Pale Blades of Moonlight by Joe Pawlowski

Author:Joe Pawlowski [Pawlowski, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

A WORLD APART

“We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;—

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems.”

—Arthur O’Shaughnessy, “Ode”

That night, Candice Higgins, walking hand-in-hand with a Dutchman named Diederik, strolled the canals of Amsterdam. It was mid-day and, by the look of it, late autumn. Narrow Dutch homes and cobblestone walkways, teeming with pedestrians and bicyclists, lined either bank of the canal, along with leafless plane trees that reached taller than the gabled roofs of the buildings.

An empty red-and-blue sailboat bobbed at the shore near the footbridge they were crossing, and the two lovers paused to take it in, and the glittering surface of the water that held it afloat.

This was the culmination of their morning walking tour of the city. The path had wound past curious little shops with windows displaying mouse dolls or assorted neon signs or glass-boxed lizards that looked as if they might have roamed the earth in the age of dinosaurs. Past tilting structures braced from the streets with wooden beams, past tulip-lined parks and plazas, and herring carts, and the tall arched panes of churches and museums. It had been a glorious morning. It was a shame it had to end.

Even as she turned to Diederik, she could feel herself coming apart. She watched as her broad-chested beau’s lucid blue eyes and blond locks began to go transparent.

“I’ll miss you, Diederik,” she said. “And Amsterdam, of course.” She could have reached him as easily with her thoughts as with her words, but, gawd, how she loved hearing her own voice again.

“Perhaps you will return one day,” he replied in his melodic Dutch accent. He leaned in to kiss her.

Then he and the entire cityscape melted away, and, once again, she lay motionless in her hospital bed staring at the stucco ceiling and listening to the occasional hiss of the ventilator that kept her breathing at night.

The door to her room opened, and utilizing the one major movement left to her, she twisted her neck.

“Good morning, Candice.” It was Elmira, her Nigerian nurse. Must be six o’clock. “Did you sleep well?”

Candice clicked her tongue once. It was their shorthand: once for yes, twice for no.

“I’m happy to hear that. I also slept well.” Elmira stepped to the room’s window and slid open the curtains. Sunlight poured in and Elmira stood in it, assessing the view outside. “Sunny and pleasant. Just like my hometown of Abuja.”

She turned and smiled broadly. One of her high cheeks carried a scar left by another patient, a psycho who’d attacked her with her own nail file right here at The Residence. Or so Candice had heard. Elmira never spoke of it. Elmira seldom spoke of anything sad.

She crossed the room to Candice and removed the ventilator mask.

“Now, let’s take care of your personal needs.” That meant Candice’s bowel program, a task Elmira always approached with good humor, which Candice appreciated.

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