you can use vitamins to help a woman through those things

She wore a white Sapphire ring. Chain-smoked Menthols. Always blew smoke rings. She’d sit at her desk, mumbling, “Wonder how much I should take… Let’s see, what would I do in that situation?… Ooh, my mouth hurts…”

Suppose you thought she was talking to you and asked her to repeat herself. In that case, she’d say, “Oh, nothing, I’m just talking to myself. Pay me no mind. Very few people do, anyway,” then chuckle in a self-deprecating way and continue doing whatever it was she was doing at the moment, which was usually nothing exciting: sharpening a pencil, doodling on a paper towel, playing Mine Sweeper on her computer.

Occasionally, you’d find her doing something useful, like washing her car, practicing her interviewing skills in front of a funhouse mirror, and studying the bus routes.

I met her just after she was released from the country jail for doing something she would never discuss. Knowing her, it probably had something to do with driving while intoxicated or assaulting an ex-boyfriend with a deadly weapon, but that’s just a guess.

If you looked directly into her eyes, her lashes would flutter; she’d experience innate anxiety and begin quoting from nature shows. “As amphibian ancestors emerged from primeval lakes and seas to live part of their lives on land, seeing and hearing sharpened.”

During one of her quieter moments, you might hear her reveal something like, “Lot of beer, lot of truck stop speed, lot of pot…I just don’t remember a lot of my first marriage,” than see her cast her eyes toward a doorway or a window, and release her breath, which always smelled of toothpaste.

Suppose you happened to catch her recovering from a particularly intense orgasm. In that case, she might whisper into your ear, “Ohmygod, I think I might have a cyst on my brain,” or “I need quiet, peace, tranquility, you know what I mean,” and then drift off to sleep, always muttering something wild and foul.

She might have been the last of the blue, cold lovers.

I don’t know.

She never asked you to do anything illegal or immoral. Still, if she ever lost focus around you, she’d start speaking in nonsequiturs, laughing at your fractured syntax, or reminiscing about her “Steely Dan Period.”

Then, one day, she went away on an unexpected hiatus.

Some say she became a missionary to Ecuador’s Auca Indians.

Others say she ran off to Italy to work as a cobbler.

But I think she just became bored of being one person on Monday and another on Tuesday and of constantly having to play the role of the eager blonde pretending not to have the personality to do tragedy, and she just had to disappear.