“Are you okay, Francine?”

“It’s this place, Ralph.” She shifted nervously from foot-to-foot. 

“Is it too cold? Too dark?”

She’d snuck into the alleyway a few blocks from his Uncle Louie’s restaurant, waiting by the dumpster. After bussing tables and wet-mopping the kitchen, Ralph had slipped out of his white, gravy-stained jacket and taken off. 

“I have to make up excuses, Ralph.”

Her parents weren’t wild about him. In no way would they consider these meetings romantic.

“Pharmacy?”

“Yeap. But they worry about me. This time I said I needed arch supports.”

“It’s kind of late to go out for arch supports.”

“That’s what they said. But now I have to come up with something new. I just can’t keep saying I need sanitary napkins.”

It was not exactly a Montague and Capulet situation. Occasionally, Francine grasped Ralph’s hand to keep hers warm. Their meetings were short and clandestine. They tried to meet at least once a week after Ralph left the restaurant.

“Did your parents say anything?”

“My father said he was glad he didn’t see you hanging around. Of course, he did ask me something about my feet.”

“I brought some food.”

“My father wondered why I had spaghetti sauce on my face the last time I came back from the pharmacy.”

Why should relationships be easy? Yet, why make them more complicated, Francine asked. Ralph offered her some lukewarm fettuccine Alfredo, so at least there was no red sauce. The alley was poorly lit by a streetlamp at its end. He’d brought along some plain spaghetti as well, since he was the kind of person who brought pasta along with pasta.

“I’m not sure this’s the best place to meet,” said Francine in a low voice, although there was no one else around. 

“It’s our place” he said. He didn’t mention romantic.

“It’s just that there’re a lot of flies.”

“Flies?”

“Right. Didn’t you see three of them buzzing around?”

She’d tried swatting them away. 

“I tell you, Francine, it’s okay. It doesn’t have flies.”

Perhaps he’d thought her hands moved awkwardly trying to manage a few strands of cold pasta. 

“What’d you mean?”

“No flies,” he repeated.

“I just swung at three of rhem.”

“They weren’t flies from the alley. A dozen of them came with me and the fettuccine from Uncle Louie’s kitchen.”