A WOMAN in her thirties. Looking at us.
WOMAN … I saw an old boyfriend yesterday. It was probably—no, that’s not right. It was the day before yesterday. Two days ago now. That’s when I saw him. (Beat.) He was driving and we were both stopped at a light and I was sitting there, I’m glancing down at my phone—not texting or anything like that, I promise you I wasn’t, I try not to do that because it really is dangerous, terribly dangerous, and I know a girl who died that way. Back in college. Texting. She wasn’t doing it but she was reading one that was sent to her. Just going along in her little car … she had one of those Mazda Miatas, which are so tiny … and she looked down to check a text she received (this has all been verified by the police) and she flipped her car on a bad turn about twenty miles out of town. Right over on its hood, and that killed her instantly … not certain if she had the top on or not but I’m not sure that would’ve mattered—Karen had a soft convertible, not the hard shell type so there wasn’t really any hope for her after she did that. She died. Because of a text that some guy she was going with at the time sent to her. You know what it said? “I DON’T KNOW.” (Beat.) No, I’m not saying … I do know what it said, I’m not being coy … it said those words: I DON’T KNOW. He was responding to something she had written to him earlier in the day … like, four hours earlier when he was in class, and he was just answering her back right then, and he wrote: “I-DON’T-KNOW.” The authorities tracked down on her phone what she’d asked him and it was a text she’d sent to him—they’d only been out maybe three times together, and she had texted him this: “SO, DO YOU LIKE ME OR NOT?” Karen had just put it out there … which was so like her … and asked the guy where they stood and that’s what he wrote her back. The truth. I DON’T KNOW. (Beat.) Of course no one’s sure if she ever read the thing … if she actually saw what he wrote to her … but she did receive it. She did click on it. So who knows? I’ve always wanted to believe she didn’t read it … that she died just trying to hold her phone and drive and it was an accident that was stupid and should’ve been avoided but I don’t know for sure. No one does. There’s just too many other things that might be true if she did see that text … stuff that I don’t want to be real or want to have happened, if in fact she actually knew how that guy felt. You know? Because Karen used to really fall hard for people—boys—and I don’t know what she might’ve done if she put herself out there like that with someone and then they wrote back to her “I DON’T KNOW.” I don’t wanna believe that she would’ve … you know … but anything’s possible and I also don’t want to put that on him. That kind of guilt for having written what was probably just the truth—the truth based on him and her and how long they’d been dating at that point—and who wants to carry that around for the rest of their life? Not him. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to. Not me, either. (Beat.) But I suppose I do. A little … (Beat.) See, the reason he was unsure about whether he had any feelings for Karen was because at that same moment he was dating another girl. Me. Obviously. I mean, obviously you’ve figured that out by now … or just did. And I knew that she liked him and that meeting guys—or keeping guys, really, keeping them was more specifically her problem—but I was young and I didn’t really care and I liked him so I just did that. I dated him, too, and so we kept it a secret—from her, at least—and that was that. He sort’ve had the best of both worlds there for a little while … being around Karen, who was a nice person and had a cute car … plus some kind of trust fund—maybe not that, maybe not something as elaborate as a “fund” but money of some kind, not just living off financial aid or student loans like the rest of us. She had all that so he did, too … and he also had me. Someone on the side that he could play with and be with and … just … whatever. The guy was seeing both of us at the same time and I knew it and didn’t care and she didn’t know a thing about it and so … that was the story. He’d go back and forth with us, sometimes straight from one of us to the other—and I mean, in the same night. But it wasn’t gross, it wasn’t dirty … he had this way about him that was just sort of boyish … likeable and tender and … God, funny as well, he could really make you laugh … (Beat.) We both liked him. At that point, and I mean at the beginning point, there wasn’t really any harm being done. Didn’t seem like it to me, anyhow … but yes, she technically met him first and so … should I not’ve gone out with them for a meal on one occasion or talked to him when we ran into each other on campus or that type of thing? Maybe … maybe so. Isn’t that what friends do—they’re supposed to watch out for each other? But I didn’t … I did not do that and/or want to or even feel some nagging pain in my side telling me there was something morally wrong with what was happening. And there were others, too … we didn’t know that, at the time, Karen or me, but there were a few other girls that he was involved with, too. A few. Quite a few. Which is not really for me to judge, I don’t think, and he was not the only guy that I would go out with—or even slept with—during that semester, either, but I think it was a much bigger deal for Karen. I feel like it was for her, or would’ve been, if she’d known … (Beat.) Maybe she did know. Maybe she did—maybe that’s even why she sent that text to him in the middle of a school day when she could’ve just as easily talked to him that night … asked him flat out, to his face. That’s how I would’ve done it … I mean, if I’d cared. (Beat.) I honestly don’t know what was going on with her at that moment or during that day so we’re just speculating to think that there is any validity to the idea that Karen may or may not’ve spun out of control and crashed her car on purpose. The police couldn’t say and the coroner couldn’t tell and none of her friends or family or school officials felt like this was anything other than a tragedy that was bound to happen to a young girl who was texting someone while she was driving a sports car on a decidedly dangerous and twisty road. And so that was that. She died that day, Karen did, and no one’s even felt the need to ask any questions or raise their eyebrows or request further investigations into the case. (Beat.) It was hard to go on, of course. I mean, not as a person—I’m sorry … I made that sound very maudlin but that isn’t what I meant—of course I could go on with my life. Of course I could. I had to … that’s what you do. It just is. I mean him and me; as a couple, or whatever it is we were—I never bothered to text him to find out, never once—but that’s who I mean. The two of us. We had been sneaking around the whole time, really, ever since we first decided to go see a movie together without her, without Karen … and once she died … well … didn’t seem like the right time to suddenly come out as this big romantic partnership with him and so we kept going on—for a little while, at least—but it began to drop off like those things do, like this probably would’ve done anyway, even if such a bad thing hadn’t happened. But it had and so it was doubly doomed, I think. Whatever it is we’d found in each other. He quit calling … or calling very often … and I did the same or one of us would go after the other for a week or so and then give up, date other people … it was not a big thing, really. Very normal and nice and doomed to failure, like most every love story you see in college or high school. That’s just what happens. (Beat.) But that was him, sitting there at the light. Next to me in his car … nearly ten years later and in a different state even. Just by a fluke of coincidence were we ever there together, even just for these few little seconds. (Beat.) I started to roll down my window, to wave to him … but I didn’t. I let it go. What would I say to him? Make him pull over or follow me to a Denny’s and have a meal together, talking about old times and all that? See who is now married or has kids or doesn’t and why? Or sleep together even—I was in town on business so he might be, too—but what would be the point of that? None. There would not be one … except for the act of doing it. Proving to ourselves that we’re still here. Still around. Alive. So I drove off. Turned my head and drove away. (Beat.) … And that’s the end of the story.
She stops talking for a moment. Looks at us. Nods. Looks away.
THE END.