Alice

The last time I saw Alice was at her wedding, about fifteen or more years ago. We lived next door to each other in Forest Hills, a suburb of New York City. We’ve known each other all our lives and went to the same schools until high school. I, to The School of Art and Design in Manhattan and she, to Forest Hills High.

Of course, we still saw each other every day, as our houses were attached, but suddenly we had separate interests. She found boys and I still played with model trains in my basement.

Alice was a very pretty girl, she was a couple of inches shorter than me but dressed in what then was considered cool. I still dressed in jeans and T-shirts with famous railroad names on them. I was definitely not cool.

 However, by the end of my first semester in high school, my parents sold our house and bought a co-op in Manhattan as my father became a partner in his law firm.

There were no smartphones then. No way to communicate like kids do today. The Internet was a science fiction dream. It was by land-line that people interacted with each other. Our mothers were in touch occasionally by a Princes' phone and at the end of their gossiping about the old neighborhood handed over the receiver to us. It was a stilted conversation. We hadn’t seen each other or talked to each other for a long time.

Me. “Eh, hi Alice, what’s going on?”

Alice. “Nothing much. How’s life in the big city?”

Me. “It's OK.”

Real exiting conversation.

When we were still young we occasionally went to a movie together, not just Alice and me but with friends. However when I moved we just lost contact with each other. She most likely found all new friends in high school and so did I. But my parents, as I said, still kept in touch so that a few years later, actually five or six years later, we were invited to Alice’s wedding. She was twenty and pregnant. I was twenty-one and didn’t even have a girlfriend.

I haven’t seen her in all that time so when we came to the wedding reception, I was totally bowled over when I saw her. Alice had just started to show but now I really appreciated how beautiful she was.

She hadn’t recognized me at all. I was a bit taller. I dressed differently. It was probably the first time she ever saw me in a suit. I wasn’t a Burt Reynolds or a Robert Redford but I was OK. I didn’t have a steady girl but I asked one of my female artist friends to come with me.

I met her fiancée, a tall good looking guy, he wasn’t from our neighborhood. He was a basketball player from St. John’s University where she also went. He seemed like a nice guy, and I don’t want to demean basketball players, but I thought he had the brain of a gnat. Oh well, I wasn’t marrying him so what did I care.

And that was it. I haven’t seen or heard from Alice again. I suppose even our parents eventually lost contact or I would have heard something. That’s how it was when you move away.

After college, I was hired by a top advertising company and years later worked myself up to creative director. I never married. I don’t know why. I went out with a very nice women but something always kept me back. 

And so the years passed. I was in my late thirties by now. One day I went to see a new client in Great Neck and on my way back to Manhattan I just wanted to see what my old neighborhood looked like. I haven’t been there since we moved. It wasn’t that much out of my way, and just my bad luck I got a flat tire. Fortunately, near a diner we used to go to in my younger days, the Shalimar. 

I pulled slowly into their lot and called Triple A. They said it would take at least fifteen to twenty minutes to come over so I went in for a cup of coffee and maybe some pancakes. I used to come to this diner many times with my parents on Sunday mornings for breakfast and I always had their pancakes. I even came here a few times with Carrol and some friends after a movie for cokes and ice cream and it seemed nothing has changed.

They sat me by a window booth that I also remembered sitting at, with Alice actually. Once we came by ourselves, it was after a movie we went to see where we held hands. It was some kind of Hitchcock horror film and Alice was pretty frightened and to be honest, so was I. I think we shared a banana split after. Sounds funny now. It was sort of nice but by the next day it was as if nothing happened. I bought myself a new locomotive for my model railroad, so Alice was forgotten. Oh, we must have been about thirteen then.

“Are you ready to order, Sir, or do you need some more time?” Asked a waitress standing suddenly beside me.

I hadn’t even opened the menu, I was so into reminiscing 

the past.

I was about to order my coffee and pancakes as I looked up at her. She of course didn’t recognize me but I knew who she was right away. Yes, it was Alice.

“Hi,” I said but couldn’t continue. There was a lump in my throat. Why would Alice be working as a waitress after marrying that Basketball player?

“Just give me a minute,” I finally got out looking towards the parking lot so I could compose myself. She turned to go then stopped and looked back at me.

“You look familiar,” she said as if also remembering something from the past, and then in a horsey voice continued. “Why you’re Ted from next door, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you in a long time. I think not since my wedding.”

In novels, we would have embraced and cried and retold our life stories right there, but it didn’t happen that way. 

At that moment the repair truck entered the parking lot looking for my car. Just my luck, they came early. I knew from experience that if you’re not standing next to it they’ll just leave, so I excused myself and said goodbye. I think I even said, nice to have seen you again, or something stupid like that, and ran out.

I made it just in time as they were ready to leave. It would take them about fifteen minutes to fix the tire so I gave them a twenty-dollar tip and I went back inside.

I felt awful. I don’t know why. I certainly didn’t do anything to Alice but still, I felt bad for just bolting away so suddenly. Almost like a dog with his tail between his legs. 

When we were young I didn’t think anything else about Alice except as a friend. Now, for some reason, I felt something much deeper.

She must have been standing there watching me through the window and when I came back in, she sort of had a reminiscent smile on her face and wiped some moisture away from her cheek with a napkin.

The diner was slow so we both sat down in the old booth we once had that banana split in, and looked at each other. I held her hand in mine but now it was different than that time during that scary movie. I also noticed there was no wedding band on her finger. She looked older, of course, well, so did I. There was a bit of sadness around her mouth but she was still beautiful and I was willing to listen to any story she had to tell me..