Dessert was the true anticlimax. We could have skipped it, for all it was worth, but who skips Tiramisu? The silence that lay between us could have been cut with a knife. My old friend, Joannie, had disappeared behind the public mask she called Juanita. It was obvious the setting wasn't within the scope of the life she had created for herself. An old Italian Restaurant that had stood on the same corner for time out of mind, it was shabby without the chic, just like I was.

The thoughts I had about taking her back to the little studio apartment I had rented after the divorce three years ago fled my mind. How could I allow her into my world when she was used to so much better? The reality of the evening was as fleeting as the personal history I had just recounted to her. She had her world; I had mine.

I continued to sit at our table long after she had said her good-bye. The scent of her expensive perfume was all that lingered. Like Joannie, the old gang was long gone. Perhaps some of us would come together in ten years for the next reunion. We would remember old times, promise to keep in touch, then wave good-bye just as we had waved Brenda and Eddie good-bye all those many years ago.

Slowly I tipped the last of the Cabernet Sauvignon into my glass. The Chardonnay remained. A bottle of red; a bottle of white. It was all that was left of a last remnant of past reminiscences. We couldn't go back to the past; we could only keep going forward. But those memories would always remain in the far back corners of our minds.

The End

*Story inspired by "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" by Billy Joel