Francine and I were never introduced. We always knew each other. We were the same age and lived on the same side of the street, long ago, in what used to be Manhattan’s Little Italy. My earliest memory of Francine was her playing with a doll on the front steps of her building. She played alone because there were no other girls her age on our block. Her father was “away,” a neighborhood euphemism for prison, her mother left with another man. Francine was raised by her grandmother in a one-bedroom apartment.
•
We were eleven when I walked out of my building that evening after dinner and found Mott Street quiet and empty. It was November and already dark at six o’clock but the weather was still warm. I saw Francine down the block, drawing something on the sidewalk in the light of a lamppost. I walked over to hang out with her until some of my friends came out and saw she had a piece of chalk in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other.
She’s always eating, but boy, is she skinny, I thought.
I asked, “What are you drawing?”
“A potsy game. Want to play?”
“Not me. Boys don’t play that game.”
“You don’t have to act tough. None of your friends are around. Come on, play. It’s fun.”
She had been eating potato chips and holding her chalk with the same hand and had gotten some white dust on her cheek. I rubbed it away with my hand. This was the first time I had ever really looked at her, and I thought, Boy, is she pretty.
I quickly took my hand away and said, “Tell me how you play, and I’ll think about it.”
It involved a lot of hopping on one foot through the boxes she had drawn. I didn’t want anyone seeing me doing this, but I couldn’t get myself to refuse her. After a few tries we were hopping at the same time and suddenly found ourselves face-to-face in the same box. With both of us standing on one foot, we lost our balance and to keep from falling, held onto one another. It didn’t take long to regain our footing but we stayed like that, holding one another, a little longer than we needed to.
•
We were thirteen, and it was Sunday morning. When I knew the eleven o’clock mass was almost finished, I went over to the Church. Francine was walking out.
“Hey Francine, who said the mass?” I asked.
“Father Masarone, why?”
“My mother asks me just to make sure I went to church. What color vestments was he wearing?”
“Are you kidding me? I didn’t notice what color he was wearing. Don’t tell me you mother asks you that too?”
“Yeah, sometimes she does.”
Francine said, “Well, if I didn’t notice you can tell her that you didn’t either.” She thought for a moment and said, “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you. I just got out of mass and you’ve got me helping you lie to your mother.”
She turned her back and walked away.
That wasn’t the reaction I had hoped for. My clumsy attempt to start a conversation and maybe hang out with her for a while came to nothing. I went about it all wrong and she was gone.
•
We were fifteen, school had just let out and Francine and I were talking, not about anything special, just talking.
I said, “How about walking me? I need to get a sweater. You can help pick it out.”
“Sure,” she said, and we went to a store I liked on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. She didn’t leave the block much and was looking around like a tourist, but it didn’t bother me. It was good to see her enjoying herself doing something as simple as going shopping. As soon as we went into the store she found a sweater she really liked and held it up in front of me to see how it would look.
“It’s so beautiful I’d wear it myself,” she said.
“I’m not sure,” I said, “it looks like it could be a girl’s sweater.”
“How can you say that? It’s perfect for you.”
I took it to the cashier and paid for it. When we got outside I handed Francine the bag.
“Here, it’s for you,” I said, “I got it in your size.”
“You mean you’re giving it to me?”
“Yeah, but don’t tell anybody. This is just between us.”
I knew she liked pretty things and couldn’t afford them. I just felt like doing something nice for her; something to make her happy. But I didn’t want it to get around that I might like Francine. With us living on the same block where everyone knew everyone else’s business that would mean people teasing us about making plans for a wedding.
Francine smiled and said, “OK, thanks.”
•
We were seventeen, the night before Easter when I told my mother I was going to midnight mass. I didn’t. Instead I met some friends and we decided to take a walk through the Village. On Sixth Avenue we bumped into another group of guys about our age. We literally bumped into them and neither side would back down. As soon as we started to square off, a police car stopped and two cops lined all of us up facing a parking lot fence. They started to search us and check IDs. As I was waiting for my turn to be frisked, I felt someone behind me grab my arm.
I thought it was a cop but I instead heard Francine say, “Just start walking.”
