“Right, but we could have gone anyway. Were we still friends in 1969?”
I was dead by then, but I don’t want to tell her that. “Not really.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “Why do friends ever drift apart?”
Lili stops asking me questions for a minute so she can wipe down the last two tables while I refill saltshakers. It’s Monday morning, the diner will open in less than half an hour, and there’s still a lot to get done.
“How did we meet?” she asks. “Do you remember?”
“I was walking to work one day. You were standing under an awning, smoking a cigarette. I stopped and asked if I could borrow one, and we got to talking.”
“Did you recognize me? You know, from before.”
I turn to smile at her. Even in the gingham polyester apron that all Deli-Lishes employees have to wear, with her frizzy black hair pulled back in a ponytail so it won’t get in the food, Lili is adorable. Bubbly as a cheerleader, friendly as a puppy. One of my best days, in every life, is the one in which I meet her again for the first time.
“Of course I did. That’s why I stopped to ask for the cigarette.”
“I can’t believe I smoked back then.”
“Everybody smoked.”
“Did I recognize you?”
I laugh and shake my head. “You never do.”
“Did we work at the same place that time?”
“No, I was at a bar down the street.”
“But we became friends anyway?”
“We did. We found out we lived in the same neighborhood, so at night we’d wait for each other’s shift to end so we could take the subway back home together. Felt a little safer that way.”
“But we weren’t roommates?”
“Nah. You were living with Adam.”
“Adam,” she says, trying out the sound of the name. I can see her nod of satisfaction when she decides she likes it. “Was he cute? Was he nice?”
“Really cute. Really nice. When we got to your place at midnight, we’d wake him up and then he’d walk me the rest of the way home.”
“Did you have a boyfriend, too?”
“For a while. But we broke up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember.” It’s the first lie I’ve told her. This time, anyway.
“Was my name Lili back then?”
“It was, but you spelled it differently. With a y instead of an i.”
“Is my name always Lili?”
“Mmm, no. Sometimes it’s Lilah. Once it was Delilah. It’s usually got a bunch of Ls in it, though.”
“Was your name Sasha?”
I shook my head. “No. I have a different name every time.”
She’s headed back to the kitchen, but pauses to poke me as she passes. “No wonder I never recognize you,” she says playfully. “If you’re always changing your name.”
Changing my name, changing my appearance, doing everything I can to disappear or alter the course of events. Trying to make sure my life is different this time around. It never works. I just smile. “I like to mix it up a little,” I say.
I follow her to the kitchen. We have to pass Armand, who’s stocking the cash register and straightening the order pads and cups of pens laid out at the front counter. He wears his usual expression of brooding intensity, as if he alone has been told the fate of the world and it’s a dire one. He casts me one long, measuring look and I know he’s been listening to our conversation with a mix of scorn and incredulity. Armand has never said out loud that he doesn’t believe any of the tales I’ve told Lili, but his expression has always made it clear that he thinks I’m either a liar or a lunatic or a little of both. But he’s too aloof to say so to my face.
Well, he makes a point of saying very little to me at all. Fine with me. I have enough other things to worry about.
Back in the kitchen, Sanjay and Juwan are chopping tomatoes and cutting open bulk boxes of hamburger buns. Lili pauses to rinse her cleaning cloths in the sink while I get out the big ketchup bottles so I can refill the smaller ones on the tables.
“Did we know Sanjay and Juwan in New York?” Lili asks.
Both men look up in interest at that. Everyone who works in the place has heard some of my stories. I think Sanjay might actually believe them, while everyone else is too polite to say outright that they think I have an overactive imagination. Even so, with the exception of Armand, they all like to hear the tales.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember them, anyway.”
“My mother tells me I’m a very old soul,” Sanjay says. “But I was probably in India in my last incarnation.”
Juwan makes a kissy face from across the kitchen. “If you knew me before, you’d remember me now,” he says in his deep voice.
I laugh. “I’ll look for you in the next life.”
“Plenty of this life left,” he says suggestively, and we all laugh.
Armand pokes his head through the kitchen door. “Customers,” he says, and backs out again.
We all look at each other, shrugging and rolling our eyes. No one can kill a mood like Armand.
“Time to go to work,” Lili says.
* * *
—
It’s my favorite kind of day. There’s a steady stream of customers, no one is too much of an asshole, no one stiffs us on a bill, and no one I recognize comes through the door. Well, I mean, some of them I recognize—regulars who stop by Deli-Lishes two or three times a month. But no one I’ve known in a previous life.
Which isn’t surprising, right? New York is almost eight hundred miles from Chicago. How many people would have made that migration in the past fifty or so years? Maybe I’ve left a lot of demons behind this time.
Maybe.
The only moment that gets a little weird is when an older woman, probably in her late fifties, takes a seat at my table around the dinner hour. She’s big, a little flushed, as if the heat of early spring has made her remember how wretched it is to sweat. She sucks down the first glass of ice water I bring her, and thanks me fervently when I bring her a whole pitcher to keep at her table.
“Oh, you’re a sweetheart,” she says, gulping down another glassful. She’s staring at me as she swallows, and when she sets the tumbler down, she’s got a small frown on her face. “You look so familiar,” she says.