FANTAISIE

Walking through a shopping centre, an old-fashioned one, with a woman who rode the lifts with you and pressed the buttons. A grand piano in the foyer, an elegant, arched man in coattails playing nocturnes and waltzes. We spent the day riding the escalators, craning our necks to watch the thin strings inside the piano tremble as the hands of the coattail man swept across the keys, those hands, those fingers, and his feet on the pedals, dampening, accentuating. Eventually a security guard approached us, tapped his watch, but left us to listen to the last song.