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Mar. 5th, 2007 08:27 pmMarch 5, 2007
3:30pm
Tomorrow. At high noon. It's such a cliché, but sometimes a cliché is the only appropriate response to the situation.
The afternoon air is damp and cool, but not bitingly cold, when Charlie steps out the door of the Dolphin Hotel and heads for the corner. Down Fifth Avenue one block to the bus stop on East 60th, take the M3 four stops to 47th, and then walk east. Madison, Park, Lexington, Third ... and Second.
Even from here, she can already hear the singing.
She turns aside on her way to the Tet building to look at the turtle sculpture in the park across the street, and notes with amusement that someone has left a folded piece of paper under the turtle's left front foot, the carved claws punched carefully through to anchor it. The impulse to look at what it says is irresistible, and she doesn't really try very hard to resist it.
Scrawled in green pen across the page are the words Son, you did real good. It's not for her, then. That's fine. Someone else's story, briefly crossing through her own.
In the lobby, she nods to the doorman and walks directly up to the little shrine in the middle of the floor. The Garden of the Beam.
If the sound of the good-mind at Taos is a hum, the sound of the rose is a thousand church choirs singing together. Her hands close lightly around the velvet rope that marks off the garden's boundary, and she stands there, eyes half closed, letting the song pour over her.
She doesn't need to look at the plaque to know what it says: GOOD OVER EVIL, THIS IS EVER THE WILL OF GOD. And the song of the rose says the same thing.
(One of the voices in the choral multitude is her father's.)
For close to fifteen minutes she stands there, and no one disturbs her. It's a common enough sight here, no doubt; she is not the first (nor, probably, the hundredth) to stand before the rose in a moment of doubt or fear or desperation, seeking clarity, seeking strength, seeking hope. Seeking all three.
She's going to need it.
3:30pm
Tomorrow. At high noon. It's such a cliché, but sometimes a cliché is the only appropriate response to the situation.
The afternoon air is damp and cool, but not bitingly cold, when Charlie steps out the door of the Dolphin Hotel and heads for the corner. Down Fifth Avenue one block to the bus stop on East 60th, take the M3 four stops to 47th, and then walk east. Madison, Park, Lexington, Third ... and Second.
Even from here, she can already hear the singing.
She turns aside on her way to the Tet building to look at the turtle sculpture in the park across the street, and notes with amusement that someone has left a folded piece of paper under the turtle's left front foot, the carved claws punched carefully through to anchor it. The impulse to look at what it says is irresistible, and she doesn't really try very hard to resist it.
Scrawled in green pen across the page are the words Son, you did real good. It's not for her, then. That's fine. Someone else's story, briefly crossing through her own.
In the lobby, she nods to the doorman and walks directly up to the little shrine in the middle of the floor. The Garden of the Beam.
If the sound of the good-mind at Taos is a hum, the sound of the rose is a thousand church choirs singing together. Her hands close lightly around the velvet rope that marks off the garden's boundary, and she stands there, eyes half closed, letting the song pour over her.
She doesn't need to look at the plaque to know what it says: GOOD OVER EVIL, THIS IS EVER THE WILL OF GOD. And the song of the rose says the same thing.
(One of the voices in the choral multitude is her father's.)
For close to fifteen minutes she stands there, and no one disturbs her. It's a common enough sight here, no doubt; she is not the first (nor, probably, the hundredth) to stand before the rose in a moment of doubt or fear or desperation, seeking clarity, seeking strength, seeking hope. Seeking all three.
She's going to need it.
