msterdam is a four-day city. The words rattled in Ann’s brain like marbles in a glass as the plane began its descent toward Schiphol Airport. Over time she’d grown tired of advice from well-traveled friends—Don’t miss the Orsay when you’re in Paris but the Pompidou Center’s just proof that architecture can get varicose veins, or, Shop in Kuala Lumpur instead of Hong Kong or Bangkok because everybody knows about them already, or, If you want to see the real jewel of Australia skip Sydney and go to Perth. She couldn’t keep track of who had said what, who had been where. Ann had spent the last decade in Seattle. Apart from a few weekend trips up to Vancouver, and a winter sun holiday in Oaxaca last year, she hadn’t ventured out of Western Washington. Until now.

Perth, the real jewel of Australia? The only real jewel she’d seen recently was the diamond glinting in a certain slant of rare Northwest sunlight when she threw her engagement ring into the Puget Sound. Other ferry passengers stared, their faces whitewashed with disbelief. One pale woman in an oversized Columbia rain jacket clapped and tried to high-five her. Ann declined to share the gesture; she shrugged herself into her cardigan and tried to become invisible. Another woman had the audacity to say, with the righteous glare of a Seattleite whose Volvo SUV had been turned into a bumper-sticker billboard for world peace and random acts of senseless beauty, You should have sold it and given the money to the homeless.

That was last week.

A month ago, on Valentine’s Day, Jack had dumped her. From an emotional standpoint, he’d been gone since their trip to Oaxaca. They spent a magic week together under the Mexican sun, overwhelmed by vivid colors and smells, as drunk on the texture of every minute that passed as they were on margaritas and beer. Her life in Seattle receded to a distant jumble of deadlines and unanswered e-mail. Fuzzy images of home flashed through her head like a handful of confetti tossed into fog. On returning from Mexico, Jack essentially dropped out of her life. A void had opened between them. Even during sex, when he was inside her body to the hilt, he vanished. He didn’t kiss her like he meant it, although he went right on fucking her. Is there another woman? She asked him that in the bathtub one evening, point-blank, near tears. When he said no and went on washing himself (instead of her), she continued: Is it me? Did I do something? Did you meet someone else? No to those questions, too, and the absence deepened.

Then it ended. Ann showed up at his house on Valentine’s Day, for dinner, and he stopped her at the door. I’ll write you a letter to explain everything, he said. He wouldn’t let her in. Nor would he meet her gaze. She swallowed the stone in her throat, but another appeared, all sharp points and hard edges. She fought back tears but her face ached when she tried to hold them in. When she reached for him, he stepped back. I can’t, Ann. I’m sorry, but I can’t. You’ll understand someday. I promise. Ann sobbed in the driver’s seat of her car for half an hour before she could collect herself enough to start the engine.

Since then, Ann had come no closer to understanding. It had been a month, a ten-year-long month. Oh, intellectually she got it. He sent his letter. She read it on her sofa and forced herself not to vomit when she read the words I should have never proposed to you. Baggage from his previous relationship, he said. It’s always baggage from somebody else; it’s the oldest goddamn excuse in the history of dating. Jack’s ex had been a train wreck of a woman: clingy, erratic, temperamental, ill. Chronic migraines kept her from holding down a job. When she missed a period and threw up in the unemployment office, suspicions invaded both of their heads. Sure enough, she was pregnant: six weeks, maybe two months. On the advice of her doctor, she aborted the baby. Her migraine meds would have caused horrible birth defects, assuming she’d carried the child to term. Neither she nor Jack had gotten over the loss. Three months after that relationship ended, Jack met Ann.

It was working, Ann thought. Goddamn you, it was real and it was working. I didn’t deserve this.

After a year, everything quietly imploded. He dumped her at the door to his house. In his letter, he announced plans to move back to Korea, to take care of his aging parents. No specific date, just that he’d resolved to do this, he needed to be back in Seoul.

Various friends tried to brace her up: It’s one thing to miss your mother’s bibimbap and it’s another thing to move back to Korea so she can cook it for you. And: He wasn’t really that good-looking, if you don’t mind me being honest with you. And: He’s a loser. All well-intentioned, but after a while she couldn’t listen to it. Nothing worked. She was shredded.

