Neil Weiner
Short Fiction
Deja Vu All Over Again was named to the Shortlist in the 2025 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration, judged by Michael Nath.
Kelly Kelly escaped the sweltering humid heat of 1958 New York City by ducking into the Horn & Hardart Automat on Broadway between 46 and 47th street. She was here to meet her blind date for the second time, Thomas T. Thomas, whom she met in the Tautonym Club–a club for people with the same duplicate first and last names. Kelly came a half hour early to be sure this date didn’t become redundant.
The first blind date, whom she had never met before, had not gone so well. Her mother had set up the blind date with a close friend’s mother. Her mother thought of herself as somewhat of a Yenta and practiced matchmaking regularly. However, this new beginning floundered on the rocky shoals of Thomas not recognizing Kelly the first time. Kelly thought to herself that this might be a reoccurring pattern, so this time for the second meeting she wore a prearranged bright colored pink blouse that she considered a timeless classic.
She wandered around the restaurant before depositing a nickel into the coin and token-operated glass-doored window to purchase a coffee. And then tragedy struck once again. After putting her hand into the round circular open window to retrieve her coffee, Kelly felt the door automatically closing on her hand, clamping it from the wrist down to her fingers. Panicking and her heart racing with each beat, Kelly had a sudden epiphany to mitigate this tragedy. She reached over with her left hand to place her sweater on her right trapped arm. Standing perfectly still without moving, she glanced up to see Thomas entering the Automat. Her natural instinct was to nonchalantly wave him over to her with her left hand while keeping her hidden secret about the entrapment.
Thomas, too, wore a prearranged brightly colored red shirt that Kelly and he had set up over the phone the night before. This prearrangement would certainly divert misrecognition for meeting each other. He ambled over slowly to where Kelly stood by the automated windows.
“Hi Kelly. I’m your blind date that you haven’t met before.” He explained. “Do you want to sit down on one of the chairs to catch lunch at a free table?”
Kelly answered back, “I feel comfortable standing up on a second blind date if that is okay with you. I already had my brewed Joe so why don’t you get one too, and we can get to know each other.”
Thomas deposited his nickel and reached in to grab his cup which was too large to extricate from the hollow tube. He repeatedly kept trying to force it out, bumping up against the sides each time. Then he became consciously aware that Kelly was staring at his perceived ineptitude.
“The central core problem for me is that this coffee mug is stuck,” He dejectedly threw light on his awkward problem.
Kelly, feeling her heavy burden lightened by Thomas’ predicament, responded by taking the sweater off her arm to reveal a similar central core problem. “We have almost exactly identical issues,” she giggled.
At that precise moment, the couple realized that they had one more thing in common with each other besides their identical first and last names. Bonding took place instantaneously at the same time for both.
The manager, noting the banging cup inside the automated windows, quickly hurried out to open the window helping Kelly’s extricate her hand. Embarrassed by the malfunctioning of the windows, he offered the two-starstruck couple free cups of coffee and tuna fish sandwiches. After eating their sandwiches and finishing their coffee to the last dregs, the couple decided it was absolutely essential to attend an afternoon matinee at the Roxy Theater. As soon as the lights dimmed down, they took the opportunity to make out by kissing in the darkened theater.
From that moment on Kelly and Thomas were attached together at the hip. They planned their future years ahead at every available opportunity. They discovered they had so much in common with each other that each one took to answering each other with an et cetera to demonstrate their oneness in thought and action.
Epilogue.
It was essential to tell their families and friends about their actual experience in the automat. They even immortalized their stranger-than-life meeting in their famous book, Déjà Vu All Over Again, which, of course, is now in its tenth printing. It became an all-time classic like Yogi Berra who first coined the phrase.
Dr. Weiner has over 40 years’ experience as a professional psychologist who specializes in trauma recovery and anxiety disorders. He enjoys using stories to help readers harness the resilience within to aid them on their healing journey. He has published a variety of related articles and books including Shattered Innocence and Curio Shop. Non psychology publications include Across the Borderline and The Art of Fine Whining. He has a monthly advice column in a Portland, Oregon paper, Ask Dr. Neil.
Photo Credit: Elise Racine is a creator, scholar, and activist based in Washington, DC, whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, digital art, collage, mixed media, and poetry. Her cross-media investigations delve into the intricate relationships between humanity, technology, and both natural and constructed environments. In doing so, they delve into themes of power, representation, visibility, memory, identity, knowledge, repetition, and ritual. She has exhibited/published her work in the United States and internationally, most recently in “The Bigger Picture” (Beta Festival 2024 and MTU Gallery, Ireland), “Unearthing” (Sims Contemporary, New York City), and Superpresent’s Winter 2025 Issue on Secrets and Mysteries. Upcoming shows include “Digital Directions 2024” at the Maryland Federation of Art’s Circle Gallery and “Figures 2025” at the CICA Museum (South Korea).
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