Molly’s wine glass was half empty. She would have said half full. She was half drunk.

“Smell that?” She asks me.

“Sewage?”

“No. The smell of rain.” She closes her eyes.

I smelled worms and muddy streets.

Dusk. We sat on the porch watching cars drive by, their tires sticky and oppressive on the wet pavement. The rain was a welcomed hiatus from the intolerant summer heat. I watched Molly’s face as she breathed deeply unable to be distracted by the bothersome aspects of the evening; the bugs, the rush hour traffic outside our front door, the recent events of our relationship. She had always reminded me of a porcelain doll. She had wild curls of black hair radiant against her pale skin. Her skin shone brightly of uncalloused youth and I could remind myself of what it felt like, not long ago to touch the smoothest skin I had ever felt. I wanted to talk to her but I didn’t dare ruin her moment. She was somewhere else.

That’s the way Molly was, taking little moments like these and placing them into her own memory box, a private section of her that I could not understand. Her enjoyment was so pure; I was reminded of our age difference, just ten years yet noticeable. She was young, expectant, still a college girl. I had learned not to anticipate. Time had made me jagged and weary. She made me feel centuries old. Her mind uncorrupted by the toils of adulthood, her heart still open and genuine.

I always feared that I would crack her glass. It had been so long since I had touched her, besides the slight brush of shoulders that morning as we commuted our bathroom. We competed for mirror space while she applied makeup and I shaved. “I’m the one that needs to see myself,” she had argued. “I don’t need a mirror to shave my legs! Why should you need one to shave your face?” I told her that while she didn’t need makeup, I on the other hand, was required by my job to keep a hairless face. She looked at me, for the first time since we awoke, and blankly said. “If you need a mirror, go use the downstairs bathroom.”

I had meant it when I said that she didn’t need to wear makeup. I found her to be very beautiful. I felt like an imp next to her with my rough wrinkled masculinity, an acute contrast that made us the Tai-Chi couple. We coined this our title while Molly was studying Confucianism and Taoism in a Chinese Religions course. I would watch her as she studied, genuinely interested in what she was reading. I wanted to know every thought that provoked her excitement, every pearl of data that was birthing itself. I was well acquainted with Eastern religion and philosophy, having studied it myself, but I pretended to learn from her every time she would put her book down and tell me about what stimulated her. I wanted to hear her speak, her voice proud of what she had discovered, shedding it unto me.

“Ok…so the Chinese yin and yang symbols, ya know?” she had asked me two very long years ago. As she studied on the loveseat I sat on the corner of the coffee table, clipping my toe nails into a small wastebasket.

“The Tai-Chi,” I stated.

She looked disappointed. “Oh you already know, never mind.”

“Tell me.”

She pushed her glasses up higher on her nose and put on her studious face. “Well, yin and yang are polar opposites…”

“Right…”

“Yin represents everything about the world that is dark, hidden, passive, soft, shady, secretive, mysterious, and cold,” she was reading from her book. “And yang in turn means clear, bright, evident---”

“Ooo, evident, that’s one of my favorite words,” I interrupted.

“…active, controlling, hot, and hard. Yin is the feminine and yang is the masculine.”

“I’d like to think of myself as hot, hard, and masculine.”

“Apparently, everything in the world can be identified with either yin or yang,” she said. “It’s a choice.”

“Like the dark and light side? ‘Don’t go to the dark!’”

“Sure, ‘Darth’, I suppose so,”

“Hey, Mrs. Skywalker…” I gave her an evil look. She was wearing my t-shirt and my boxers and I loved her.

“What?”

“I’m hot and hard if ya know what I mean.” I put the nail clippers down and inched closer to her.

“As sexy as you are right now,” she nodded to my foot positioned over the trash can, “I have to admit….not in the mood.” She was lying to me. She always did.

She laughed. I smiled.

“Well, I’m going to shower. You know where to find me.” I started towards the stairs.

“Later. After my homework.”

“Missing the chance of a lifetime, Baby!” I shouted down as I walked upstairs.

Later that evening, while we were making love, I opened my eyes to catch Molly looking up at me vacantly.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” I said offended.

“Why do you do that?” She asked.

“Uhhhh….wh- what?”

“Keep your eyes closed so tight.”

“I’m concentrating.”

“On what?”

“On you.”

“Then why don’t you look at me?”

