An Old Flame Revisited

I felt an odd hesitation as my fingers reached for the phone.

I took a deep breath, lifted the receiver, and started punching the numbers. I didn't want to use my cell phone for this call. I was afraid the caller ID function would throw my name up on the receiving screen and I had absolutely no idea how to prevent that. I wasn't sure what her reaction would be to my name, so I was using the hotel's phone.

I punched in the number, found only after a long, complicated, and I had been afraid, fruitless search. But I had it now and punched it in.

"Hello." The voice was high and clear, almost musical. I shouldn't have been surprised. She had always been a musical girl.

"Bonnie?" I asked, happy that my voice didn't break.

"Yes?" she said, the question mark clear in her voice.

I took a deep breath and started into the greeting I had been preparing for the week since I set off on this quest. I was doing my best to sound like one of those radio announcers from the 1960s in Chicagoland announcing the drag races on Sunday - SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY. 200 CARS AT THE HIGHWAY 30 DRAG STRIP. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE. SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!!!!!!

"BONNIE RICHARDS," I said, trying for that booming, throaty sound, "CONGRATULATIONS!! YOU HAVE JUST WON A BLAST FROM YOUR PAST."

She giggled softly.

"Well, I suppose it is at that. I haven't been called Bonnie Richards in a long time," she said.

I waited her out.

"Okay," she said, the smile still in her voice, "I give, who IS this blast from my past?"

"Do you remember," I said, my voice settled down now, trying for that "radio voice" that I've been told many times is good although to me it sounds sort of squeaky, "the first boy you went steady with?"

She giggled again.

"Went steady? God, this IS a blast from the past," she said, and then, after a slight hesitation she added, "David?"

"DING DING DING!!!" I said, reverting to the big radio announcer's voice, "YOU WIN A FREE DINNER!!"

"David," she started and I could see, across the years, the way her brow furrowed as she did the math. She had always been good at math. "58 years and you call?"

"58 years and I call," I said.

"And this is your way to ask me out for dinner?" she asked.

"Is it working?" I asked.

Another hesitation and she said, "Pick me up at seven and do NOT stand me up for the second time in my life."

And the line went dead.

I chuckled as I started digging through the databases I had spent four decades learning to use. It was pretty simple, really, to trace the phone number to an address and then confirm that it was the current address. The problem had been finding the phone number. Well, no, the problem had been finding out if she was even still alive. As you hit three-quarters of a century, the answer to that question is often "no."

I killed the afternoon getting new clothes, I doubted the T-shirt and jeans I had been wearing pretty much exclusively since I retired would be very impressive. So I went to Penney's and got new casual pants, kind of the high-end cargo pants, a new button-down Oxford cloth shirt that I hoped would trigger a pleasant memory for her, it had been the uniform of our in-crowd the last time I had seen her, new loafers and new white socks to complete the image.

I got a haircut and for the first time in my life sprung for a barber's shave.

All of which took me to about five o'clock. I stopped at the hotel room, took a quick shower, and still had over an hour to kill. I tried to watch the news but couldn't concentrate so I just said, "fuck it" and took one of those Magical Mystery Tours of nostalgia. I visited my grade school, now a senior citizen center, my junior high school, now relabeled as a "middle school" with its weird configuration of the playground/football field, probably a soccer field now I thought, across the street from the school building itself, and East High School, bordered by Colfax street, City Park, and the Esplanade across the front of the building looking like an oversized version of Constitution Hall. I headed east, then, to the house I had grown up in, on the east side of Denver, the Park Hills area, a house not mine for over half a century but still holding fond, and some not-so-fond, memories. I drove the rented Ford Mustang convertible to the little shopping area where I had spent my Saturday afternoons at the movies and then back to Colfax driving east to Aurora where I was disappointed that the A&W root beer stand that was the eastern terminus of our Friday and Saturday night cruising was gone.

I set the Google Maps to the address I had found then and headed for my date. The little readout at the bottom of the screen gave me an ETA of 6:48 so I had time to stop at a convenience store and pick up one of those little bouquets they seem to always have on display.

As I turned down Grant Street I had a sense of deja vu. Then, as the blocks clicked off slowly it got even more intense. When I stopped at the address I breathed out and said, "no shit."

