Chapter 25- In the Diner.

Philadelphia 1948.

It's my dress.

I stop dead on the street, staring at the dress on the mannequin in the window, not even moving when the suited figure behind me bumps hard into my back and then stomps around me muttering. It's my dress! Heedless of the crowds and the wary looks I'm attracting I clap my hands in glee and skip across the pavement to touch my fingertips to the glass. It's my dress!

Soft white fabric printed with cherries, the full skirt gathered together at the waist with a red belt, a v-neck and short fluttering sleeves…it is everything I have ever seen in my vision of meeting Jasper. As if in a dream I push my way in to the store.

"The dress in the window," I tell the salesperson, trying to keep the tremor if excitement from my voice. "I'd like to try it on."

I don't think I do a good job because the saleslady, who is little more than a young girl, smiles at my enthusiasm. "Isn't it beautiful? Come and see if we've got it in your size."

I come out of the dressing room and twirl in front of the mirror. I can't stop smiling. "It's exactly right!" I exclaim gleefully.

The girl is smiling. "It suits you, it really does. Shall I pack it up for you?"

I don't want to take it off, but as I look out the window at the rain and the late afternoon sun I know that although this is the right dress, today is not the day I will meet Jasper. I sigh regretfully and nod.

"Is there a diner nearby?" I ask, as she packs the dress in layers of tissue paper in box.

"Oh sure," she says chirpily. "There're a few different ones, but Sandy's is just down the street and they do a really good burger. Just go to the right when you leave." She smiles at me amiably and I grin back.

I see the diner from across the street and for a moment I feel my whole body quiver with the enormity of what is soon going to happen. Jasper. After all this time of waiting and hoping and longing all the pieces are falling in to place. The dress, the diner, the shiny shoes I found last week and have carried in my suitcase through this unfamiliar city…all of it is just the way I have seen it. And soon I will see him. With you in waking and dream shall I be…. The dream of him has guided me for twenty eight years. It is time for the waking.

I retrieve my suitcase from the locker I secured it in at the train station earlier in the day and then take a room in the hotel next door. Since I don't sleep I rarely bother with this, but it's been some weeks since I was able to bathe and I'm not meeting Jasper without washing my hair and scrubbing the dirt from under my nails.

I take as long as I can in the bath, scrubbing every inch of me, and then I call down to the desk and borrow an iron and iron my clothes. My shoes are brand new but I wipe every dust mite off them before I buckle them on, and then I kneel by the window and watch the quiet city street, waiting for the sun to rise on what is going to be the most beautiful day of my existence.

It is mid-morning when the bells above the door in the diner jangle to announce my arrival. It is not busy now, the breakfast rush is well over and there are only a few people scattered about, drinking coffee and eating pie and reading newspapers or talking quietly. I want to dance and leap and twirl with the joyous exuberance I feel, but I force myself to walk demurely to an empty booth by the window and take a seat. Today. It's going to be today…Jasper my love, it's today! I reach in to my pocket and take out the poem I have carried for so many years.

The paper is soft and worn with age, the printed words blurred with handling, as I gently flatten it out on the table in front of me. I don't need to, the words have been committed to memory for years now, but I find the familiar act of unfolding the paper and reading the lines comforting.

"Anything I can get for you, hon?"

The friendly but impersonal voice of the waitress breaks into my thoughts as she approaches my booth. I smile at her sweetly. She's got bleached blonde hair with two inches of grey roots and her apron is dirty, but everyone is beautiful to me today. "A cup of tea please, and a donut." I won't eat it, but I don't know how long I will have to wait and it will give me an excuse to linger.

She places a chipped white cup and saucer in front of me, and a plate with a large, greasy looking donut beside it.

"Thank you!" I say brightly, and pretend I don't notice her smile falter a little as she looks into my eyes.

"You're welcome," she says, after a pause that probably no one but I would notice. "Anything else you want, you just call."

I drop my eyes back to the paper in front of me. One edge is jagged, as though it was torn out of a book, and once again I wonder what happened to the rest of the book. My eyes scan too, the handwritten scrawl at the bottom of the page, the pencil faded after nearly thirty years. Alice- you called him Jasper. Find him. Good luck.

Jasper. I have to stop myself from dancing with impatience in my seat, and I whisper his name like it's a talisman. Jasper. I've been waiting so long, and now it's finally time…it occurs to me briefly that most people would be nervous in this situation, but even the idea of it makes me giggle. Jasper. I can't be anything but joyful, knowing that soon – soon!- he'll be walking right through that door and then I'll never be alone again.

I pretend to take a sip of my tea, keeping the grimace off my face, and pick at the donut, slipping the crumbs under a napkin. Outside, the Philadelphia sky is grey and dreary and there is a sudden spatter of raindrops against the diner's window. As the rain settles into a steady downpour I sigh and sit back. I know that I won't see him until the sun comes out. There's nothing to do now but wait.

Time ticks by. I crumble my donut and hide it in the napkin. I read a newspaper. The waitress brings me another cup of tea and I ask for a piece of pie, and then I have to try and dispose of that as well without eating it. I watch the lunchtime crowd flow in and eat and flow out, but even with all that delicious scent and the hypnotic siren call of the heartbeats my focus never wavers. Jasper. I know it's going to be today. The dress, the waitress, the way the sun breaks through the clouds and makes the wet pavements gleam…everything is right. Everything matches the vision I've carried in my head and heart for the past twenty eight years. I prop my chin on my hands, looking out the window and waiting, and then my heart soars and my whole world blooms bigger because there he is.