“What is this twenty questions, we’re supposed to be having sex!”

“I didn’t finish telling you about the Tai-Chi.”

I sighed and rolled off of her. Lying beside her on the bed I looked at her. “Ok. What’s the problem?”

“Most diagrams of the yin and yang, like the ones I used to draw on my notebook and teenagers wear on the backpacks?”

I nodded. “Yeah?”

“They have the yin and yang flowing into each other. The Romans used to engrave the Tai-Chi symbol onto their shields with an interior dot of the other in both the yin and the yang, being the idea that each force contains the seed of the other.

I looked at her strangely. “You got baby fever? Want me to knock you up?”

“Don’t be juvenile!” she yelled. “The yin and yang don’t merely replace each other…”

“Oooohhhkay…”

“They become each other.” She reached over and played with my hair, shaggy and due for a cut. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or scared, but Molly so rarely expressed sentiment towards me that I had learned to take it however it came. I held her stare.

“Alright,” she said. “Now fuck me.”

.....

We sat on the porch until midnight, barely talking. Molly repeatedly looked down at her stomach. I didn’t know if this was the vanity in her appreciating the fact that nine months from now she wouldn’t have lost her six pack or mourning the unborn child that was no longer there. We had murdered it in a doctor’s office twelve hours prior.

“So…” she said.

“Yes, love?”

“You really think I’m yin?” she asked me this at least once a week.

“Well you are the female.”

“Yeah, but…am I cold, dark…..secretive? Do I stay hidden from you?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.”

She frowned. She wouldn’t look at me, only past my head to the street. “You’re so clear and full of light. Obvious.”

“Evident.” I said.

“Warm and loving…”

“Don’t forget hot and hard.”

We remained silent for either several minutes or several hours. Eventually she spoke again.

“Kids, ya know. I hate them.”

“I know you do.”

“Babies are ugly. And smelly. And a burden.”

“Um hmm…”

“I’m far too selfish to be a mother. Ever.”

“That might change.”

“I hope it never does.” She stood and brushed imaginary particles from her lap. She stretched and rolled her head in a circle, cracking her neck. As she stretched, her shirt lifted to reveal the tattoo on her stomach of the top half of the Tai-Chi, the yin portion. I wore the other half of the tattoo on my back, a childish romanticized idea we had when we were in drunk and in love. Molly used to love me. A clap of thunder could be heard distantly.

“Strom’s brewing,” I said.

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said sarcastically.

I didn’t know why I loved her so much. She dressed strangely, smoked, wore purple lipstick, actually likedBon Jovi, and rarely smiled. Her hair was never well kept, her feet were too large for her small body, her body more thin that what I liked for a woman, and she called me “Jeffrey” when I insisted upon being addressed by everyone as “Jeff.” We had conflicting opinions regarding nearly everything. If arguing were a sport, she would have won all honors available. She was dark and moody. She had been taking Zoloft since she was fifteen and was clinically diagnosed as a whack-job. She was known to say and do crazy things, blaming it on “the illness.” She didn’t enunciate words correctly, which drove me crazy. She was beautiful to me.

Molly walked off of the porch and trudged through our pathetic excuse for a garden. We had been living in that house together for two years and still hadn’t fulfilled our promise to each other to plant flowers together. She crossed over the driveway and onto the sidewalk. She was near soaked with rain.

I wanted to tell her to stop, to come back onto the porch and talk to me like we used to. I wanted to dry her off with soft towels and make her hot tea to melt the chill from her. I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t look away from her decreasing image, growing smaller the further she walked away from me.

Once she had crossed the street she looked around, confused as if she had no where to go. She was barefoot and crying…I could hear the sobs. I had never seen her cry in the three and a half years I had know her…I had never seen her cry. The rain made the tears invisible. Molly threw her head back and looked into the black sky, thunderous with pressure that could explode though a cloud at any second. She let out a dramatic howl, the kind only in movies and Shakespearian plays. It was sharp and piercing.

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

I stood stridently, not a conscious choice but a will of my body to be called to action. I couldn’t bring myself to walk. Just stand. And watch.

A bolt of lightning struck down through the sky, luminous and beautiful. I watched it take shape in the form of electricity, a yellow zig zag that came down onto my lover’s head. Her entire body and face tensed, wide eyed. Then she was gone.

There are no words to describe that which you cannot remember. I suppose I ran to where she had been, searching the surrounding area, convinced that her body was thrown elsewhere. She had disappeared.

