(The Waltz) She complains about her shins and how they keep getting kicked. When the man tries to apologize, she takes the blame on herself saying it is all her fault. As her thoughts are explained, she reveals how she would do anything to stop. She wants him dead. She is outraged at his constant kicking. She tries to justify it in her head to no end. She sarcastically comments on how lovely the waltz is although we, the readers, now how she truly feels. She goes on to sarcastically say how he should really be her night in shinning armor. Then he steps again completely on her foot. Out loud, she speaks of how she likes this little step, and then finds out that he made it up. She complements him on it even though we know that she thinks it’s awful. The band goes on for another encore. The comments are happy, she tells him she wishes to keep dancing. In her thoughts, she explains how she is not tired, but dead. How everyone else in the place is having fun dancing except for she, who is stuck with “Mrs. O’Leary’s cow”. But, then she realizes if they were back at the table she would actually have to talk to him something she really would not care to do either. She is past feeling in her legs. She can’t go on anymore. She goes on to tell us all the worst things that have happened in her life: There was the time I was in a hurricane in the West Indies, There was the day I got my Head cut open in a taxi smash, there was the night the drunken lady threw a bronze ash-tray at her own true love and got me instead, there was that summer that the sailboat kept capsizing. Ah, what an easy peaceful time was mine until I fell in with Swifty here. (The Waltz) The band stopped again. The man asks her if she cares to dance some more and she says “ Oh that would be lovely… I’d simply love to go on waltzing.” (The Waltz) The story’s back and forth nature between what the narrator is thinking...
