Good Friends Never Change

She stood inside blocking the doorway; hesitating, debating with herself whether she should turn around or stay.

“It’ll be good for you,” Dr. Williams had told her. “You need to get out on your own.”

“I can’t," she argued. “I can’t let her see me like—”

“You’re scared. Some of that fear is normal. You’re seeing someone you haven’t seen since college.”

“It’ll happen again. I know I’ll have an episode. I know.”

“You’ll do well. Trust me. Enjoy yourself.”

Judith carefully put away her sunglasses. The coffeehouse hummed with the white noise of a hundred people talking. She had never been there before, and it took her a minute to figure out what to do.

At the counter she selected a small raspberry tart, which she could pick at hiding from her ordeal, and ordered a decaf coffee. She was hungry, but embarrassed at the thought of meeting anyone while eating. In the corner by the large window she saw an open table. She threaded her way through the crowd of raggedy, dirty students.

“We would never have been caught dead looking like that,” she thought.

The table closest to her, along the side by the window, was occupied by two young men playing chess. Judith twisted in her chair, turning away from them, to ward off their silence and concentration. She thought of Mely, her best friend in college. Judith had written several limericks about her. “Mely, with a long ‘e’—Amelia—good for a limerick, steely, really, squealy.” Judith tried to recall at least one of them. She couldn’t, they were lost in the depths—

“No,” she stopped herself, “I should never have agreed to come.”

Judith’s hand gripped the braided leather straps of her purse. She saw that the hem of her dress had ridden up an inch above her knee—a line of dark brown across her tan stockinged leg—to put it in place would mean letting go. The white noise became bright and piercing, each word, each of hundreds, outlined and staccato, was a painful reminder of her mistake.

Her hands cramped; her nails dug into her palms. “I knew, I knew, I knew,” she chanted.

Through the window she saw a woman waiting to cross the street towards the coffee house.

“Mely.” Judith couldn’t let Mely see her trapped like this. “What did Doctor Williams call it? He said . . . he said—”

The light turned green. Mely started walking. It had been fifteen years, but to Judith she looked unchanged, forever young, and happy.

Judith took a deep breath and stood up—too fast. In one continuous disaster, her coffee spilled; then, unable to stop it, she watched the table fall against one of the chess players, and roll in slow motion, crashing to the floor. Its gray marble top cracked.

The chess players turned. The closest one noticed a spot of red at the edge of her hand. He started to help. “It’s okay,” he said, stooping down to pick up the table. “They’re all real wobbly.”

Judith kept her eyes away from him, searching inside herself for strength.

“I almost knocked one over—”

Judith ran out the back door.

* * *

Amelia stood inside the front door, allowing her eyes to adjust to the light. Most of the tables were full, and the coffee house sang with the enthusiasm of a hundred college students.

She had eaten on the plane. At the counter, she ordered glass of iced coffee, thinking that she would be hungry for dinner—dinner with Judith. Then she looked around. She couldn’t find Judith.

In the corner by the large window she saw an open table. She threaded her way through the crowd of students. Their clothes were torn, patched and return—their uniform.

“We must have looked like this,” she thought, smiling.

The table was damp when she sat down. A drop of cold coffee dripped from the crack in the marble onto her leg. She shifted in her chair towards the two young men playing chess at the next table.

Amelia stared out the window. “Judith’s late,” she thought. “She was always late. Some things never change.”