glories

Sutton Foster singing at Café Carlyle.  Sitting there, happy and in love, his hand touching mine under the linen tablecloth as we near a decade, murals aglow behind Sutton, her eyes locked with mine as she purrs.  The pianist, really accompanying - setting off long low vowels with slightly staccato notes, pulling back altogether for her riffs.  The quiet a capella duet with her musical friend who is married tomorrow.  The lovely wine, the wide open smiles of prosperous men, dined and wined, then drunk on her performance.  Waves of understanding: so this is what Woody Allen was getting at, what the Upper East Side has going for it, what this organ of New York's cultural viscera is doing.  A pearl of song in an expensive casket; its lid lifted an hour each evening.  Will we be back?  Perhaps when old, when seventy, to remember last night.  It will still be there.