Lasting Image of Her

It’s the last thing I have to remember her by. A photo I snapped before she walked out of the empty apartment. I could not have known it was goodbye. I thought it was a reset, a reboot, a rejoin would happen a bit later in our lives when things had been more worked out. Work. Money. Sexual orientation.

She loved to tease me with her lesbian adventures. In fact, the first time we met in person she hinted at her past indulgences, “I can make that happen for you.” She was trying to entice me with a promise of future debauchery. But something inside her would never let her trust a man. Too many men controlled her life at the moment. A dad. A brother with a difficult child and a vindictive ex-wife. Another brother lost in a drinking himself to sleep problem. Telling stories, the night we stayed with him and his family, the same stories, over and over about ice hockey glory and the two-hundred times they saw Phish. “They lived in my dorm freshman year.”

I had moved my stuff to a temporary loft I going to sublet from a work friend. We had moved to New York together, to “get out of the heat and bullshit in Texas.” Standing in the window looking more like a dream, she mentioned vague plans about Paris and repairing her damaged soul. Said that the sound of spoken French would heal her. She said she would be a real catch in France, for a man or a woman.

I asked her, “Don’t you think it would be helpful to work out your running urge with someone who’s in love with you?”

But this was weeks after she vanished and only an hour before she would cease to be. I never got the full details, only that she had passed. Her drinking brother, I think, when he got her phone unlocked began texting contacts to give them the sad update. I couldn’t respond at the time. All I could do was keep opening this photo on my phone.

This was the photo I sent to her only a few days after she left.

“I miss you.”

“You too,” she texted back immediately.

“Wanna grab coffee?”

“I’m boarding a flight to Europe just now. I’ll call you when I’m settled in.”

In our erotically charged bedtime, there was always the hint of foul play. Some aspects of her past left her craving loss or abuse. The S&M was just a cover. It was about a big man who had left and asked her to store his Harley Davidson in her garage. This was back in Austin, not after we’d gotten to New York. It was one of the things I helped her clean up.

“He’s got to sell the Harley or something. Pick it up. He can’t just leave his shit at your house.”

“The guns too,” she yelled. “I told him I didn’t want them in the house and now they’re stored in my kid’s bedroom closet.”

“I’ll help.”

Nothing I did brought down her anxiety. I tried to be clear and honest with my actions and outlook for the future. She was often quiet and withdrawn. Then in the bedroom, she taught me some delightfully naughty tricks. Wow. I think I still crave that. Even after seven years, I still want her. Was it a powerful connection or some sort of warp that she’d planted in my mind with her heteroflexible ideas?

A text from the brother came about a week after she died.

“Nothing to bury. She was cremated in Paris. No service. Donations to SLAA in lieu of flowers.”

Read more Short-Short Stories from John.