I couldn’t remember her name long enough to speak it at the most important moments, and not because I couldn’t forget her, but because she talked so fast.  She would be speaking for only ten minutes, but there was information about the time she tried to follow the Neal Cassady trail on the train tracks, apparently she only got to three hundred, the weigh of an albatross, literally, she knew, and then something about the price of marzipan in southern Mexico.  That’s the moment when she would suddenly stop and ask me to remember her name, and I just couldn’t because my head was spinning.  She had that effect on a lot of people, and she certainly had it on me.

Whatever it was, it was some kind of strange magic, and I don’t know how I lost track of her.  The last time we were together, we were in Malgrat de Mar.  Hotels were everywhere, and we found the most charming place, not too far off the path, but far enough that we were on our own.  It was a great way to catch up on all the lost conversation, and I do remember one particular night when she woke up speaking.  She may have been dreaming, and may have caught herself in the act of talking in her sleep, but she kept going, and it eventually started to make sense.  When she asked if I remembered her name, like she always did, I was ready.  It was right there on my forearm, we’d been to Red Devil to get my first tattoo in Spain.

These stories always end sadly, and I don’t know if they need to end any other way, sad is sort of perfect.  She was sort of sad, really, and I’d like to say, one morning, I woke up, and she was gone.  I’d like to say she left a note that went on for twenty pages about the relationship between Johnny Appleseed and real estate, and how that was the beginning of the end, or at least an excuse about going to Red Devil Tattoo herself, but nothing as good as that.  It was more simple, where we both woke up one morning, and the weather had turned to autumn, and we both knew it was over.  Nothing more, nothing less romantic than that.

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