The chimes above the door ring and he steps through. Jasper. He's wearing ill-fitting grey serge trousers cinched together at the waist by a belt, and a threadbare shirt that might once have been red but is now more of a faded pink, and a grey pinstriped waistcoat that somehow manages to match neither the trousers nor the shirt…and despite this fashion disaster he's still the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. His hat is pulled low over his forehead and he's looking down so that I can't see his eyes, but I can see the dull gleam of his blonde hair and the long, strong masculine fingers as he reaches behind him to pull the door shut. It's finally you. After all this time…my Jasper.

I don't even hesitate. Not now, not after all this time of waiting. Instead I rise to my feet and smooth the crumbs off my sweet cherry print dress and swiftly move to his side. He turns his head sharply and takes a step back, but nothing can stop the dizzying swirl of happiness I feel inside. I tilt my head to peek under the hat and his blood red eyes meet my glowing golden ones and I feel my whole face light up with my joyful smile.

"Jasper," I say softly. "It's you…you've kept me waiting a long time."

I hold out my hand to him, and I watch his face shift from taut suspicion to a kind of incredulous happiness, and then he bows his head and gives me the crooked grin I've seen so often in my mind as his fingers fold around mine. "My apologies ma'am," he murmurs, in the syrupy Southern accent my ears have been aching to hear. "My apologies…I'm here now."

To be touching him! The feel of his large hand curved around my small one…oh, I hadn't known it would feel like this! Wonderingly I reach up and touch his cheek with my fingertip, tracing the line of his jaw, brushing across his lower lip.

"I can scarcely believe it's you," I breathe. "I've been waiting so long Jasper, and now you're finally here."

"I'm afraid you'll have to explain," he says to me softly. He shakes his head, looking a little bemused. "I don't believe we've met?"

I giggle, realising that he has not been having visions of me for twenty eight years and I am, in essence, a stranger to him. "Oh no, we haven't exactly met. I'm Alice."

"Alice," he repeats thoughtfully.

I haven't released his hand, and I tug him gently back towards the booth. "Come, sit down."

He does so a little warily, looking around the diner uneasily and then glancing out the window at the bright sunshine making the wet street gleam. As the waitress approaches us his jaw tightens and his body tenses.

She smiles at me in a friendly way. "Well, he turned up then, hon! You've been waiting all day…I hope he's worth it! The two of you want anything?"

Oh, you have no idea how long I've really been waiting! But I look at the face, so familiar and beloved already, and know that my Jasper is more than worth the wait.

"Some more tea please," I say to the waitress, and then turn my attention back to Jasper once she leaves. He is looking at me with puzzled curiosity, but all I can do is beam. I know he must be dreadfully confused, but nothing can dampen my joy at having him here within reach.

I wait until the waitress returns with a teapot and pours us each a cup before I begin talking. "I'm Alice," I say again. "And I know that you're Jasper. I've been looking for you…"

"Who sent you?" His face goes taut. "What do you want with me?"

My face falls. "No one sent me. I…I saw you, I saw us…" My words trail off as his face remains hard. I have been so focussed on what we will be together that I have failed to give a single thought to how we will get there. How do I explain what I am to this man whose entire being screams out defensiveness?

"I can explain everything," I say softly, gathering my thoughts. "But I promise you that I mean no harm, and you can trust me."

Jasper nods slowly. "I believe that." He shakes his head again, and rubs his chin thoughtfully as he examines my face.

Impulsively I reach across the table and lay my hands over his. For a moment he sits stiffly, and then his face relaxes into his crooked smile as he turns his hands over to clasp mine. "Extraordinary," he murmurs. "I don't…please Alice, explain this to me."

I feel like I'm floating with joy, the only thing anchoring me to the earth are his strong hands holding mine. "I see things," I tell him. "I always have. Visions of the future, of what I'm supposed to do, of whether people are friends…you were the first thing I ever saw." I stroke my fingertips along the lines in his palm, memorising the touch and feel of them. "I'm not like other vampires- I don't remember being human. I never have. I just woke up one day I this is what I was." I pause for a minute. "The visions came right from the start, and the first thing I ever saw was you. I knew your name, I knew what you would look like, I knew how we would meet, I knew what we would be to each other…I've been looking for you ever since."

For a long time he doesn't respond, but he doesn't take his hands away from my touch. Instead he watches as my fingers continue their slow and caressing exploration of his hands. "When you saw us together…what did you see?"

Saying it out loud feels like I'm throwing myself off a cliff, not sure if I'm going to fall or fly. "I saw that I love you," I say simply. "I saw that you love me. I saw us together."

There is silence, and then a slow smile blooms on Jasper's face. "This is nothing but crazy," he murmurs, "but I believe you, Alice."

He raises my hand to his mouth and gently kisses my knuckles, and I shiver because my body just can't hold on to everything I feel.

"I feel things," Jasper says, so softly I can barely hear him. "I can feel the emotions of vampires and humans when I'm near them. It's like…waves, or vibrations or something of that nature. Being with you, right now…I cannot describe it Alice. I have been a vampire for eighty five years, and I have never felt like this."

I rise to my feet, keeping my fingers curled around his to bring him with me so that we are standing side by side. For a brief moment I lean into him, and every nerve and sense in my body flares with awareness at being so close to him. His hand touches my cheek and as his blood red eyes meet my golden ones I know he feels it too.

"It's good though?" I say. "It feels right?"

Oh, the smile on him! "Oh yes Alice. It feels right."

"That's all you need to think about now then." I drop some money on the table, and the two of walk hand in hand out of the diner.