I'm in the civic center. It's just three bureaucratic monoliths in a U-shape round a parking lot. This is it? The heart of Paris, heart of France? I pictured something more romantic.

Locals explain it's gone downhill over the decades--blander and more corporate. The cars parked in line are all angular white sedans--some company fleet. Drivers entering and exiting are equally crisp and... white.

I park my own car on the edge of the Civic Center park--just a big green empty lawn. Next to the corporate ranks, my rusty dusty old car looks Neanderthal.

On the passenger side, the window cranks down on its own. My car's old, those aren't power windows but hand-cranks, so I know this means my invisible girlfriend's here. Or rather, not here--not anymore. The car rocks, then stills. She just crawled out the window!

And on this big, close-cropped lawn, there's no way for me to track her.

She can turn visible whenever she wants, but she rarely does, these days. Hiding more and more.

I think we're slowly breaking up. Feel helpless.

I miss her already--and she's right here.

I wake thinking "Whaaat?" Like I blundered into the middle of someone else's story.

NEXT DAY

I go to the library. Some books are waiting for me. One's a manga called Interviews With Monster Girls, about a school counselor who has a few paranormal students--vampire (amiable, sticks to tomato juice), ice maiden (timid, or just practical?), dulahan (her head's detached, but not her heart). He worried they'd have problems fitting into conformist Japan, but they're doing OK--it's his supposedly grownup co-worker with magic who's a mess.

Unexpected: at the end, there's a bonus story about one more "monster" who the artist, after this test tale, chose not to make a regular. She can turn invisible; when it's warm enough so can can go nude, she can hide from all, be anywhere. Clear why she didn't make it as a regular--it's near-impossible for the artist to show what's up with her! She turns silent to hide, and you can't see her expressions or body language... She had to go.

But she managed to make it into my dream--the night BEFORE I met her on the page! Appropriate, I guess, that the dream had us breaking up. Since I won't be seeing any more of my... invisible girlfriend.

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