Ann drained the last of her Evian. No point trying to drink the remaining few drops. With her luck, the plane would hit a patch of rough turbulence (they were passing through a bumpy layer of early-morning clouds now; Ann’s seatmate looked green and had directed a stream of air from the vent overhead onto his pallid face) and she’d end up with an embarrassing wet spot on her shirt or her crotch.

She’d called her editor and e-mailed various clients to say she’d be out of town for several weeks. Good idea, most people said. You need some time away. She wrapped up the last of her writing projects in a big hurry, compromising the quality she’d become known for just for the sake of finishing. There were times to be a perfectionist and times to say oh fuck it. The time had come to pack her bags and go.

Seattle’s airport offered nonstop flights to four European cities: London, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Moscow. Ann thought of canals and Vermeers and semi-legal hash brownies. She booked tickets online the same day she tossed her ring into the Sound.

The plane gave a lurch. A few passengers gasped. Ann thought, Bring on the night. Let’s go to hell.

 

idiculous things assaulted her. From the moment Ann arrived at her hotel in the Jordaan, and found her room not yet ready for occupancy, every line and every surface seemed too bright, too sharp. She went for a walk. She felt like a crayon outline of herself. After the long flight from the West Coast, her body thought she should have been asleep for several hours now. The forced extra hour of consciousness sandpapered every sense bloody raw. Litter on the cobblestones of Warmoesstraat pricked at her eyeballs when she strolled into the Red Light District. The heavy brown reek of beer drying in the gutters grabbed her guts like a fist. The stench of bottles in dumpsters sent her staggering back in the other direction, punch-drunk, toward a cleaner part of the city. How did the whores on display in their storefronts stand the stink as they walked to work? How could men get excited, smelling this? How could the women even fake it?

Inexplicably, someone was playing a Billy Joel song on a piano in one of the bars she passed. The melody tore her in half. Despite the song’s clumsy execution, or perhaps because of it, she thought of lost time and had to swallow another ossified mass of emotion. Her eyes stung. She looked down at the sidewalk to avoid the gaze of passersby, saw a heap of dog shit half an inch from her right foot, and stopped in her tracks.

How is this happening to me? What am I doing here?

She saw Jack in every room of her condo. She saw him when she looked in the mirror. She saw him when she took a shower—they used to wash each other’s backs, and everything else in friskier moods. Okay, she knew she had to get out of her apartment for a while, even out of Seattle. She understood and her friends understood and her colleagues understood. Some breakups are harder than others. Some relationships, while relatively short, take deep root. She wondered if it could be possible to damage another person beyond repair, without meaning to, just by living.

I ought to find a bridge to jump off of, she thought. I didn’t want to bring him to Amsterdam with me, and I don’t know how to make him go away.

 

er peripatetic friends gave mixed advice on recovering from jet lag: You have to trick your body into believing it’s on local time, some said. What that entailed remained vague. Caffeine? Meals at times of day when she didn’t feel hungry? Melatonin, someone else suggested. It’s a neurotransmitter thing. You have to realign your neurotransmitters. Start taking melatonin before you leave. This sounded like a recipe for brain damage; Ann declined. Still other beneficent globetrotters told her to synchronize her body to the new time zone in advance of her trip: The day before you leave, maybe two days, eat and sleep on Amsterdam time. Too scattered to deal with recommendations that sounded more like superstition than science, Ann went about her daily routines until the day of departure, and hoped for the best.

Exhaustion and sadness bred terrible children. Nobody told her jet lag would feel like this.

Stop being dramatic, she told herself. You just need some sleep. The room will be ready in an hour.

Another thought struck her: I need drugs.

 

fter visiting a coffee shop, Ann emerged feeling lethargic, energized, and pleasantly numb. The corners of her mind tingled. Two cups of coffee and a modest two bites of space cake later (Take it easy, the ganja barista cautioned in buttery Dutch-flavored English; Don’t overdo it your first time), some of the grief and fatigue washed out to sea. She still needed to reset herself with a nap, but she made it through the hour she’d been told to wait without being caught in another rip tide.

