Sunday Afternoon at Le Pont de la Tour
by Chartreuse 12/5/2011 16.05

I love being alone at the bar. This right hand corner; sitting on the high leather padded disc on long aluminium legs. The long shelf of customer-scuffed varnished oak stretches away and back to me in the mirror at the far end. The afternoon light is reflected soft and dim grey in the goblets and flutes packed above. The champagne glasses off to the left fanning out like bells. The smart young girls in black weaving between the tables. The cheerful central European men half-bowed over the customers behind me, waiting solicitously.

The columns of wine bottles, the straight ranks doubled into a long, standing line in the mirror behind them. The slightly crooked rendered as graceful curves courtesy of the physics of reflection. There is orange on the ceiling from the slices on the bar mediated by the glasses. Only the jazz from the piano and bass emptying into the drowsy, Sunday afternoon half-silence.