The Romanian- 1

A friend of mine reminded me of the first Romanian I ever met. She was a sad, odd woman.

She was a friend of my sister in law's from art school back east. She showed up in Missoula shortly before we moved to Arizona. She was staying with them, and kind of meandering around town. She bought a cheap old bike and a swim pass from the University. She would stop by my apartment on her way home from the pool, and we would talk.

She was a very tall girl, with a large moon-like face and huge brown eyes. Her mouth was very poochy and her eyebrows were bushy. She wasn't what I would call pretty- but she was interesting looking. My friend says that she smelled. I don't remember.

She was an artist- I bought one of her large paintings, and have it in storage now (no place large enough to put it). Her video piece was quite arty, and unwatchable. I could never figure out whether or not she was really good, or just really driven.

Her story was sad, though. Seems that while in NYC she had had a psychotic break during a manic ephisode, and broke a bunch of windows on one of the major streets. She was hospitalized and put on lithium to control the severe bipolar illness. It really changed her, apparently. She was quite odd when it came to relationships. She was intense. She fell in love very quickly and hard. She fell for a friend of Spouse's right away. He was also a twisted puppy, and appeared to like her quite a lot. I remember her cooking dinner for us all one night. Over the dessert of grapes and white wine (with lithium?), she said to him, "Krriss, Krriss, I want to know your soul." I knew then that something was a tad off. They had known each other for about 4 days at that point- and she was fixated. In another 3 days, he was trying to get tips from us on how to end it.

Luckily we moved away before it all got ugly. And it did get very ugly, indeed. Last we heard, she had moved to Canada, gotten married, and was living there. I have no idea where she is now. I hope that she's still taking care of herself and not as crazy anymore.