Her hotel room oozed character but exhaustion prevented her from absorbing details. In the moments before her eyes crashed shut, she took in her surroundings: tasteful antiques, a vase of tulips on a little table, books in various languages on a shelf. Beige rugs on a gleaming hardwood floor. Blue curtains. She was dreaming before she realized she’d fallen asleep.

 

he awoke several hours later, at twilight, and felt disoriented inside and out. Where the hell was she? Oh—Amsterdam. Yes. And what time was it? Outside, a lightning-colored sunset backlit a thin reef of clouds. The combination of light and shadow fascinated her but she couldn’t look at the setting sun’s arc-yellow glare for more than a second. She wondered how to attribute the visual effects: travel, cannabis, nature in its unaltered splendor, or some combination of all three? It was anyone’s guess. She took a shower (amazing what a sensual and luxurious experience that could be when you were slightly stoned), avoided thinking about Jack (mostly), dressed in black jeans and a comfortable light sweater, and ventured out in search of food.

Amsterdam’s finest hour comes at sunset. In the same way soft camera lenses flatter aging actresses, diminished sunlight limns the city’s buildings and canals. The water in the canals, also dark by day, no longer cries out for attention. You don’t wonder what would I die of, if I fell in? The rich green leaves of the trees deepen. The first lights from shops and houses switch on and gently rinse the scene with extra colors.

Ann walked until late, hungry but daunted by unfamiliarity. What if the customs were different here? What if the restaurant staff glared at her and barked in Dutch? On the other hand, how could they make her feel worse than she already did? She passed a number of Indonesian rijstaffel restaurants and salivated when she looked through the front windows. In Amsterdam’s Chinatown, she passed various Asian venues and felt giddy with hunger. Back in the Red Light District, she found herself ready to eat filthy cobblestones off Warmoesstraat. She forced herself through the front door of a Spanish place that looked much cleaner and more upscale than anything around it. The paella turned out to be delicious, the carafe of white wine she drank even better, and before long she could barely keep her eyes open.

 

n the tram, a young man kept staring at her. He wore a week’s worth of unevenly trimmed beard. His clothes hung limp on the line between thrift-shop chic and last week’s garbage. The dark smudges under his eyes looked permanent. Nobody looked robust in the dim light of the streetcar, but this poor bastard had shot up with one dirty needle too many.

Ann thought, Oh shit, my first night here and I’m going to get mugged. She tried not to look concerned. Concerned? Afraid. She tried not to look afraid. The pot had worn off, or she thought it had, but the wine she drank with dinner resurrected her buzz. Calling emotions by their true names took concentration. So did walking, when the tram stopped and she stood to exit. She thought, If he wants to rape me, he’ll have to wake me up first. I’m too goddamn tired to give a shit.

He didn’t get off at her stop, thank God. She looked over her shoulder every other step until the hotel’s front door swung shut behind her. In the mirrored elevator, she slumped against one wall and stared at her reflection, not quite recognizing herself.

 

hen you travel to get away, your take your problems with you. More unwelcome advice from Ann’s well-traveled friends. Three of them had told her this. Had they called each other beforehand, to coordinate? You’re just taking a geographical cure.

“I’m not an alcoholic,” Ann insisted.

“But you’re addicted to him,” her best friend Connie said. Connie managed an inpatient treatment facility over in Bellevue. She saw the world in terms of cravings and fixes. “You’re behaving like an addict.”

“It’s a breakup,” Ann said.

She spent her next day in Amsterdam exploring. The city with its canals and trams, bicyclists everywhere, elegant townhouses along narrow tree-lined streets, hypnotized her. She couldn’t bring herself to give up on the day and return to her room for a nap, no matter how tired she was.

Another friend, Jessica, said something resonant about Barcelona after a trip: All I wanted to do, you know, was walk around. The museums? Those could wait. I just wanted to see everything, look at people, breathe it all in.

At the time Ann thought this sounded ridiculous. How could Jessica not have made a bee-line for the Museu Picasso or the Fundació Joan Miró? The Sagrada Familia? If someone had told her she’d get to Amsterdam and think Van Gogh can wait, she’d have laughed out loud, but here she was, walking. The canals spoke louder, quietly.

