Old Man Drives by a Young Woman Running

OLD MAN (driving): Is that Ellen? My God, it is! She was never a runner! She looks great. She literally hasn’t changed in – what? 40 years? I didn’t even know she was living here…
Ted, that’s stupid. It’s literally impossible. Yes, she looks like Ellen, but she looks like Ellen when you first got together, right after you moved to Seattle. That’s not her.
She looks so similar. Same auburn hair, same dimples, the same lips that turn up at the ends. Same figure, too.
We were so good together that way. And so bad in all the others. What did she say that last night?
“You may find better…”
No, it was:
“You may find easier, but you’ll never find better!”
And I said:
“At this point, easier is better!”
Turned out we were both right.
She never trusted anyone. We’d run into someone on the street, someone we both knew, ask them how they were doing, and as we’d walk away, removed from their hearing, Ellen would hiss, “Yeah, like I believe her.” That should have told me something.

But man, that part…

Making love to her while she talked to her ex on the phone. Her voice began to flutter, her breath to hitch briefly, and I thought, “I’m getting to her.” Then she got to me, and I didn’t think anything else.
It was only later I learned he did not yet know he was an ex.
Her mother had that strange face, too much surgery, like a burn victim. And her dad, the guy who owned a square block of Manhattan, so self-assured, he hated that she was stuck on me. When they came to be with her through the abortion, the way he treated her, the way he talked to her, the way she talked to him… it was like he was not just her father, but the father of… It was creepy. I thought so then and I still do. I’ll always wonder how life would have been different if she hadn’t laughed in my face when I suggested to her that we keep it.
Some guys sneak out to be unfaithful. Some guys sneak out to have a cigarette, a beer or a bet. I used to sneak out to eat a burger. She made great salads, but damn.
This girl running, she wouldn’t have the scar, either, if I were crazy enough to pull over and yell “Show me your right hand!”
I bandaged it myself after one of my failed escape attempts. The sex was all we had left at that point. I was determined not to let it get that far. I proclaimed I was leaving, maybe for the evening, maybe for good. She ran at me, jumped up, wrapped her arms around my neck and locked her legs around my thighs. She clung to me like a monkey. I pulled her off and tossed her on the bed, then went out the door and started down the stairs. I heard her yell my name a moment before the sound of her fist crashing through the glass pane of the old door.
“She won again,” I thought wearily, as I turned and made my way back up the stairs.
“This has to stop,” I said, while I cleaned away the blood and applied the bandage. She didn’t answer.
I once tried to step out of a moving car to get away from her.
I was so proud of finally going through with it.
That one part, though.
I’d be lying to myself if I pretended there wasn’t some backsliding. Meeting her on some pretext or other, to pick up some mail or discuss who was keeping what and ending up with my face between her thighs while she cooed in French. Sometimes it’s hard to leave a bad thing.
Now that I really look at her, I guess she’s not so similar. The hair is a slightly different shade and I think she’s taller. She has a real runner’s build, too, and Ellen-“

YOUNG WOMAN (running): “FUCK YOU, PERVERT!”