Thursday, November 21, 2019

An older wine-and-cheese audience wanders in clumps through the dance center lobby. They maneuver around pillars, stanchions, and tables covered with plastic goblets and trays of fruit. There is no cheese. I think I hear a soprano, but it's the sound of a handpan someone's playing at one end of the space, filtered through the crowd noise and echoing off the stone ceiling and walls. Down near the street, the usual guitarist plays for tips, just far enough away that his music and the handpan don't clash. Across the plaza, a german shepherd, his leash held loosely by a woman who is typing on her phone with one thumb, nudges fallen grapefruit with his nose, as if trying to get them to form a meaningful constellation. Uptown, later, another crowd, several blocks long, marches silently down a main street, bearing white balloons and placards. It's too dark to read their signs.