[Newer York, 462AS] Overheard in Newer York 3: Music

This one's actually micro. I didn't have a lot in me, today, but it's been too long since I posted anything. Timeline of other Newer York stories so far is here.

A bar on Stuyvesant Street, Brooklyn Ring B8, 4 Av 462 After Starfall

"Well it's aaaaalll riiiiight, yeah / in fact it's a gas...."

"What the hell is this?" The speaker was clearly a new arrival from Earth. Her accent gave her away, even if her overall build didn't mark her out as having grown up in a gravwell.

"What do you mean?," responded her friend, just as obviously a native Newer Yorker, someone who grew up in this neighborhood, although she was currently going through her Ellis Years, which explained where she met the Earther.

"I thought you said this was gonna be classical music!" the Earther shouted back, trying to be heard over the time-hallowed sound of electric guitars and a surprisingly credible imitation of Mick Jagger's voice.

"I did!"

They paused for applause, then the Earther resumed, "I thought you meant, like, Beethoven, Bach, you know..."

"We call that Pre-Electric, here. That's everything before 5720..." she saw her friend's confusion and did some quick math, "...um...1960 or something like that."

The band finished tuning and launched into "Gimme Shelter".

The Earther shook her head. "So, wait, you lump Handel in with, like, Gregorian chant?"

"No. That's Prehistoric!"

The Earther stared at her in something very close to horror.

"What? Most of Earth history doesn't matter up here until about the 1960s anyway. That's when we started learning what space was gonna be like!"

The Earther looked like she wanted to argue a lot, but something in the music, combined with very different kind of look she was getting from her companion, had caught her attention.

"What was that lyric again?"

Her friend lip-synced, a definite challenge in her eye and her smile, as the singer repeated, "Love, sister, it's just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away..."

The Earther might not have understood local terms for music, but she knew a hint when she heard one, and leaned in for a kiss, which her friend returned eagerly.

The set had ended, the crowd was shifting their attention away from the stage and toward the restrooms, the bar, and each other...and a few toward the couple still liplocked a good two minutes after the song ended.

Coming up for air, the Earther smiled up at the local girl. "So, what's on next?"

Before her friend could answer, the bar's sound system began playing recorded music from the same period, which was the bar's specialty. "...I just want your extra time and your..."

They kissed again.

Some years after, when they put their clan together and progressed out of Ellis, they moved back to the neighborhood. Forty years later, they were still coming to that bar, arguing about what "Classical" really meant.

And still making out like teenagers any time a song suggested it.