Chapter 4 of 9. See previous chapters beginning on Friday, July 26.

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Even though I had picked up the phone to call my younger self on a whim, after two minutes of conversation, I was considering the verbal exchange an opportunity to define (or re-define) who or what I was … in the here and now.

My fingernails, not bothering to tell my mind what they were doing, began their characteristic tabletop dance, and I listened as my eighteen-year-old self seemed almost to be lecturing me about her “new and improved” ambitions.

“I know. I know,” she continued dismissively. “I once had wanted to become the next Cecil B. DeMille or Steven Spielberg, but that isn’t true anymore. I’m done with acting. I’m done with directing. I’m done with the stage. I never thought this would happen, but the minute I walked out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal and looked up at the skyscrapers, I fell madly in love with New York City. I want to spend the rest of my life here. But not as a civilian who glides along the glitzy surface of the streets. As part of the system that protects it and protects the people who live here.”

She paused for a few seconds. Then, in a firmer voice, she added, “This fall, I’m enrolling in John Jay College of Criminal Justice. When I graduate, I’ll go to law school. After I pass the bar, I’ll become a prosecuting attorney and work in whichever of the five boroughs will have me.”

My younger self stopped talking.

She said nothing. I said nothing.

But fearing that she might interpret my silence as disapproval, I jumped in to say, “Great. Terrific. You’ll make a fantastic district attorney!”

Her instantaneous sigh of relief was volcanic.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” She erupted. Then she started to talk. No. Not to talk, to spew. To gush. To effuse. To effervesce. She … me … whoever that wonderful creature at age- eighteen happened to be. God, she was young. I … me … that breathless embodiment of what I once had been … was young. Fearless. Idealistic. And absolutely gorgeous inside. Her energy and innocence… her passion for justice…her belief in the power of truth. My passion for justice and truth. I’d forgotten. Oh, yes. I had forgotten so much.

I love you, Kid, I said to myself long-ago self, half-expecting that her/my enthusiasm would go on forever. But it did not. Instead, her voice did a quick one-eighty and lost its forward momentum.

“But I’m not very good at academics.” She tiptoed around a precipice of self-doubt. “What if I don’t have what it takes to pass tests or write legal briefs? What if, every time I talk to a judge, I gulp and hiccup or start to cry? What if I take the bar exam, flunk it, take it again, flunk again, and instead of becoming a lawyer, I land up selling exercise equipment at the Staten Island Mall?”

She went on morosely, “It’s probably just a pipedream.” Then I sensed a sly smile steal onto her face, and she asked, “Is it a pipedream?”

But an eighteen-year-old with that kind of smarts doesn’t turn into an idiot at thirty-five.

“You aren’t going to wheedle the future out of me,” I told her. Then, certain that the time had come to extricate myself from the conversation, I grinned and said, “I have got to go now.”

She sighed.

“Thank you, though,” I added.

“Thank me for what?”

“For the kick in the head.”

“So!” My eighteen-year-old self laughed. “When I’m your age, I’m still going to need a kick in the head!”

And the receiver went dead.

I took a sip of coffee. Cold, but not as bitter as it had been.

I looked out the window. Not full color yet, but some of the grays were taking on a sepia hue.

I shut my address book, lifted it to my lips, and kissed it.

Seconds later, I reopened it again to the page that was headed “Me.”

Continued Next Week

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2024. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com