I had to sit down, because inside that napkin was a small cassette tape, and taped to it a slip of paper in Marges hand that read only: press play when you miss us.
I found an old player in the closet and I did press play, and out of that little speaker came the sound of Marges Diner alive. The clink of cups. The sizzle of the griddle. Marge calling an order to the kitchen. And underneath it all, laughter, our laughter, and Patsy Cline drifting from the jukebox.
Marge had set a recorder on her counter one ordinary Saturday night, years and years ago, and just let it run. A whole evening of the diner simply being itself, caught forever. And she had hidden it in the jukebox, knowing that someday the sounds of that place would be gone from the world, and that somebody would ache to hear them again.
She could not have known it would be me who found it, but she knew it would be someone who loved the place enough to bring its music back, and that was the same as knowing it would be someone who would weep to hear it.
I sat in my living room and I closed my eyes and I was there. Sixteen years old, Raymond across the table, my whole crowd of girlfriends squeezed into a booth, Marge behind the counter, the griddle hot and the night young and everyone I loved still in the world.
And then, on the tape, I heard it. A young mans voice, clear as anything, calling out come dance with me, girl, and a girls voice laughing back. Raymond. Me. Caught by Marges recorder on some forgotten Saturday, young and in love and unaware that sixty years later I would hear us again.
I have listened to that tape more times than I can count. I had it copied onto something that will not wear out, and I gave copies to my children, so they can always hear the diner where their mother and father fell in love.
Some nights I put the tape on and drop a dime in the jukebox at the same time, and the recorded Patsy Cline and the living Patsy Cline play together, past and present at once, and Marges Diner is open again, just for me, just for a little while.