Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Still Life
Page 37
exactly. Reoriented. His gaze, once cast toward the courtyard, now meets the moon directly, as if receiving a cue.
Finn joins her. “Did he turn?”
“No,” she says. “He remembered.”
The moonlight reveals a second figure behind the first; half formed, half erased. A twin or echo, sculpted in refusal. Where the first was noble in forgetting, this one is aristocratic in erasure. Cuypers didn’t sculpt a man. He sculpted a decision.
A knock at the door. Not a summons, but a cue.
The docent again, holding a candle and a velvet pouch. “For the intermission,” he says. “You’ll need these.”
Inside the pouch; a key with no teeth, a map with no legend, and a note that reads; “The next act begins when you stop interpreting.”
Susie grimaces and chucks the pouch into an otherwise empty and dark corner. She removes most of her clothing and hops into bed, inviting Finn to join her. He does.