SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 88
SINE QUA NON
time.” He lifted an afghan from the waiting room couch and encircled his shoulders as he
gazed through the glass. “And there she was. At first, I thought I was hallucinating.”
Dr. Luz, standing behind him, craned to see what he was looking at. Across a stretch
of floorboards, just beyond the post of the moon sign, the lights came up on a park bench
that hadn't been there before. It was surrounded by a cluster of ferns and gardenias. A young
woman sat on the bench cradling a Spanish guitar. She strummed, gentle chords, and sang
softly to herself.
Darius, forehead pressed to the glass, stared at her. After a moment, he opened the
French doors and stepped onto the tiny balcony, leaning against the railing. As he did so,
the woman's singing became louder and clearer: a delicate rendition of an old Jobim bossa
number, “Corcovado.”
“It wasn't just that she was beautiful, it was the whole package. The song, the voice, the
warm night, the smell of gardenias, my fever, and—especially—the moonlight.”
The glow from the moon sign over the park bench grew brighter.
“I knew I had to get down there and meet that woman, if she really existed.” He twirled
away from the window, sending his blanket aloft like a cape, then scurried away. He ran a
circuit along the floorboards that lead him behind the walls of the doctor's little house. This
took him out of view of all the eyes that were watching from the darkness, out of reach of
the spotlights.
He moved past the exposed two-by-fours and rolling platform that made up the back
wall of the house. He emerged on the far side, back into the spotlight, just beneath the sign
post and right next to the woman's park bench. But the bench was empty now, no guitar, no
woman, just the leaves of the ferns and flowers shining in the sign's glow, which had grown
dimmer. Dr. Luz hadn't moved from her spot. She watched him now through his balcony
doors.
“And that was when it all started,” Darius said. “I decided to look for her—although
maybe 'decided' isn't the right word. I needed to look for her, I needed to find her. And I
haven't stopped since.”
He revolved on a heel, strode back across the open expanse of floorboards. Across the
backdrop behind the doctor's house, the silhouettes of cityscapes scrolled by like weather.
Dr. Luz and the interior of her clinic dropped into shadow as Darius roamed the boards in
his spotlight. He doubled back, re-circled, the afghan still clutched around his shoulders.
The clicking of a woman's shoes could be heard somewhere. The woman with the guitar
appeared for an instant behind him in the wink of a spotlight, then another woman with a
guitar at the other side of the open space, then a third just at the edge of the darkness where
the floorboards fell away. At each apparition, Darius whirled to glimpse her, but each time the
woman's spotlight flicked back to darkness and she was gone.
“I thought you had a fever,” said Dr. Luz from where she'd remained in her waiting
room. “But you went running around the city wrapped up in your blanket?”
“Well, yeah, that's the point. It became a compulsion, you see? I don't remember if I
ever went home again.” Even as he said the words, the tall French doors with their pocket
balcony trundled away into the shadows.
“And your fever?”
He touched the back of his hand to his forehead. “Probably still have it.”
“See, you actually do need a doctor, I just don't think I'm the—”
He jutted a finger in the air. “But things got a little better when I found my wings.” He
deposited the afghan back on the couch as his satin wings from earlier lowered out of the sky
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