A toast to Christmas at the Seneca Cafe

OUTSIDE THE OVAL glass-block window of the cafe it was snowing. Inside it was dark and quiet but for the colored lights that flashed and reflected off the polished top of the dark plywood bar, and the soft but scratchy Christmas music that rose and faded on the jukebox. Two people sat at the bar — a young woman on a stool and, two stools down, an old man in a wheelchair. The woman’s face was smiling and lit by a bluish light.