We meet again, she said.
She'd been waiting on the front porch for me - not for very long, since the hood of her car was still warm. You think we'd be all danced out for the night - I'd made an early exit from the mosh pit, and she was back from ballet class. But the cheap portable radio was playing, and she didn't resist when I lifted her from her seat and pulled her close to me; we danced, after a fashion, and swayed together to the late-evening tracks-o-wax the DJ was spinning, stopping from time to time to marvel at the stars in the clear summer sky.
I sang along to Johnny Hartman, as best I could, vibrating smoky-baritone love thoughts into her, as we suspended disbelief and let every corny lyric - from a song as old as Mum and Dad - ring true.
The more I see you, the more I want you
Somehow this feeling just grows and grows
With every sigh I become more mad about you
More lost without you and so it goes...
All hail the ancient ballad, she said.
Disbelief would face a long, long suspension.