 

round sunset Jack broke into her thoughts. As Ann’s energy ebbed, she kept herself mobile with cup after cup of black coffee, that concentrated European serum strong enough to resurrect the dead. She’d never been much of a coffee drinker but she didn’t want to sleep just yet. Shadows grew longer; lights came on. Lines formed in front of restaurants. When she felt faint, she bought an apple and a packet of Spanish almonds from a corner market. It was enough. Then she remembered Jack bringing a bag of those almonds the night she tried cooking paella. He’d been gracious about the mediocre results. They finished a bottle of white Rioja, gave up on her mess of gooey rice and vulcanized shrimp, and made love on the sofa.

Ann stopped. The scene in her head transported her back to Seattle, back three or four months to a time she would have given anything, absolutely anything, to return to. She stared out over the darkening water. A dim memory surfaced: herself, on the plane, reading her Time Out Amsterdam guidebook. She decided she should find the Blue Bridge, not because it was much to look at, necessarily, but because she liked the name. Not long after that, the plane had begun its descent. It didn’t crash, as she’d vaguely hoped it would. She recalled thinking There’s still time. But was there?

She sat on a bench and watched a woman serve dinner in one of the canal houses. Ann couldn’t make out the sexes of the people at the table. Had these people no sense of privacy, or no curtains? She caught herself grinding her teeth. A bad habit, but one she’d never been able to break. Deep breaths, Ann, she told herself. He isn’t here.

She’d given herself to him. Body and soul, her heart and her head and her ass, the whole thing, all of it, Ann. She couldn’t remember exactly when she realized she loved him. Maybe the second weekend they spent together. She had a clear memory of kissing his chest, on the way down. She kissed the jutting edges of his hipbone and made him squirm with pleasure; she licked his balls and nearly came, herself, from hearing his moans. A voice spoke inside her head, almost separate from her own thoughts. I love this man. And when he pulled away, she took risks to hold on. She stopped taking birth control. Risk made the fading tenderness sting sweeter.

A pair of blonde girls stumbled by, giggling and jabbering in a language Ann didn’t recognize. She stared after them, briefly grateful to have been jolted out of reverie. The girls looked to be 20 or 21, drunk, happy, and unaware that they had a lifetime of closing doors to look forward to. Did they have boyfriends? Did they get along with their parents? Ann wanted to follow, and offer them a beer or a coffee, just for the privilege of asking personal questions. In that moment, how other people lived seemed mysterious. She couldn’t fathom getting through the next 15 minutes.

“May I sit here?”

Ann recognized him from the tram. He spoke in an unidentifiable Mitteleuropan accent, and Ann didn’t know whether to be charmed or to hit him. She thought, Is there anything I could do to stop you? Something about the his features looked out of proportion, almost Cubist, the kind of face Picasso would have painted with a broken wrist.

You’re being unkind, she told herself. At moments like this, her mental voice sounded too similar to her mother’s for comfort. But it did the trick.

“Can I help you?” Ann asked.

He took a seat.

“I don’t need help. Do you like Amsterdam?”

“I think so,” Ann said. She didn’t edge away from him but tensed up in case the urge to run became impossible to ignore. “I just got here, so it’s hard to say.”

“Do you know anyone in Amsterdam?”

Saying no felt dangerous but saying yes could get her in trouble if he chose to snoop. How did she know he hadn’t been following her around, watching her? Her blood cooled. She thought of every women’s self-defense workshop she’d ever taken and wondered whether any of the techniques really worked when the creep sitting next to you on a park bench insinuated his way past your defenses with good timing and a European accent.

Now’s your chance to scream and run, said the disembodied voice of Ann’s last safety instructor. If he tries to rape you, pee on him.

“My fiancé was supposed to come with me, but he backed out at the last minute,” Ann said. If you’re going to lie, why not lie with flair? “I keep hoping he’ll change his mind and join me here, but he hasn’t called.”

“It’s a long way from Korea to the Netherlands,” he said.