It was the same building where I had picked her up for our roller skating dates when we were kids. This was an apartment house that would have been a hit in the Architectural Digest of about 1948, say, the year I was born. Well, the year she had been born too.

At the door I was stopped by a block of buttons, doorbells I suppose you'd say, that would call up to the apartment who would then, presumably, press a button on their own intercom and buzz the door open.

But I didn't know her apartment number. I scanned the names and found no Fredericks, the last name I had finally tracked her down under, or Richards, the last name from our days in grade school. I scanned again and laughed when I found "B. Smith."

"Smith?" I said aloud, "that's the best you can come up with for an alias?"

I pushed the button and was gratified that her voice came back almost instantly.

"David?" she asked in a musical voice.

"In the flesh," I said, and heard a buzz and a click and the door was open.

Fortunately, the room number was on the label. The apartment building had twelve floors. I had ridden up, my memory told me, to 10 when I was 13 but now I punched 6.

I looked to get oriented, turned left, and found 607.

There was another little rush of gratification when the door opened as soon as I knocked.

And the thing is, I recognized her.

Oh, she was older of course. Fully six decades older than the last time I had seen her and almost that since our aborted reunion date, but if I had been walking down the street and seen her I would have recognized her. The same round face, truly blue eyes (I thought "cornflower blue" although I've never seen a cornflower), the same button nose, and cupid's bow mouth. She had been pretty as puberty took her away from childhood but not quite womanhood when I had known her. Now she was beautiful in that striking way only some old women can achieve. Her hair was still blonde but if I was 74, which I manifestly was, then she was too. My hair had gone grey, the good grey, not that nasty white of many men my age, but hers was still blonde so I was certain that Miss Clairol or, more likely, regular visits to a professional with access to commercial product in white bottles with plain black letters, accounted for that color.

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

I thought for an instant she was going to shut the door.

Then she stepped forward and I thought she was going to throw her arms around my neck.

Then she slapped me, hard enough to hurt and make me take a step back into a defensive stance.

Then she stepped back into her apartment and stood by the door, clearly an invitation.

Inside she smiled when I offered her the cheap little bouquet I had been hiding carefully behind my back and said, "give me one minute."

She was back well inside her deadline with the silly bouquet in a nice China vase which she placed, carefully, pretty much in the middle of her small dining room table.

"Thank you, Davey," she said and that drew a little quiver deep in my belly, it had been a long time since anyone had called me Davey, "it's been a while since anyone brought me flowers."

We didn't say anything as the elevator made its ponderous way down to the lobby but she did giggle and give a little "oh" when she saw the red chick magnet I had rented.

"Can we put the top down?" she asked as she pulled the seat belt tight.

"Sure," I said and did the lever and button thing.

She smiled when the big engine started and the oldies station I had found started with the Kingston Trio doing Tom Dooley. "Oh my God," she said, doing a pretty good Valley Girl voice, "is it really 1961 all over again."

I laughed and said, "actually, 1959 and you're eleven again."

I punched in the address I had looked up earlier and let Google Maps guide me north and west. The Five Points area of Denver had been somewhere you really didn't want to be when we were growing up. But my grandfather had known an old man, well, old to me as a boy, named Wink (I have no idea what his real name might have been), a black former boxer who ran a tiny hole-in-the-wall carry-out rib restaurant known, unimaginatively, as "Wink's Ribs." I remembered them being delivered in brown paper bags with the bottom of the bag almost transparent from the leaking grease and juices. My cousin had taken me to the restaurant one time, a tiny cinderblock building with two tables and the occasional roach looking big enough to throw a saddle on running across the floor.

I had searched and in the new Denver, after billions of dollars had been spent on rehabilitation and upgrading, the area was better and I found a little restaurant specializing in ribs that made me sort of nostalgic.

At the restaurant, I was careful to seat her and we ordered ribs, of course, onion rings and potato salad for me on the side, a house salad and slaw for her, and a pitcher of beer from which I poured two mugs.

"Sooo," I said, stretching the word out, "whatcha been doing for the past 58 years?"

