laughter

A week ago, my girlfriend stopped talking. I thought maybe it was just a silent treatment for a while, but she wasn't actually quiet for long. She still laughed.

It wasn't the nice laugh I knew. It was the laugh of a desperate woman, someone who has seen too much of the world and found that it was--not cruel, because cruelty implies malice. She found that it was indifferent, and absurd. And she laughed a lot more than she would have, at completely inappropriate situations.

When we communicated, which was seldom, we'd write notes. She laughed the whole time she wrote, laughed until there were tears, or maybe the tears were something else, and handed me a terse note in a shaky hand. And then she'd look at me and laugh.

I kept all the ones I remembered to. She was cryptic about what was happening, and I don't blame her. But I combed through them looking for clues, looking for a hint as to what was wrong. There was nothing. No pattern, no information.