Makers Manhattan de Maison Rose à Rue Cortot

Sarah's hermit of a heart burned [bright.bright.b r i g h t e r]. Reflecting the warmth of his favorite city lights as the bus, she frequently took back and forth from suburbia [aka - Wayne, New Jersey] to her 'city life,' paralleled the skyline so many dreams are lost in. She pressed her flushed cheek to the cold window pane, allowing it to diffuse the fever her body temperature was quickly boiling to. The empty seat next to her mocked the empty bed she so deeply despised back at her studio apartment she shared in the East Village. She sat with her oversized bag in her lap, clutching on to the meaningless possessions that filled it; the little pieces of 'home' she always brought along for the ride, searching for substance in their banality the same way she scanned the streets for a face that responded to human interaction. Sarah's trip back to the city was always this bittersweet. Her heart was torn between two World's, but she loved him and this is where he loved. Passerby's may have described her walk back to 'the cave,' [as she affectionately referred to it] on 6th Street as if she was a giant child and there was an invisible parental like figure pulling her by an apathetic hand. Before she even settled in at home, she'd always meet him at that bar on St. Marks Place, the one that the regulars still smoked inside of, and the bartender was an old man who could probably still remember when the calculator was invented - but, DAMN! Did he know how to pour the whiskey heavy! She'd always find him waiting for her, in the back booth where they first met, and first held hands, and where she first let him kiss her, and where she first kissed him. Sarah loved their personal little alcove, in the 'back room,' away from the busy door that was frequented by foreigners with accents that reminded her of the places she [really] l o v e d. BUT, she loved him, and he was never afraid to take her hand and ask her to slow dance to songs you really couldn't slow dance to. He was years older than her, an intellectual, a graduate, a 'worldly' fellow. He didn't understand her fascination with the banality of the world, especially with the only place she'd ever really traveled to - Paris - he thought she romanticized 'things'. He thought it was a silly, touristy place. He didn't get it. He didn't get it at all. But, that's where she left her heart, amongst the silly-touristy-romanticized streets. That's where you'll find the cleanest parts of her heart.