SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 89
and onto his shoulders, his fingers back into their wingtip loops. In a conspiratorial aside to
Dr. Luz, he stage-whispered, “I got this sweet cape at an estate sale. That helped a little. You
see, it gave me the illusion of being able to fly.” He flapped, flourished. “You know, to reach
the moon? I searched for days, maybe weeks. Then I saw her.”
“The guitar girl?”
“Well, not her her, but another her.”
Dr. Luz struck a baffled expression. Meanwhile, shadowy figures rolled a small section of
black-and-white tile floor onto the empty expanse downstage. A few small tables and chairs
clustered on the floor segment. A different woman, this one with auburn hair, sat at a table
reading a book with a steaming pot of tea at her elbow. Darius rushed toward her in a balletic
sweep—titters of laughter sounded from beyond the darkness—and then he sat backwards in
an empty chair near the woman's table. Chin in his hands, he watched her, eyes twinkling.
When she looked up from the page and their eyes met, he sang the line, “Quiet nights of
quiet stars...”
The woman hesitated, book still open under the thumb. “Is that supposed to mean
something?”
“You tell me.”
She pondered that, then shook her head and started reading again. “You remind me of
the moon,” he blurted.
She took a breath, laid her book face-down on the table, met his gaze. “That doesn't
sound particularly flattering.”
“I wasn't trying to flatter you, I was making a factual statement.”
She considered, looking him up and down. Tucked a length of auburn hair behind
one ear. “Okay, I think I get it. Something about me draws you in like gravity. Probably has
something to do with basic physical attractiveness. I'm no supermodel, but I think you—
unlike my mother—might find me vaguely pretty—and maybe it's also the suggestion of
psychological mystery implied by my reading of this book—which, by the way, you don't
even know what it is—and also surely by the fact that I'm the only woman in this cafe, and
it all registers as a target for the yearning of your lonesome heart. You think it's love but
it's really just a longing for connection, no different from the last woman you fixated on—
probably some mysterious waif with a guitar on a park bench, or a slightly-more-attractivethan-average doctor with thick glasses and hair piled on top of her head, or a housewife with
a yoga mat on a bus or an art student with paint on the toes of her Doc Martens standing
thoughtfully in front of a Gauguin in some museum. Am I getting warm?”
“No,” Darius said. “You just remind me of the moon.”
The woman's face flickered between annoyance and humor. She slapped herself on
the forehead. “Shit. I just centered you in my attention by articulating a series of uncanny
insights, and now we're both—”
“Falling in love,” Darius blurted, finishing her sentence.
“I was going to say 'screwed'.”
“Same thing.”
In a dizzying rush of movement, she rose from her chair. The table was whisked away as
she and Darius clasped hands. They spun around as props and objects swirled about: a picnic
blanket with a baguette and bottle of wine, a pair of red velvet cinema seats, a tangled bed
sheet which wrapped around them like a newspaper around a lamppost in a wind storm, all
of these objects conveyed around and between them by shadowy figures moving with fluid
grace. Darius and the woman danced among the swirl of totems, enacting in seconds the span
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