He didn’t just say that, Ann thought. Bombs exploded in her heart and her head. Shrapnel blasted holes in her defenses.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It would be a long way for him to come from Korea, wouldn’t it?”

“You don’t know me,” Ann said. She wanted to stand up but her legs wouldn’t work. “I’ve never met you before. How can you know about that?”

“You’re right, we’ve never met,” he said, looking away. Ann couldn’t tell what he was staring at. “Jack moved back to Korea two weeks ago. He didn’t think you would hear the news well, so he didn’t tell you his plans. He lives with his parents in a suburb of Seoul. He’ll return to Seattle in two weeks to finish tying up his affairs in the United States, but there is very little left for him to do. The housing market in Seattle made it easy to sell his house. He hired movers to crate up his furniture. Half of it went to his sister in Los Angeles and the rest is on a cargo ship bound for the port city of Incheon, which is a short distance west of Seoul.”

Ann gripped the bench to keep herself from being blown away in the breeze. She had turned into a paper doll, flat and insubstantial. For at least a month prior to the breakup, the awful words it’s over blinked on and off inside her head. She thought of an intermittently lit OPEN sign in a restaurant on the verge of bankruptcy. Jack would go all afternoon without speaking more than two sentences to her. She’d go home too miserable to cry. She’d think, it’s over. Then he’d suggest another weekend trip or smile when he opened his front door to let her in (she never had a key to his place) and her doubts would evaporate. As long as he stayed in Seattle, she could cultivate hope he’d come to his senses. But this…

“Tell me how you knew,” she said.

“Tell me how you breathe,” he said.

“It’s an instinct,” Ann said. “I don’t think about it.”

“Then you’ve answered your own question, haven’t you?”

Ann shook her head. It’s dark, she thought. This guy’s a psycho. Or just psychic. He’s going to murder me and eat my soul.

“It’s chilly,” the guy said. “And you haven’t eaten. There’s a little Chinese restaurant nearby. I think you will like it.”

Ann shook her head again.

“I’m not interested in you sexually. I think we ought to talk. You should eat. You’ll like this restaurant. Their oysters in black bean sauce are worth the trip from Seattle. Are you coming?”

 

fter Ann placed her order, everyone in the restaurant except herself, her bedraggled friend, and the restaurant staff disappeared; they blinked off like a string of unplugged Christmas lights. Before Ann could ask what had happen, or even catch her breath, the waiter appeared with their oysters. I’m hallucinating, she thought. The rest of the world did not just vanish into thin air. But she couldn’t be hallucinating, because would she have made up the brown stains on the waiter’s white shirt?

“I want a beer,” Ann said.

“You’re wondering what happened to everyone. Look outside,” said the still unnamed European. “The streets are empty too.”

The waiter returned with a bottle of Heineken and a glass. Ann skipped the glass and poured as much beer down her throat as she could gulp, only stopping when the carbonation stung her sinuses. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then took a couple of deep breaths. The world steadied itself.

Under the harsh fluorescent lights of the restaurant, Ann’s dining companion looked more dead than alive. He wore a stained purple shirt and a leather jacket that was cracked like a desert floor. The bags under his eyes and the pallor of his skin suggested an unsuccessful attempt at embalming. When had he last washed his hair? His clothes? Was he familiar with the words toothbrush and dental floss?

“I turned them off,” he said. “We can talk privately this way.”

“How do you turn people off? Should I be worried?”

“Not at all. No one has been harmed, or even noticed anything. They’re all still there, and so are we. I’m not sure I could explain it without sounding like a physics professor who has taken too many drugs and found religion. Lots of angels can dance the tango on the head of a pin. Does that content you?”

“It would if we were in Buenos Aires,” Ann said. “Are you an angel, or are you…”

“I’m a Rolf,” said Rolf.

“What do you want with me, then? Why did you ask me to come here and turn off everybody else?” She wanted to run but—where? How do you run from someone like this? “I’m…not okay with this,” she finished lamely. She drank more beer and signaled the waiter for another.

“Why did I turn off the world? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it too much before I do it. Privacy? Good food? Eat your oysters before they get cold.”

“How?” Ann ate an oyster. The appetite she thought she’d lost came roaring back.

