This is the right moment to be here. Poised between two imperfect moments. Conversations at the bar, the dj plays latin jazz and salsa, This feels like a ballroom of friends or of friendly strangers. We are drinking at the bar, me sipping the lone manhattan among a small sea of cosmopolitans. As the music picks up, a pack of people arrive, mostly women, dressed in wild colors, walking in like a samba school, refugees from another affair. The men arrive later. They eye the women who are nodding their heads and bodies, swaying to the drums, the rhythm. The whole place has soon erupted and, somehow, I am also in the middle of the dance floor, hips moving in a south american style. We have all collided now, the giggling girls from earlier, the men in pursuit, the strangers at the end of the bar. We are all sharing this moment.

On the next day, the sun is breaking the sky open, dissipating an early morning rain, reflecting itself endlessly in a patchwork of quivering puddles. The local coffeshop is full of us, all of us drinking coffee, reading our books and newspapers, squinting at the sun.