IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK

Lost: Do we ever really lose the people we love?

Fiction

Image by Partha Narasimhan on

I didn’t just walk these city streets in the summer of 1963. When I was twenty and in love, I owned them. We’d go dancing with the gang at Monaco-a-go-go. Johnny and the Mojos. Hang on Snoopy; or was it Sloopy? Anyway, Maurie used to toss me over his head and drop me between his legs as if I weighed no more than a feather. He’d spin me dizzy and then we’d do the Watusi. Other dancers pulled back in a circle to watch and clap for us like we were the at the very center of something that really mattered.

That was before his back went out.

Now, when I pull out my compact to check my lipstick, a plastic bag brushes past my shoulder and flutters above the traffic like a drunken seagull.

The Monoco’s long gone, and here’s this skyscraper hotel with no character, no charm, not even a doorman to welcome a person in. On my way out, I hold the door open for a woman, heavily pregnant with swollen ankles. The poor thing is carrying her own suitcase. She gives me a tired smile along with her sincere thanks before disappearing into that cavern they call a lobby.

Maurie would never have let me carry a suitcase when I was pregnant. That man didn’t let me carry anything bigger than a bread box. He hauled the…