“How do you breathe? It’s the same answer I’ve already given to the same question you’ve already asked. Some things can’t be explained. They just are, and you either accept them or you don’t. Want another oyster? You could make a meal off beer and oysters here, but their broccoli in garlic sauce is also quite good.”

Ann tried to get her mind around the idea that a supernatural being (which she assumed Rolf was) might be concerned about his fiber intake. Thoughts like this required mental lubrication. She finished her second beer and wondered whether it would be wise to drink a third. Then she laughed at herself—out loud. Wise? What was wise about any aspect of this situation? Rolf had just switched off the outside world. Here they were, eating oysters and drinking beer in some kind of bubble in time, to hear him tell it, and angels were dancing the tango on the head of a pin in Buenos Aires. Why shouldn’t she have a third Heineken, and even a fourth if she wanted? If she began to feel ill Rolf could switch off the alcohol, too.

“Like your relationship with Jack. It’s not easy to explain, and it’s something you will have to accept. Despite what he told you, it didn’t end because he wanted to move back to Korea. He could have brought his parents here, and he could afford to hire someone to take care of them. That’s only a part of it. The best I can do is to say it ended because you are full of stones.”

“Stones? What, like gallstones?” Disgusting, distressing idea. She felt a twinge of nausea at the thought…or was it just a bad oyster? A symptom of jet lag? Too much Heineken? “You’re not talking about kidney stones, are you?”

“No, you’re perfectly healthy in that regard.”

“What, then? Sapphires? Chunks of granite?” In mid-oyster, Ann bit down on something hard. She pulled a small white pearl out of her mouth. “Did you do that?”

“No, the oyster did.”

“Then what do you mean, that I’m full of stones?”

Their broccoli came, and a fresh beer apiece. Ann dried the pearl on her napkin and slipped it into the front pocket of her jeans. Would it still be there when Rolf returned them to the world? She had her doubts. She’d probably have a bitch of a hangover, too. Vanishing worlds were beyond her but at least she knew what to do about hangovers.

“Stones are stones,” Rolf said. “Stones are a form of heaviness. Anyone can look at you and see them.”

Ann fished a compact out of her purse and checked. She looked like Ann, no different, maybe a little wide-eyed and ragged from jet lag and shock. Hair unrulier than she’d have liked. Not unlike any international traveler, she supposed.

“I don’t see any stones,” she said. “I’m not even wearing jewelry.”

“Look deeper,” Rolf said.

Ann held the mirror closer to her face. She could see the pores on her nose—Christ, she needed a facial, and made a mental note to find a day spa tomorrow or the next day. Her eyes were on the bloodshot side. The only makeup she’d put on before leaving the hotel, a trace of lipstick, had worn off. Nothing out of the ordinary. And she told him so.

“If you can’t see them, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. You can’t see electricity either, or love. You can only observe those things indirectly.”

“Why are you telling me all this? Out of all the women in Amsterdam—out of all the people in Amsterdam—why did you single me out?”

Rolf shrugged. “You caught my eye? Sitting there on the tram, looking lost and alone, no idea what you have inside of you…how could I not notice?”

“So is this what you do? Swoop down on strangers and tell them they’re full of stones?” Ann swallowed. She felt a lump in her throat and wondered if it was another gem. “I always thought my guardian angel would be more…”

“Luminous?”

“That’ll do.”

“I’m not a guardian angel,” Rolf said. “I’ve never seen an angel, although I’m told they do exist. They’re terribly aloof creatures.”

“Every angel is terrifying,” Ann quoted Rilke.

“Demons are worse. Do you want to know what to do about your stones? I wouldn’t have approached you if I weren’t in a position to help.”

“Tell me,” Ann said. “Just as long as it won’t hurt. I don’t want to be hurt.”

“You’ve been hurt enough,” Rolf said. “Follow me.”

He left a colorful stack of euro notes on the table, stood, and walked outside. Ann looked around the silent restaurant. She could hear the hum from the fluorescent lights over, or under, the hisses and clanks and crashes emanating from the kitchen. The waiter and the cook stared back at her, clearly impatient.

