Le Dernier Bal (El Ultimo Baile)

I was sittin’ at the bar of the old Hotel des Perdus— one of those places where the piano sounds tired, the mirrors have forgotten how to reflect clearly, and the rain always finds a way inside.

The bartender didn’t talk much, and that suited me just fine. Nights like that don’t ask for company— they ask for silence… and someone to watch. That’s when I saw ’em, through the open doors of the courtyard. The rain had just stopped— that little breath of stillness when the last drop falls and the world decides whether to breathe again… or stay broken.

The streetlamps burned gold over the wet cobblestones, and she stepped out first— a lime-green dress catchin’ the light like it had been waitin’ for her all night. He followed. Plum-colored suit. No hat. A man who’d made and broken promises in the same breath. You could see it in the way he held her— careful, like someone holdin’ somethin’ he already knows will leave.

The music from the bar drifted out into the courtyard— slow… nostalgic… probably a song that should’ve ended three verses ago. But they kept on dancin’. Some say they were strangers who met at the hotel bar. Others, old lovers keepin’ a promise no one ever really keeps.

All I know is this— it was rainin’ when they began… and the ground was dry when they were done. When they left, the street still looked alive— reflections of green and violet slidin’ across the stones, the echo of somethin’ beautiful refusin’ to die.

Le Dernier Bal. The Last Dance. And maybe… the only one that ever really mattered.