ALSO BY FANNIE FLAGG Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven A Redbird Christmas Standing in the Rainbow Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! Fannie Flagg’s Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man (originally published as Coming Attractions) I Still Dream About You is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2010 by Willina Lane Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Flagg, Fannie. I still dream about you: a novel / Fannie Flagg. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-679-60404-4 1. Women real estate agents—Fiction. 2. City and town life—Fiction. 3. Alabama—Fiction. I. Title. PS3556.L26I3 2010 813′.54—dc22 2010036232 www.atrandom.com v3.1 For Jonni Hartman-Rogers, my friend and press agent for over thirty years, with love and gratitude Contents Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Prologue: September 1955 Epigraph The Big Decision: Monday, October 27, 2008 Something to Look Forward To The Ice Cream Incident Upon Further Reflection The Lady with the Frozen Arm Meanwhile, Back at Avon Terrace So Rare: 1965 The Purple Flash: Monday, October 27, 2008, Midnight The Beast Sleepless in Mountain Brook Hazel Whisenknott Begins: September 21, 1929 Good Timing: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 Growing Up in Dreamland Another New Day The Perfect Plan Magic City The Open House Another Unexpected Perk Political Aspirations What Had Possessed Her? Meeting a Friend: 1990 Why Babs Hated Maggie Making Arrangements: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 Dropping a Hint What Was Bothering Brenda Maggie’s Rehearsal The Beauty and the Beast: Thursday, October 30, 2008 Ethel Is Aggravated What Babs Had Done T.G.I.F: Friday, October 31, 2008 So Much Hope Meanwhile, Back in New York Audrey and the Panty Hose: Saturday, November 1, 2008 The Night-Before Preparations Why Ethel Hated Babs The Night of the Whirling Dervishes: Sunday, November 2, 2008 D-Day: Monday, November 3, 2008 Meeting Mrs. Dalton: Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Crestview Begins: Birmingham, Alabama, 1887 Congratulations All Around: Wednesday, November 5, 2008 The Big Caper Another Big Puzzle: Thursday, November 6, 2008 A Crocker Family History A Lost Object: Saturday, November 8, 2008 The Man on the Wall: Monday, November 10, 2008 Edward Crocker Begins: 1884 A Hard Sale: Mid-November 2008 Officially on the Market: November 23, 2008 Crestview: Birmingham, 1935 Time on Her Hands: Friday, November 28, 2008 Miss Edwina Crocker: London, England, 1920 The Humdrum Motel: Friday, December 5, 2008 A Bad Day: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Brenda Reflects: Friday, December 19, 2008 Chicago: 1975 Another Side to the Story ’Twas the Day before Christmas: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 Merry Christmas, Maggie: Thursday, December 25, 2008 Woman Scorned: Monday, December 29, 2008 Blast from the Past: Monday, January 19, 2009 Ready to Leave (Again): Saturday, January 31, 2009 Brenda Gets a Surprise: February 2009 The Kate Spade Affair: 8:57 A.M. March 15 It’s Good to Have a Sister Gus’s Famous Hot Dogs: Early April 2009 Is It Real or Is It Memorex?: April 12, 2009 Home for Good More Revelations: Friday, April 24, 2009 What the Fly on the Wall Saw: Edinburgh, Scotland, May 22, 1884 Returning Home to Crestview: Scotland, 1946 Beauty Secrets: Friday, May 1, 2009 A Message from Mitzi: Friday, May 22, 2009 Certain Arrangements Epilogue: A few years later About the Author Prologue September 1955 I T’S FUNNY WHAT A PERSON WILL REMEMBER SO MANY YEARS LATER; what sticks in your mind and what doesn’t. Whenever he thought back to the year he had worked at the Western Union office, he remembered that little girl. At the time, the entire city of Birmingham was surrounded by a number of smaller suburban neighborhoods, each with its own name and shopping area. Most had two or three churches, a drugstore, a grammar school and high school, a bank, a Masonic hall, a J. C. Penney’s, and a movie theater. In East Lake, where he worked, the Dreamland Theatre sat directly across the street from the Western Union office, between the barbershop and the grocery store. He had been sitting at his desk, looking out the window, when he had noticed the pretty brown-haired girl in a green plaid dress. She was the tallest of the three or four little girls walking home from school together that afternoon. It wasn’t an unusual sight to see groups of kids going by that time of day. He was used to that, but just as they passed the barbershop, the tall girl stopped in front of the theater, waved goodbye to her friends, then turned and walked inside the two big glass doors and disappeared into the lobby. Dreamland didn’t open until seven P.M. on weeknights, and he wondered what she was doing going into an empty movie theater all by herself. He even thought about walking across the street to check on her, but a few minutes later, a light came on in a second-floor window, next to the big neon sign, and he could see the silhouettes of a woman and the girl walking back and forth, so he assumed she must belong there. But still, every afternoon after that, when he wasn’t busy, he would look over to make sure she’d made it home safely, and eventually, right before she went inside, she would turn and shyly wave at him, and he would wave back. About three months later, he was shipped off to serve in the army, and by the time he got back to the Western Union office, the theater had closed down for good, and he never saw her again. He had six granddaughters of his own now, but to this day, he still wondered what ever happened to the pretty little girl who had lived upstairs in Dreamland.