“Go on,” said the waiter from behind the cash register. He shooed her with a hand as if she were a trespassing barnyard hen. “We don’t have all night. We want our customers back.”

Ann followed Rolf through the door.

Amsterdam was not on the other side.

 

on’t let them fool you. I tip well. The owners are always happy to see me, and they’re used to me by now,” Rolf said. He gestured for Ann to take a seat on a slightly worn black sofa. In an armchair opposite the sofa sat a man who looked as if he’d stepped out of a Visit Germany poster: very blond, handsome in a nondescript way, not someone she’d notice in a room full of people. “They’d rather argue about the freshness of today’s fish. I only bring them along so we can eat. Otherwise there’s no reason to visit their restaurant, is there?”

The space between Ann’s ears felt like an elevator whose cables have just snapped. “Where are we?” They were in a living room, that much she could tell, but the word HOW kept screaming in her head.

“A friend’s apartment in San Francisco.”

“If you can switch off the world, I shouldn’t be surprised to be in San Francisco. The airlines would worry if more people could move so fast without them.”

“The airlines have enough to worry about already,” Rolf said. “This is Stefan. He’ll take care of your stones, if you would like.”

“How will you take care of them?” Ann’s breath tasted like the Red Light District smelled. “I’m…not sure what to make of all this.”

“Whether you should trust us, you mean?”

She nodded.

Stefan watched, politely impassive, as if he were the host of a party pretending to be interested in a dull conversation between two guests he didn’t know and hadn’t invited.

“If I meant you harm I could have done it already,” Rolf said. “It’s not worth my time to go to these lengths.”

“But why bother?” Ann asked. “Why me? I’m nobody special. I’m not worth the effort…”

“Which is why you’re here, now, in this room,” Rolf said. “Do you remember your plane descending into Schiphol? You were thinking We haven’t crashed yet but there’s still time. A part of you was disappointed when the plane reached the terminal. Even if we’re not as benevolent as you think, what do you have to lose? Either way, are offering something you want.”

“Because I have stones?” Ann asked, not wanting to go near the second half of what Rolf said, for fear he might be right about her intentions. “I’m full of stones,” she said to herself. “Of course. What else could it be?”

“Yes, you’re quite full of them,” Stefan said. “Enormous ones. Why don’t we get started, before they grow any larger?”

 

nn’s experience with a masseuse back home in Seattle offset her reluctance to undress in front of a strange man. Stefan discreetly left the room—his studio, in the center of which stood a standard-issue massage table—while Ann removed her clothes. An atavistic voice kept screaming RUN at full volume. Run where, though? That was the thing. Run back to Amsterdam? There was this thing called the Atlantic Ocean in the way, not to mention the entire North American land mass. North to her apartment in Seattle, then? Ridiculous.

She stretched out on the table and covered her body with the sheet. Stefan’s studio, unbearably stuffy while she’d been dressed, now seemed comfortable. She hoped he wouldn’t open the door and walk into the room carrying a tray of scalpels or kitchen cutlery, but at this point, what choice did she have? If she were to break a window and leap through it, who could say where she’d end up? Marrakech, most likely, or Jupiter. When you’ve seen the world switched off, your perspective shifts. Certain things become possible; certain other things become impossible. Running away from this experience, however it was going to end up, was now out of the question.

Ann heard the door open but, facing the floor, she couldn’t see it.

“You’ll be getting very sleepy in a moment,” Stefan said.

Closing her eyes sounded like the best idea ever.

She remembered nothing else until she heard Stefan telling her to wake up.

 

tones,” Stefan said.

He held one up for Ann to see. She lay on the massage table, on her back this time. How had she gotten here? Had he turned her over in her sleep or had she done it herself? Who had draped this blanket over her? What day was it?

“Don’t touch it,” Stefan said. “It will pass through your skin and enter your body again. For me, your stones are solid objects. For you, they are like…”

“Concepts?” The room seemed to spin. Ann lay very still. What the hell had he done to her? She remembered a gruesome German thriller called Anatomie, about medical students running amok. The film opened with one unfortunate bastard coming to in an operating room, no apparent memory of how he’d gotten there, and looking down at himself in helpless horror. His hand had been flayed to the bone. What had Stefan cut off her? Cut out of her? She looked down at herself—the familiar shape of her body beneath the sheet. There were no splashes of blood. She didn’t hurt anywhere. But this sense of dizziness was going to kill her. “I don’t feel good. What did you do to me?”

