Time After Time
By J. Keys
Caleb stepped from the warm embrace of Argentina’s Cafe’, placed his fedora hat on his head, popped his collar up and began to walk down the sidewalk as he mashed his hands into the pockets of his black trench coat. The night was thick, dark, and dismally wet with a cold setting across the air. Concerned and occupied in his mind of what to do next he paced the city, his warm breath clashing with the cold air like a snake battling a hawk forming a thick and rasping cloud of condensation that seemed to bleed from his mouth like fire. He walked slightly hunched up to protect from the random and jealous winds blowing down the barren unpopulated streets. The ripping sounds of tires pierced through the water and cross-hatched one another periodically disturbing the silence of the late night.
As he continued to walk he began to hear a sound –a guitar playing a song. He continued on his own way but by chance or fate the sound grew louder as he kept on walking. Within the dark recesses of the sleeping buildings he passed, a light was on in one. A woman by her fire place was playing a song he once knew but hadn’t heard in sometime –it was Eva Cassidy’s “Time After Time”. Caleb slowly approached the window standing near a bus stop post so as not to appear, at least, intrusive. Caleb, even though having not heard the song in some time, still thought of it every time it rained…. he remembered how people told him it was such a “sad” song…. but not to him… he used to tell them that it fit him well “when the rain fell…” He analogized the idea and totality of the muse to an unfinished duet, not the forsaking or loss of something, but to some he even revealed why this was in fact the sum of much of who he was and why…
She played beautifully. A difficult thing to find within the pouring rain… or rather a difficult thing to see for most. Her strumming was only outdone by her soft and soothing voice –both warm much like the fire she sat adjacent to. Caleb smiled as he listened to her play the closing lines and chords and just as he did she turned to the window to discover her silent fan. Simultaneously a loud hissing noise crashed out on the street as a bus approached the stop Caleb stood upon. She continued to finish her playing as she watched him, wondering whether he was there listening to her or there waiting for the bus. As the bus pulled and opened the door Caleb put his right foot on the step to the bus and then looked back over his shoulder at her through the window as she looked at him –waiting for some fateful response. He then sighed, turned his head and pulled himself onto the transport. As the bus pulled away he walked to the very back, sat down but looked again to her place in the window as she finished her song, his unfinished song, time after time…….
