"Earworm"
"Don't be sad…," he said, too late to stop the tears collecting in the corner of her eye from rolling down her cheek.
That small, tilting grin on his lips was not helping, but he could not erase it. The grin was as involuntary as her tears. If he had wanted to sort his feelings in that moment, he might have found that he was as frightened as she was. There would be pain, but she would not let him feel it for long.
Yet he was grinning because a song had chosen this moment to fill his mind. It was one they had heard playing on the big, cathedral-shaped radio at Miriam's Restaurant in Washington on those crisp fall nights of 1946. He spoke the words aloud to clear them from his head.
"We'll meet again…" and he realized that he was saying them to her. The first drops of rain splashed on his balding head. A sunny day in Tselinoyarsk was a rare one.
"…someday," he said, the grin widening.