“Table for one, sir?

    He looked around, startled.  The restaurant was bustling with the energy most common in New York style bistros.  Couples held hands over candles nestled in those idiomatic ropey bowl contraptions, small, circular tables were populated by dour men reading dire newspaper headlines, and a few women were busily engaged in taking the perfect cell phone food picture.

    “Excuse me?”

    The waiter held up a menu with an air of practiced equanimity.  

    “You waiting for someone, sir, or you flying solo tonight?”

    “Um, listen . . . I’m not . . .”

    “Sir?”

    “Where am I?”

    The waiter laughed, his face reddening to match the shade of the tablecloths, curtains, corner lighting, and his cummerbund.  He put down the menu and folded his beefy arms across his chest.  His tan skin, speckled with fine hair, was in sharp contrast to his crisply ironed white shirt.

    “I’m sorry sir, but I don’t-”

    “I was in the car, and . . .” He stopped, his eyes focusing on a spot over the waiter’s left shoulder. 

    The waiter leaned forward.

    “And now I’m here.  Is this . . .” He looked around, taking in the smiling crowds, cozy atmosphere, and pleasant, vaguely bread like smells.  He looked down and noticed he was wearing his favorite shirt, that purple one that only sometimes threatened to highlight his growing paunch.  He swayed backwards, a move the waiter did his best to ignore.

    “I sent this to the cleaner’s yesterday. I was- I was wearing the blue one, and- did I . . .”

    “I wouldn’t know, sir.  I’m just working here.  Table?”

    He realized the muted susurration had dimmed and looked up to see the restaurant lay empty.  On each table was a candle.  Each candle was twinkling down into a pool of wax, leaving small, artful trails along the table.

    “What?  Um, yes, I guess, I . . .”

    He watched the wax dripping along the tables and blinked as the tables followed suite, twinkling out of existence one at a time.  The shadows deepened over the piano as the melody faded further into the background.

    “What’s happening?

    The waiter smiled, rubbing the palms of his hands together.

    “I don’t know sir.  Like I said, I just work here.  Table?”

    The waiter nodded at where the man had bene standing.  With a shrug he turned around and walked back to the piano, tapping a staccato beat out on its polished lid.  He reached up and pulled on a cord hanging nearby.

    The lights went out.