I left without a word, cradling my horn, knowing they deserved better but too shaken to pay my debt in courtesy. I couldn’t stay in that broken place, couldn’t stand their courage or their hope, or even thank them for what they had saved, though what they saved had once meant life itself to me. […]

“It’s just the mist,” he said. The encouragement had faded from his tone through many repetitions, though he still forced a smile. It was not the mist, but I could not tell him so. In thick fog I might have stepped boldly onto the bridge, but the mist was torn into streamers, and dizzying glimpses […]

The music died in fits and starts, but we danced on. There were other couples around us for a while, comforting shapes in the soft gloom, and one gently sobbing saxophone to take our time from, but they drifted away, all of them, in the end. They had other places to be, perhaps, or people […]