was back then. No cell phones buzzing in your pocket, no instant replies, no scrolling through texts. At the end of the day, it all came down to that little box with its blinking light, holding whatever words had been left for you.

I stood there for a moment, staring at it, my heart syncing with the rhythm of the city trains I had just left behind. One message waiting. Just one.

I pressed play.

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