She couldn’t remember how she got here: twenty-seven years old, in a smokey, cold, rainy, old city, with not a dollar or a friend to her name. All of a sudden, as if falling from a dream, she found herself roaming through the streets of Amsterdam, with a joint smoking in her right hand and a cheap ring rusting the skin on her left hand’s ring finger.


She must have been walking and smoking for a while when, all of a sudden, she stopped dead in her tracks when something—a movement, like an unnatural splash of water in the general stillness of Amsterdam’s canals—caught her eye in the distance. That’s a sure way to catch anyone’s eye, she thought, but everyone else kept walking on like nothing was happening.


She got closer to the scene of commotion and, peering over the bridge, let go of the half-smoked joint without even noticing it and let out a scream. Someone, a child! was drowning! But, once again, everyone kept walking on undisturbed, all too caught up in their own personal drama to lend a hand, an ear, or even an eye to anyone else’s. So, immediately letting go, not only of her joint, but of her thoughts as well, she jumped in the water and helped the little girl get up on the sidewalk.