Another Incident on 57th Street

I've been here now for fully an hour, without moving. One hour in 36 years ain't that long really. Not when you think I'd never come back at all. I don't know what I expected to see... Not this ... Not how it's changed. I was a somebody back then, and now? Well... Maybe I wasn't ever a somebody, I don't know.

That hot, sultry night had been buzzing around here, the pimps, the girls, the music, the streetlife. It hadn't been a good night for me, and pity was hard to come by on these mean streets that's for sure. Except for her. She'd reached out, taken me in, and what a night we'd had. Up there, in that room .

When the guys had called up to me , sitting on that fire escape in the early hours, I should have waved them on, sent them on their way to do their dirty deeds without me. She'd asked me not to leave her alone, but I did , with promises to meet her the next night, a promise I couldn't keep.

And I stayed away, from shame, from fear, and the longer I stayed away the more impossible it was to go back.

Now the kids here are watching an old man standing in the cold watching a window and wondering what the hell he's doing there. They don't know he's watching without seeing. What he sees is a might have been future, a past that can never be.

I don't know what I expected to see. Not this. Certainly not this. A figure appears at the window. A heart skips. She's older, of course, but has the same warmth in her eyes as she sees me. I want to duck my head, scurry away. I have no answer for the disappointment, hurt, anger she surely feels. How dare I show up here ? For what?

She smiles at me, a soft, sad knowing smile. A smile that says "this is our tomorrow night". I cannot see her any longer, my eyes filled with unbidden tears.

And she whispers to me "Johnny, don't cry"

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