Aging Out of Memories

"Good morning, Princess Elizabeth," I'd say as we passed on the steps of the shabby apartment house where we both lived . Princess was my neighbor for a couple of years in a northeast city, a cold city blanketed in snow from November into March. I was a twenty-something student/cocktail waitress. Until the shots crackled and the blood droplets appeared on the snow, I didn't think much about Princess Elizabeth .  No one did. Princess Elizabeth was frumpy, pudgy-faced and ever-cheerful. Unless she was screaming in the common back stairwell. Middle-aged, her skin was more blotchy than lined. Her smile seemed unfettered by reality. No coat in winter. She didn't seem to have a job, walking from dusk to dawn and in between, circling the several blocks that connected us to the rest of the city. She explained that she was a Princess on multiple occasions, as if we were meeting for the first time. There was no doubt that Princess Elizabeth, ever alone, never accom