Modern Ghost Story

During the tail end of a rather dull party, she came in like a winter draft. I instantly got goosebumps. Before her arrival, I had preoccupied myself with anxiously peeling off labels of sweaty beer bottles to distract myself from whoever hovered around me. It was always the same kind of person that cornered me at a gathering: a beard, a plain sweater, and a long story that absolutely needed to be told to me. When she came in, I felt myself trying to get a look at her, as if her mere presence could rescue me.

Charming would probably be the most common way to describe her, yet there was something more to her even from a distance. She moved in a confident way that hinted that she had been here, had done all this before. Her eyes nonetheless remained soft, calm, inviting. My gaze fell to her lipstick, which was a shade darker than I would’ve expected for her complexion, yet it added to her mystery. Wispy curtain bangs framed her face. Even her self-knit looking sweater seemed to welcome others to come close to admire her.

No longer able to even half pay attention to the conversation around me, I quickly excused myself to get a drink. Approaching the counter where she stood and was selecting her own beverage of the evening, I inhaled deeply, hoping to catch her scent. A hint of honeydew. An undertone of litschi. Hanging loosely from her wrist was a worn festival bracelet. I found my ticket to strike up a conversation with her.

“I haven’t actually been there before,” I pointed to her bracelet, “but I’ve only heard good things. Tell me, are these reviews true or does everyone wear rose colored glasses when remembering?”

—

Her phone number was a reward that evening. Pulling up her contact photo and status brought up a familiar feeling from early online instant messaging where each character in the away message felt cryptic. Troubled poets in puberty trying to cry out to the world. Her black and white photo portrayed another time, her once long hair blowing in the wind and covering her smile. Her away message, her crying out to the world: Two emojis of smirking gray and gold moons. My thumbs hovered over our blank chat. I thought about all the things we talked about in that first encounter, the laughs at the stereotypical things we had done and still wanted to do in this foreign city that had become our home.

“Hey hey, interested in a super tourist walk around the river next week? I can also highly suggest overpriced drinks at the famous underground jazz bar.” Sent. A sigh. Before I could go into obsessive overthinking of wittiness and syntax, a buzz signaled her response.

—

On a Tuesday evening where the cherry blossom leaves look like they’re glowing against the indigo sky, we race each other with shopping carts through the parking lot. Our guards are down, we have walked hours through side streets, handing back and forth a clover joint. Then we find the perfect scene: Some rarity of two unchained carts free to use in a nearly empty parking lot. It spurs something in us, possibly some juvenile yearning or possibly a feeling that we could temporarily go off course without punishment. Rusty wheels and wide smiles, we are refusing to turn to dust.

We walk back to the station to catch the last night trains. Our tipsy steps manage to stay in sync as our brains spew out random topics to chatter about. People who protect pigeons. Glow stick factories. The trials and triumphs of language learning. My train is the first to arrive with a rush of air and screeching of metal. She walks me directly to the edge and before the doors close, she leans in to kiss me. It’s an awkward fumbling of soft lips, like we’re both 16 again. That leaves us giggling as the doors close. We wave to each other through the glass, our images getting smaller as the distance becomes greater. I place my hand on my beating heart.

—

Weeks went by without a word from either of us. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly we were two opposite magnets pushing each other away. Her lack of response only encouraged me to stay silent. I occupied myself with the usual outings with friends and freelance work that funded the friend outings. Days became longer in a way that felt like they were tormenting me. The sunset didn’t even start until after 9pm now. The whole thing felt as if I awoke from a dream and saw it disappearing before my conscious mind. My only proof was a phone number with a first name, a nickname at that. Had I somehow fabricated an enthrallment between us? Had I sent the wrong signal? Did she even exist?

To my great surprise, I found a notification from her after putting up the wash on the balcony, the morning sun gently grazing my skin. An apology for the delay and a suggestion to grab drinks tomorrow. Just like that, she was real again. Normally the brevity of her reply juxtaposed to the lengthy silence would upset me, but her showing up again pushed away all other possible negative feelings. She wanted to see me. I wanted to see her.

—

We meet at an organic wine bar just outside the city center. Somehow it’s still crowded leaving us with torn leather bar stools as our only seating option. Swishing my rosé wine and feeling the silence bubble, I turn over an apology in my head. Before I can open my mouth, she says dryly that she’s getting married. I glance down and notice the gemstone engagement ring. Emerald. Pear-shaped cut on a gold ring. Of course she’d want something unique. It suits her. My eyes stay glued there, unwilling to look her in the face. Instead of asking questions, of getting upset, of leaving, I tell her, “Congratulations” and then we go back to our usual banter.

I see her lips move and shift, forming sounds that amount to sentences and ideas, but I’m not able to hang on to anything. The last months together left me in a loose state of euphoria where it felt like anything could happen between us. Late nights under street lamps and huddled conversations in bars. Now I’m left to drift; she’s leaving us.

We go outside for a smoke and we continue to talk about everything until we can no longer avoid the elephant in the room. My words feel shaky as I try to broach the topic.

“So tell me more about it,” I gesture to her ring and take a drag. Then I hear all about it. The bride and groom awaiting the big day. The wedding in another country. The decision to move back home, across the ocean. I plaster on a supportive face, taking in the information as neutrally as possible, as if she were merely recounting the plot of a film and not her future. At one point, a man walking his pomeranian strides toward us, forcing us to lean against the building to give way, our shoulders brushing each other. My cheeks blush as I keep my gaze toward the end of the cigarette. She says that it’s getting late, a first time for this concern. She walks over to her bike, unlocks the linked chain, clips on her helmet, and waves me off.

“Oh, the bike’s new,” I say to her fading black silhouette.

—

If you asked me what she looked like now, I wouldn’t know what to say exactly. She was taller than me, she was kind to strangers, she had freckles on her arms but not her shoulders. She leaned in when a particularly good story was being told. She often wore a subtle expression on her face as if she were thinking about what pasta to buy for dinner, but when she laughed, you would get the feeling that everything was alright in the world. She wore an engagement ring.

It’s been 4 years since I last saw her. She promised to write me a postcard once she made it back home. After a half a year, I stopped checking my mailbox with the hope that something would be there from her. Nothing ever came. Did I love her? I don’t know. Love doesn’t feel like the right word. Maybe I was just an adventure.

She disappears more every day. I am forgetting her age, her hometown, how many siblings she has. I am losing sight of her wispy hair, what color was her hair? I am missing moments between us, did we even go to the wine bar or just talk about it? There’s not much of her left anyhow.

Once in a while, she will appear somewhere. An old photo, a familiar street, an abandoned shopping cart. It grasps me by the shoulders and yells, “The ghost is back!” My head will tilt ever so slightly and my eyes will close. I’ll repeat her name aloud as if tasting it once again. My heart will flutter all over again for this moment.

No, I don’t remember her.