Marta has a holomorphic n-form that vanishes nowhere. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. It keeps me going. She's there but too small for me to sense. Or too large.

So we go to a movie. Sitting beside her is like sitting alone, but it's still comforting when she holds my hand. On the way home she puts her arm around mine and holds herself close. I look around and expect to see bystanders freaking out. "There's nothing there! What is that person doing??!" But no one seems to notice that she's invisible on the inside.

We kiss, and it's exactly like a kiss. A really good kiss, actually. But I feel like I'm doing something I shouldn't. Is it OK to make out with people if you can't read their minds? Like, wasn't that one of the first forbidden things? What am I getting myself into?

Marta continues to baffle me. With everybody else I've ever met, I can see into their minds just enough to get the measure of them. But with her, nothing. It's like she's not even there. We sit in the grass and play Chinese checkers and if it wasn't for my eyes and my ears and the game I wouldn't know there was another person there at all.

It makes me feel like I've been making the whole thing up. Reading minds. Maybe I'm just good at deduction and lying to myself, and I don't really have any kind of "special connection" to the people and things around me. Maybe there is no "special connection" to be had, and you can be good at guessing and that's it. But I can't even guess about Marta. Why does she have this effect on me? And why don't I just flee?

I really can't tell what's on Marta's mind. I stare at her across the lunch table - when she's not looking of course - and it's like a big white shipping container. All white corrugated metal and no way in. What is inside of it? Where is she coming from? She could be faking the whole thing.

I take my lip reading pills, in hopes that it will help her really understand the words that come out of my mouth. Is she really listening? Her answers make sense, but I think of 12 other questions where her answers would be just as meaningful.

Shouldn't you be frightened when you meet someone so completely disconnected from your reality, and yet is so high functioning? Am I a fly caught in a web, powerless, with the anesthesia lined fangs already inside me? Or if I move to break out of it will I immediately appear to be the crazy one, driven mad by my own blind spot? For now, the anesthesia seems to be the path. A little more observation can't hurt, right?