The lead singer leaned out over the packed crowd and shouted “Who here is in love?” The crowd paused.
“Okay four of you, that’s great!” he answered.
Ah, Pittsburgh.
I watched a man carry a silver serving tray of crystal goblets through a black alleyway full of mud and trash cans and empty bottles. He sat down on a broken plastic lawn chair and told a story about South Africa, of the tulips and moths and the night sky. His acquaintances laughed raucously and you held your head. The wine warmed the back of my skull and I felt oddly downcast. I recalled fumbling around in the dark and finding a light switch, turning it on to see a man’s life a shambles, clothes and household items strewn everywhere, upturned, disarray. I stood in the middle of his living room, holding my elbows and peering into the other rooms, all lamentable disasters. His upheaval could not have been conveyed in fewer words.
It’s amazing how the sky can fall on a person, in all shades of blue and gray, and that person can still glow faintly from under the clouds and shadow to humor us, and to smile. I felt uncomfortable leaving him behind last night, but only as uncomfortable as I had been to see him in that condition. The disposition that I saw seeping through the weather would lead him out of the rain.
