As if to confirm this, a harried-sounding woman said, “Maybe some people can stand around all day, but some of us are walking here. Think yez could move it along, or at least get over to the side?”

Callahan spoke an apology which he doubted was heard (or appreciated if it was), and moved along. That sense of being in a dream—an extraordinarily vivid dream—persisted until he neared Forty-sixth Street. Then he began to hear the rose, and everything in his life changed.

Seven

At first it was little more than a murmur, but as he drew closer, he thought he could hear many voices, angelic voices, singing. Raising their confident, joyful psalms to God. He had never heard anything so sweet, and he began to run. He came to the fence and laid his hands against it. He began to weep, couldn’t help it. He supposed people were looking at him, but he didn’t care. He suddenly understood a great deal about Roland and his friends, and for the first time felt a part of them. No wonder they were trying so hard to survive, and to go on! No wonder, when this was at stake! There was something on the other side of this fence with its tattered overlay of posters…something so utterly and completely wonderful …

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.