“I removed your stones. Your body and mind have become used to carrying a great deal of extra weight. It’ll take time for you to adjust. Sit up when you feel ready, but be careful. Move slowly. You may hit the ceiling.”

Ann gestured for him to show her the stone he held in his palm. On a low table behind him, she saw a basket of similar rocks: all black, and lustrous like polished onyx eggs. They varied in size. One appeared to be the size of a coconut. Smaller ones looked like grapes and eggs, all black.

“I said not to touch it!” Stefan barked, when Ann disobeyed him.

What could be the harm? But when her fingers met the surface of the stone, she screamed and jerked her hand away. It felt like a mousetrap snapping shut on her finger, but cold. Deathly cold. Frostbite leaked through her fingertips. And the stone—where had it gone? She looked around, her hand burning with cold, trying to see where she had dropped it. The empty floor scared her worse than the freezing sensation in her hand. It rolled under the table, she told herself, but she knew that not to be the case. Her body knew what had been welcomed back inside of it, even if her mind wanted to go on lying to itself about the obvious. Darkness sang in her veins. She remembered her first day in Amsterdam: a torrent of pitch-black sadness roaring within her, and thought Here comes the pain again. Stefan grabbed her by the elbow with one hand and with the other, reached through her hand and her forearm with a skimming motion, gathering the blackness that flowed through her system like ink in water.

She thought, I am nothing. Nothing is real. Strawberry Fields Forever.

She blacked out.

 

msterdam is a four-day city, Ann thought. She looked around the room: same double bed, same framed picture of an impossibly blue tulip on the opposite wall, same slightly worn but well-polished hardwood floor, same rugs, same drapes. Out the window, the pale light of morning. Night had come and gone. According to her watch, it was a few minutes of eight. She sat up and for the first time in ages felt light. None of the weird hangover dizziness she half-remembered from Stefan’s massage table in San Francisco. No questions dogged her: Did that really happen? Did I dream the whole thing? Whatever it all added up to, she’d had a good night’s sleep.

Dressing, she felt like a helium balloon. Her body still belonged to her, still transmitted sensation along all the familiar lines and pathways…but with a deeply surreal sense of lightness. Jet lag and residual cannabis traces could not explain it away.

Breakfast could wait. Ann had no appetite. But the city couldn’t wait; the canals couldn’t. Had Vermeer committed many sunrises to canvas? If so, this was how it felt to wander through them. Colors seemed ready to burst out of the shapes that contained them, and sunlight stroked her cheeks like peacock feathers. Fellow pedestrians moved as if a long-gone Dutch Master had painted them—and the oils he had used were not dry yet. Grace imbued everything. Ann dressed, remembering to put the pearl in her pocket. She walked and looked, because for the first time in ages, she could see.

And when she came to the Blue Bridge, she jumped off it. Just a whim, but not one she could ignore. The water beckoned. The canals said, Come. Ann bobbed, found herself unable to sink even when she tried to swim below the surface. People rushed to the banks of the canal, pointed, called out to her in Dutch and English.

“Miss! Miss! We will help you! Are you okay?”

Currents seemed to be drawing her. She kicked her legs and found she could move quite fast if she wanted to. Where did this waterway lead? The IJselmeer? The North Atlantic?

I could swim home if I wanted to.

The thought teased her. She was moving faster. She heard the weird two-tone klaxon of a European siren, off in the distance somewhere, possibly meant for her. But I’m not a suicide. In another direction, she heard outboard motors. Help was coming, she supposed, whether she wanted it or not. If she hurried, she could outrun anyone who might be coming after her. Outrun? Outswim. She could evade anyone who might be coming after her.

Once you’ve discovered you couldn’t drown if you wanted to, she thought, What’s left to be afraid of?

She aligned herself with the currents and started swimming toward the sea.

 

[END]

© 2004 Marshall Moore - Contributor's Bio

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