The Ex-Girlfriend

When I was 16 I took a girl named Eileen Growler on a few dates, she told me I had been her first. But I was confused by that statement since she barely moved, expressed no pain, and there was no blood. Just to not seem like an utter asshole after we had sex I took her to the movies and once for ice cream. She was a strange girl, she had a passivity about her and she whispered like she was afraid to raise her voice. Not bad looking overall but nothing remarkable, we were both sad and to be honest as I entered the bar catering to our 2003 class reunion I was wondering what had become of her.

The room had that dim, rented elegance — soft lighting that tried to flatter everyone and succeeded with no one. People stood in loose circles, drinks in hand, laughing a little too loudly, as if rehearsing versions of themselves they had agreed upon years ago and never quite updated.

I scanned faces with a kind of detached curiosity, the way one looks at photographs in an old album — searching for traces of something that had once felt urgent. There were the usual transformations: the prematurely aged, the improbably preserved, the ones who had settled into their features as if into a permanent expression. A few glanced at me with recognition that took a second too long to arrive, and in that delay I could feel the years stretching between us like something physical.

I wondered if she would be easy to spot. Eileen had always seemed slightly out of focus, even when she was standing directly in front of you. Not invisible exactly, but…