Two cops and eight young punks on a crowded sidewalk: they didn’t miss me.
Francine said, “I went to midnight mass at Saint Joseph’s with some girls from school and we were on our way for coffee when I saw you. I told them to go ahead, and I would catch up. I didn’t want them to see that I even knew a juvenile delinquent like you.”
“Come on Francine, don’t say that. I wasn’t doing anything and those other guys started it. Let me walk you to where your friends are having coffee.”
“Don’t worry about that. You can walk me home instead.”
She spent so much time taking care of her grandmother that she didn’t do much for herself. It bothered me that I ruined her night out with her girlfriends and I wanted to make it up to her. All she wanted was for me to walk her home. It was a warm spring night and we took the long route back to the block.
•
We were twenty-one when the invitation saying “and guest” arrived. I took someone I had been dating because I thought she might enjoy an Italian wedding. I hadn’t expected to see Francine at the reception but she was there as a guest of the bride’s cousin. We said hello and were talking when the photographer who was taking a group picture at the table we were standing near said he wanted us in his shot. Then others started crowding around us to get into the picture. When the photographer said, “Come in closer,” Francine held my arm and I put my hand on her waist and pulled her against me. I could smell her perfume and feel the warmth of her body next to mine. I hadn’t expected to see her and suddenly we were closer than we had been for a long time. It was good to be together. He took his picture and then it was over. But like another time, we continued holding one another, a little longer than we needed to.
My date said I was in an odd mood that evening. I didn’t try to explain.
•
We were twenty-five that time some old friends and I went to a new restaurant on East 50th Street. As we passed through the bar on our way out we saw Francine there with a date. All of us had known her for a long time and stopped to catch up.
She was even more beautiful than I’d remembered. Every time I caught her eye she looked back briefly and then shyly turned away. She was always so easy to talk to and now I couldn’t think of anything to say to her. After a time, we left, and I didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye. As we walked to the corner to get a cab, I tried to come up with a reason to go back to the restaurant. I thought maybe I could pretend I forgot something, but then what about her date? In a way I was glad she was with someone who seemed like a nice guy and I didn’t want to interfere. At the same time, what I wanted was an excuse to be with her a little longer. It was a crazy idea. I put it out of my mind and got into the cab.
•
I was twenty-eight when Vinnie and I met at an old neighborhood cafe. He and I saw each other every day when we were growing up and now, although we went separate ways, still got together once or twice a month. We’d sometimes include other old friends but this time Vinnie arranged it for just the two of us.
“I got some bad news a couple of days ago,” he said as he stirred his espresso.
“Yeah, what was that?”
“Francine is dead.”
That stopped me. I hadn’t seen her for a long time but often thought about her and what she might be doing. Now she was dead. How I regretted letting so much time go by without attempting to contact her. I waited, always thinking that we’d see one another again someday and suddenly it was too late. Now that could never happen.
I got myself together and said, “I guess she didn’t die of old age. Tell me what happened?”
Vinnie asked, “You really want to know?”
With an introduction like that I knew it was going to be bad.
I hesitated and then said, “Yeah, I want to know.”
“A while back she met up with some lowlife. He told her that with her looks she could make a lot of money working as an escort. All she had to do was go to dinners and other events with business men when they came to New York. One of those business men strangled her and threw her out of a hotel window.”
Who could have convinced her to choose a life like that? Why would she have agreed to it? I was as stunned that she was an escort as I was by her violent death.
Jesus, I thought, what a terrible end for her.
I said, “Is that it, or is something being done about this?”
“Some of the boys are looking into it,” he said, and the subject was never brought up again.
•
That was all long ago, and sometimes I wonder what might have been if our lives had taken a different turn. I’ve aged but Francine hasn’t. I can’t imagine her ever being older than she was the last time I saw her. So much time has passed but whenever I think of her, which is often, she’s still young and beautiful. Francine and I were never introduced, and we never said goodbye.
Robert Iulo began writing after retiring from a career with the City of New York. His work has appeared in Gastronomica, Museum of Americana, Epiphany Magazine, and others, and he’s had a special feature published in The Mississippi Sun Herald about his volunteer work on the Mississippi Coast after Katrina. He lives in New York City.