A Condition, Time, or Period of Flowering

“Okay,” he says.

The last few echoes of classical guitar knock up against the cool glass of the revolving doors, falling to the ground with little drunken plinks before finally giving up. One by one, the partiers push through into the chilly October air.

The chilly October air pushes back. It’s so beautiful. It is.

They leave the party feeling good, I think. This is the life. This is New York City all around and everywhere. Eating us, keeping us, teaching us, pointing at us and laughing.

Their private tour bus is waiting for them; waiting to take them slowly down golden Fifth Avenue with its open windows and its old stories. One by one, they board. There is no other way, but one by one. They climb the abbreviated staircase to the upper level, so that they can feel the chilly October air, so that - perhaps - they will have to push closer together, through whatever cool glass there may be, in order to keep warm. Above them now is one of those unreal New York City skies; a T.S. Eliot sky - veiled in fluorescence.

(Or is it veiled in florescence? he wonders. He has to look it up so that he can spell it right: f-l-u-o-r-e-s-c-e-n-c-e. And then he reads: “The emission of electromagnetic radiation, esp. of visible light, stimulated in a substance by the absorption of incident radiation and persisting only as long as the stimulation radiation is continued.” And then he goes back: f-l-o-r-e-s-c-e-n-c-e. And he reads: “A condition, time, or period of flowering.”)

So, which one is it? Impossible to be sure, perhaps.

This is the way. They touch, they make jokes, they make fun, they laugh. This is the way. The tour guide must be drunk, too.

“It would have been nice,” he thinks.

(Nice to what? I wonder.)

And, then again: “It would be nice,” he thinks.

(If what? I wonder.)

And the woman sits beside him thinking of what.

(Of what? he wonders.)

What was so special about this?

“It’s nice,” he says, “to hear people talking like this. To hear people marvel over their city as though they’ve never seen it.”

She nods, I think. Or perhaps: “Yeah,” she says.

It is difficult to be sure because they have had much to drink.

But the thing of it is this: they are only a few feet above the ground - not so far from where they usually stand at all. But they are now so close - this close - to the street signs, to Fifth Avenue, to the sky, to the traffic lights, to the tree branches. The tree branches! They can touch them.

“Don’t touch those!” the tour guide cries.

They look into other people’s apartments and wonder. For passing moments, they look into other people’s lives and wonder. She makes an observation. A very good point. She is right. He will remember it. Something about her is glowing like Fifth Avenue.

Someone from the back of the bus calls out to them. They turn around, pose for the camera. The white flash.

Too soon, they reach their destination. The tour guide says something that she has said one hundred thirty-six thousand, three hundred fifty-seven times before. Her words collapse onto the abbreviated staircase with little, helpless thuds. One by one, they fall away, like nothing. Like nothing.

With spots of dark and light in their eyes, and green flowers on their happy lapels, the partiers rise and slowly proceed, following in line, stepping gingerly down the abbreviated staircase and carefully around the helpless, forgotten words.