A young man with his long hair held back in a rubber band and wearing a tipped-back cowboy hat stopped and clapped him briefly on the shoulder. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?” the hippie cowboy said. “I don’t know just why, but it really is. I come once a day. You want to know something?”

Callahan turned toward the young man, wiping at his streaming eyes. “Yes, I guess so.”

The young man brushed a hand across his brow, then his cheek. “I used to have the world’s worst acne. I mean, pizza-face wasn’t even in it, I was roadkill- face. Then I started coming here in late March or early April, and…everything cleared up.” The young man laughed. “The dermo guy my Dad sent me to says it’s the zinc oxide, but I think it’s this place. Something about this place. Do you hear it?”

Although Callahan’s voice was ringing with sweetly singing voices—it was like being in Notre Dame cathedral, and surrounded by choirs—he shook his head. Doing so was nothing more than instinct.

“Nah,” said the hippie in the cowboy hat, “me neither. But sometimes I think I do.” He raised his right hand to Callahan, the first two fingers extended in a V. “Peace, brother.”

“Peace,” Callahan said, and returned the sign.

When the hippie cowboy was gone, Callahan ran his hand across the splintery boards of the fence, and a tattered poster advertising War of the Zombies . What he wanted more than anything was to climb over and see the rose…possibly to fall on his knees and adore it. But the sidewalks were packed with people, and already he had attracted too many curious looks, some no doubt from people who, like the hippie cowboy, knew a bit about the power of this place. He would best serve the great and singing force behind this fence (was it a rose? could it be no more than that?) by protecting it. And that meant protecting Calvin Tower from whoever had burned down his store.

Still trailing his hand along the rough boards, he turned onto Forty-sixth Street. Down at the end on this side was the glassy-green bulk of the U.N. Plaza Hotel. Calla, Callahan, he thought, and then: Calla, Callahan, Calvin. And then: Calla-come-four, there’s a rose behind the door, Calla-come-Callahan, Calvin’s one more!

He reached the end of the fence. At first he saw nothing, and his heart sank. Then he looked down, and there it was, at knee height: five numbers written in black. Callahan reached into his pocket for the stub of pencil he always kept there, then pulled off a corner of a poster for an off-Broadway play called Dungeon Plunger, A Revue . On this he scribbled five numbers.

He didn’t want to leave, but knew he had to; clear thinking this close to the rose was impossible.

I’ll be back,he told it, and to his delighted amazement, a thought came back, clear and true: Yes, Father, anytime. Come-commala.