She muttered his name with her eyes shut, trying to hold on to the image of him. His eyes, nose, mouth, hairline. Nothing. She looked back at the photo. She took in his lips, and thought about the many adjectives that could be used to describe them. Then she looked at his nose, and took in the adjectives that could be used to describe it.

Upon staring at the nose, she forgot those adjectives she thought about the lips. She looked back at the lips and forgot the nose. She never even got to the ears.

Diane searched her text history and tried texting Evan back. Another way to remember someone is to create more memories with that person. The more there is to forget, the longer forgetting takes.

She typed: “Hey, good talking to you the other night. Let’s do it again.”

It sounded like a date. She deleted the text without sending.

A horsefly sitting on the right rear headrest flew to the left rear headrest.

Diane saw it do this.

She wrote a different text: “Evan, I can’t remember what we talked about. Can you come back?”

She hit send.

Her thumb seized up in a sharp moment of pain. She didn’t cry out, just winced. Her text remained unsent. She tried again. Another sharp pain, almost to the bone. A small bead of blood ballooned on the middle of her right thumb.

This is a common feature on smart phones. If a person is unreachable by text or if the underground government agencies that control the phone companies don’t want a person to be reachable, the phone is allowed to cause mild physical harm. She put the thumb to her mouth to clean it off.

The day before, the phone had caught fire while she tried to call him. She smelled burnt hair most of the morning, and had to stop by the drugstore to get calamine lotion for the top of her ear and then stop by a garden nursery and place the side of her head onto aerated topsoil for fifteen minutes, per her doctor’s orders. She didn’t know why the doctor would tell her to do that, but no one knows why doctors do anything they do. Doctors are mysterious creatures.

Diane looked at the horsefly on the left rear headrest through the rearview mirror. She stared at the fly. She could feel the fly staring back. It shuffled its half dozen legs. It moved a little left, a little right. It stood tiny and alone in the middle of what was, to it, a vast cloth field. There was no place to hide.

“I see you,” she said.

“It’s not what you think,” the horsefly said.

“What do I think?”

“You think I’m spying.”

“Yes, I do. And what is it you are doing instead, Josh?”

He flew to the front of the car and landed on the dashboard.