Feeling as though I were about to let my date into the midst of a conspiracy, I leaned my elbows on the table as I leaned toward her. "Brenda and Eddie?" I asked, keeping my voice low as she drew closer to hear the secret. "They're splitsville."

"I thought wild horses couldn't tear those two apart. What happened to them?" Unable to hold onto her cool sophistication, Juanita elbowed the table and eagerly bent closer in order to capture my unexpected story. In that moment, I was able to catch a glimpse of the old Joannie Smith in the eyes of the woman she had become. Never had she been able to miss a juicy story. "Tell me everything."

As the story began to spill out, vivid pictures of the old gang hanging out at the village green filled my mind. Those were the days when we thought we had the world captured in our hands. Just a bunch of local kids who found each other in the schoolyard and continued in a loose form of friendship even after graduation days were behind us. In the end, the only ones who really held us together were Brenda and Eddie.

"For the most part, we all stuck together that summer between high school and college. There was always the Parkway Diner. Day or night, you could always find someone there but, in the end, we all seemed to drift away," I explained as I dug deeper into my dialogue. "As the summer began to peak, you disappeared with no explanation."

"I had to get out, Joel. Father was drunk all the time and couldn't keep his hands to himself," my date confessed as she refilled her glass of Chardonnay. "I went to Paris and reinvented myself."

Yes, she certainly had reinvented herself, I thought to myself as the conversation lulled. The appearance of the waiter with the platter of antipasto I had preordered caused the momentary pause. As he fussed around with the appetizer plates, Juanita continued to sip while I continued to study the perfections of her every movement. I was most interested in the times when the deliberately poised supermodel became the Joannie I recalled from those long-ago days of our past.

With the dinner order placed and the waiter out of the way, I moved back into the conversation. "Brenda and Eddie decided to marry in the end of July of '75. They'd been going steady all through high school so it seemed obvious to the rest of us that they would tie the knot. They went all in with their apartment. Pile carpet and a waterbed, would you believe it? It was always all or nothing for the two of them. Winner take all. But, of course, you remember. You were there with the rest of us."

"Especially Brenda." This time it was definitely Joannie who spoke. How well I recalled the little giggle that would show up in her voice when she spoke of something that amused her. "Remember when we went to Coney Island that summer. Brenda wanted that huge Scooby Doo and Eddie spent his last nickel trying to get it for her. "How she raved on the way home when he couldn't pull it off. I was in the front seat with them, Brenda in the middle, of course. She gave him a whack in the arm that caused him to swerve across the road. We both screamed, thinking we were goners. Boy, those were the days."

Addressing the waiter as he placed a plate of lasagna in front of her, my dinner companion asked him to uncork the bottle of red and to replace her used glass with a clean one. She was Juanita again: cool, confident and sophisticated. How I wished Joannie would hang around. As beautiful as she had become, it was the old hometown girl I longed for. I could hold Juanita in awe, but I could spend the rest of my lonely divorced life with Joannie.

"Well, go on. What happened next?" The impatience in her voice sent a thrill up my spine. Was she captivated by me or was it only the past remembrances that caused her excitement?

"They got a divorce. It was a matter of course, and parted the closest of friends." My statement was an anticlimax. "And that was the last I heard of Brenda and Eddie."