I hated science fiction movies. Never more than I did at that moment.

The rest of the night into the next day was a blur of frantic surrealism. I phoned the police, the doctor, everyone I knew. Search parties were sent out. No one could find her.

Life from that moment on played out much differently, every day an expectation. Every telephone ring an ultimatum. Molly, my insane friend, was gone. But she lurked in all the dark corners of the house…her favorite chair, her books, her toothbrush. I touched nothing that was hers.

After a night of a thousand breakdowns, I slept on her side of the bed. I awoke the next day with a voice in my head.

“Jeffrey.”

I screamed and jumped from the bed. “Goddammit!” I hushed. All I could hear was the ticking of the clock. “Molly?”

I laughed at myself. I was just as insane as she was. Is. Was. I didn’t know.

That morning, I used her toothbrush. I took her car to work. I even wore her underwear to bed. I felt queer and sickened. What was happening to me? I couldn’t sleep all night. I found myself at four a.m., staring at her picture on the nightstand.

“Maybe you need a Zoloft, crazy bitch.”

I plugged my ears.

“I know what always helps you sleep.”

My hand snaked down towards my genitals and roughly started to arouse my excitement.

“Just pretend it’s me doing it.”

“This isn’t happeneing. You’re not here, Molly.”

“Jeffrey. Jeffrey. Don’t you want me?”

I threw my hand off of myself and ran into the bathroom. I took three Vicadons and a shot of Nyquil. I slept for fifteen hours. I dreamt of her the whole time.

The next day at work I was unnervingly distracted. I remained sheltered in my office and refused to see anyone. When a young intern came to my door, I snapped at her and immediately felt bad.

“I’m sorry, Lucy, come in.”

“Oh…I’m sorry to bother you Mr. Kauffman. I just needed you to check my work on these numbers.” She brought a piece of paper to my desk and leaned over to point out her questions. She wore a low cut blouse with no bra. Her breasts dangled in my face. I didn’t look away from them.

“Horny motherfucker!”

“Shit!” I leaped from my desk, spilling my coffee all over my desk, and Lucy’s paper.

“Mr. Kauffman?” she was confused.

“I’m going home,” I yelled. I ran frantically out of the building, plugging my ears the whole way.

“Love is two people in perfect harmony.”

I ran faster.

At home later, I got drunk and prepared myself to speak with her. I needed verification. Was I just hearing things? It had to be her, I felt her presence. I sat on the couch and peered about the room, reminding myself of her mark, calloused around the house. I thought of all the spots in that room alone that I had fucked her; the couch, the floor, her chair, against the wall, on top of the table. I could sense her vindictive stain unmoved from these areas. Where was she? I waited until six the next morning.

“Are you there or what?” I yelled.

“Finally! Acknowledgement! I was wondering when you’d talk.”

“You’ve been here the whole night?”

“Of course! You look like shit, babe.”

“Why didn’t you talk?”

“I’ve been thoroughly entertained by watching you go out of your mind.”

“You bitch. You evil bitch. You’re the devil aren’t you? Incarnated.”

I heard Molly’s laughter. “I told you we would become each other.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You’re the one hearing voices.”

“GO GO GO! Leave me be!”

Like you want the voices to stop? Like you want me to go away?”

“Did you really hear voices, Molly? When we were together? Were you telling the truth?”

“Infatuation -- passion without intimacy or commitment -- along with romantic love -- intimacy and passion, but no commitment -- and fatuous love -- commitment and passion with no intimacy.”

“What was I?”

“An addiction.”

“Like Heraclitus said?”

“Yes, my Greek philosophy master, yes. Love is an addiction.”

Were we the Tai-Chi? Had I lost all sanity?

“Yes and yes.”

“I didn’t say that out loud!”

“Ha!”

I hated her. She occupied my brain to the point where I couldn’t tell which thoughts were mine and which were hers. Did I crave chocolate chip cookies or did she? What would “we” like to watch on the television today? Conversations…endless and dreary. This was my life now.

I woke up one morning and stumbled into the bathroom to take my morning shower.

“Good morning, lover.”

“Morning, bitch.”

While urinating, I looked down to find a tattoo on my stomach, a yin. I ran to the mirror and checked myself from behind, on my back, still a yang.

I heard laughter.

How could I mourn someone who never left?