Alexandra is radiantly beautiful, graceful and charming.
I gaze into her luminous, wondrous, deep-brown eyes, star-lit from the stars in the night sky. We sip champagne. I gallantly tell her if she is ever in peril I will gladly ‘jump in front of a speeding train’ to save her.
“There are no trains in Newfoundland, darling,” she says, smiling sardonically. I’ve heard ‘The Newfie Bullet’, the last passenger train operating across the island, despite its moniker was famously slow. Perhaps, if true, there’d be time for you to ‘step’ rather than ‘jump’ in front of the train. If there still were one,” she says laughingly. She gracefully touches my hand. She appreciates my sentiment.
“Seat-belts save lives, my own life,” she says emphatically. “The car was crushed against the concrete abutment of the overpass. I was trapped in the passenger seat. They had to cut me out through the roof using the ‘jaws of life’.” The lustre of her eyes fades as she describes the shearing force of the impact, the kaleidoscopic blur of headlights, pavement and concrete, the roar of the engine and the orange-red shower of flaming steel fragments, the fire, fumes and fear. “It was a miracle I survived the wreck I overheard the police officer on scene say.”
I am shocked she suffered the horrors of a car crash, so thankful she survived and saddened to think I otherwise would never have met her. I can barely breathe realizing I nearly lost her. She is alive and vibrant. She completes the universe. The earth, sun, moon and stars mean nothing to me without her presence.
She rises. I bring her coat. “It is chilly, Alexandra.”
We stroll into the moonlight. Her life saved from being a short episode, the lives of her future children will be a series. The universe unfolds as it should. We are truly blessed.
