In the almost-three years of my life that were consumed by our affair, I never truly got used to Quinn's disappearing habit. But, at least in the beginning, I found other ways to keep myself busy. There was my job at the diner, auditions to go on, and a whole city to explore. And I suppose that, at first anyway, there was something just a bit exciting and romantic about not knowing when I would see her again.

But as time wore on, as the rejections rolled in and the money ran out and the city became less and less inviting, as I came to crave her more and see her less, I got restless. I'd find myself riding the subway out stations past my stop, just to comb the streets of Jesse's neighborhood, hoping to catch sight of her. I felt desperately compelled to know what it was she did, how she looked, who she was when we weren't groping each other in my dimly-lit apartment.

Sometimes I did fantasize about finding her on one of these reconnaissance missions, all stunningly dressed for some big event with Jesse, but looking hopelessly lonely and sad. She'd see me, though, and her face would burst into an open, glowing smile, and she'd break away from him, and run off with me...

I tried not to think about it too much, though. Because the truth was that if she ever knew I was doing that, pushing my was into spheres of her life where I didn't belong, I had very little doubt that she'd retreat from me altogether. And I didn't think I could bear that.

I still don't know if I can.

It was right around the time I realized I would probably never see her face, never hear that laugh, never kiss those lips again, that I started taking the pills to help me sleep at night. It wasn't a one-to-one correlation; there were other, perhaps bigger, reasons why I was having trouble sleeping: all the nervous anxiety of having been cast in my first show, the letter I'd gotten from home saying my dad's heart condition had gotten worse. But it didn't help matters at all that one ear was always trained on the door, listening for her light footsteps in the corridor, that my spine was always tensed as if waiting for her touch.

The pills helped, there's no question about that, but still sometimes visions of Quinn manage to slip through my medicated haze and haunt my dreams. When I see her in my sleep though, she's even more perfect than she ever was in life. Her eyes are never wild and tired, there are no worrisome little half-covered-over needle marks to be found, no traces of anyone else's presence on her skin. And there in my dreams, she loves me with a gentleness I only felt perhaps a handful of times from her in waking life.

And once or twice during a performance, I've looked out into the audience from the wings and thought I've seen her there, but I know it can't be true, especially now that I know she spent half of the last year institutionalized.

I don't know why that news from Santana troubled me so deeply; after all, it wasn't the first time. I learned, far after the fact, that at least twice during her disappearances from me, Quinn had been put on seventy-two-hour psych hold, once precipitated by an overdose of some kind, and the other after an incident with a razor blade.

I'd seen the signs, the scars afterward, but ignored them until, one night in Sam's bar, with her looking happier and healthier than ever, she'd suddenly just blurted it all out to me like it was nothing. I brought her home with me that night, and she'd clung to me like a life raft, the way I'd always thought I'd wanted her to need me.

But instead I just ended up lying awake with a knot coiling tightly in my stomach, wondering if maybe I was the one who was drowning.

Other times, I know, the reasons for her leaving me weren't so bleak, especially when it came time for Jesse's show to make the move from workshop to off-Broadway. Oddly enough, though, those were the times it was even harder for me to sit still, the times when I knew she was with him, all dressed up and smiling at his side, his arm wrapped around her waist.

It killed me that I couldn't be the one to take her out like that in polite society. That I couldn't be the one to show her off at cocktail parties, premieres, gallery openings, and all the other fancy places I knew they went.

But just once during that time, in a fit of half-drunken madness, I actually marched right over to Jesse's place and knocked on their door. I hadn't seen or heard from Quinn in ten days and already I felt myself losing my grip. By the time he answered it, I was shaking like a leaf, but was even more stunned to see that he wasn't doing much better. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled.

"Can I help you?" he said, nervously glancing out past me into the hallway as he spoke.

I thought about running, but I also thought about reaching out to fix the haphazard mis-buttoning of his wrinkled dress shirt.

"I'm looking for Quinn," I said, jamming my trembling hands down into my pockets. "I...I'm a friend of hers...and I haven't seen her in a few days."

He leaned against the doorframe and looked down at his bare feet. "I don't know where she is either," he admitted. "She didn't come home last night."

I expected him to be in a rage, furious with her for not having come home, furious with me for having the audacity to turn up on his doorstep. But instead he just looked anxious and scared, which frightened me all the more.

And it made me stop and wonder, maybe he did really care about her, maybe he actually loved her, just as much as I did, maybe even more.

"If you see her," he said quietly, "please ask her to come home."

I wonder sometimes what would have happened if he and I had gone out for a drink that afternoon and hashed it out, what we could have learned, if we could have saved each other's lives a little instead of wasting our energy trying to save hers.

When I got back home that evening, she was sitting there on my sofa, dressed to the nines and reading a magazine.

"Your landlady let me in," she said with a mischievous smirk. "I told her I was your sister."

Before I could say anything, she was standing, turning to present me with the zipper of her gown like a gift, making me forget all my anger and indignation.

And then I was following her to the bedroom, all my questions long forgotten.