"Oh no," she said, "not until you explain why you stood me up."

I laughed softly, remembering that particular sequence of events. We had "broken up," all going-steady relationships are pretty fleeting when you're 13, and she had moved away. Then one Saturday night, as friends and I were cruising, I heard a voice call, "Well David Morgan, as I live and breathe." I looked over into the car next to us and saw Becky Goodwin, a friend from grade school and junior high.

At the next light, I bailed on my friends, of course, no 15-year-old boy in the history of the universe has ever turned down an invitation from a 16-year-old girl, and joined her. We talked throughout that evening's cruise. At one point, sitting at the now no-longer-there A&W out on east Colfax she reached into her wallet and handed me a picture.

"I ran into an old friend of yours the other day," she said, "and she's looking good."

The picture was of Bonnie and, to my surprise, there was a phone number on the back. This was all far enough in the past that I can remember that the first numbers of the number were actually letters, "TAbor 5, something or other."

I was a little self-conscious as Becky drove me home, and dropped me off, after a brief, and I'm afraid awkward, kiss. I ended the night with two numbers, Bonnie's on the picture and Becky's written on a small scrap of paper.

I called and Bonnie said yes to a try-it-again date. But then my mother died, my father and brother came and took me away, and I tried, hard, to forget my old life.

I told her all of this and she listened, carefully.

"Oh, Davey," she said, covering my hand with hers, "I'm sorry about MaryLou," that's what everyone had called my mother, "I always liked her."

"Yeah, well," I said, "that's what happens when you slam back a quart of vodka a day."

She smiled, wanly, and said, "I understand."

That hump over, we settled into the kind of catching-up conversation of any couple who have been separated for decades. You can cut a few yards of it and you'll get the idea.

I had managed to graduate high school, surprising myself as much as anyone, and then a couple of years of junior college before being drafted and spending four years in the Air Force. Then six years of riding the GI bill to accumulate a couple of college degrees, moving up a career ladder that let me retire at 65, and then a decade of generally doing not much at all.

I told her of my three wives, my two kids, and my six grandkids.

And she told me of working in bars, singing with small bands, and trying to make a living in the cutthroat music business. Moves to Austin and Nashville and Memphis. Her own three marriages, two kids, and four grandkids.

It was a pleasant, nostalgia-filled evening. We shared that pitcher of beer and then, full, we found a small bar downtown with a live band and a dance floor where we shared another. We listened to the band and danced and she felt natural in my arms when the band did a pretty good version of "Ebb Tide" (it was that kind of a place) and, I thought, we did a damn good jive when the band went into "Great Balls of Fire."

It was midnight when I said, "time for me to take you home, Cinderella."

She smiled and asked, "does that make you Prince Charming?"

"Well," I said, "hope springs eternal and all that."

I drove home and, miraculously, found a parking spot near the front of the building. I walked her in, we stood silent in the elevator, and then we were at her door.

I didn't really know how it would go. I figured it was 50-50.

But she surprised me.

At her door she got the key out, no coyness, no fiddling around, just got the damn key out and turned it.

"David," she said, facing me now, her hands on my chest, not pushing or pulling, just contacting, "neither of us is a virgin and we're both much closer to the end of our journey than the beginning, but if you come in you need to know that I'm damaged goods."

I smiled at that.

"Bonnie, I have a few scars of my own," I said, with a completely unintended foreshadowing of what was to come, my hands taking hers now.

I held that tableau for several seconds, a slow five count in my mind,

"I'll leave if you want me to, but I'd rather stay," I said, still holding her hand.

She held my hand, and my eyes, for another long five count and then turned and led me in.

Inside, she did the thing again, holding my hand and looking me in the eye, just looking and not moving.

I could almost see her reach the decision.

Her eyes didn't leave mine as she unbuttoned her blouse, unbuttoned the sleeves, pulled it free of her slacks, and shrugged out of it.

She looked good, I thought. She wasn't overly busty, I estimated a C cup, and her bra was so completely white you just knew she included bleach in every washing.

When she turned she said, in a soft voice, but still musical, "I told you, David, I'm damaged goods."

Her back was covered with crossed welts that could only be from a whip or a switch or something similar.