50th Reunion: Westide High

How did we get here so suddenly, with our bags and baggage, looking the worse for wear, the ones misfortune hasn't wrung into anything-but-perfect strangers? Old buddies, old loves, old antagonists chat at the bar in the Hilton lobby; white-haired, no-haired dyed-haired, ringers for those oldsters so irrelevant to proms and cruising, to study halls and going steady—to life as we knew it. The smithereens of yesteryear, mostly orphans who’ve buried Mom and Dad, we’re holding out in a Guadalcanal of hazard and heart-soreness: edema, angina, sarcoma, thrombosis. Casualties mount, as do the MIAs. Why aren't we vexed? Why aren't we screaming? Never mind; we're here, upright, and don't have time to skip the niceties, which never seemed so nice, or to sweat the threats, as the dead, ever younger, smile toward the future from our senior yearbook. It's too late for a fallback plan. Tonight, we'll savor the motel cuisine, pass the Inglenook, and believe there's nothing opulent as this departure.