The dirty underbelly of Houston exhaled, the hot breath
pulsing out from the concrete tunnels like a sleeping dragon. The normal
entrance to the Wortham parking garage had closed hours before, so the only
option was a deserted tunnel that snaked under the boulevard. I waited for a
car to pass, its headlights beaming through the humid air, and jogged to the
entrance of the tunnel.
Just before I entered the abyss, a woman turned the corner of
the building, on a similar mission to find her parked car. In front of me, she
paused a moment, hesitant to enter. The fear quickly passed, and she bowed her
head as she began to walk downward.
I had noticed her at intermission. I bought an overpriced
whiskey, perhaps an attempt to blend into the scene of crisp jackets and long
dresses. As I took the first sip, my eyes glanced at her just over the crystal
rim. Her legs were the most striking; they were wrapped in socks or leggings
with white concentric circles spaced up the length of her calf. Elegant, bold,
and a defiant departure from the drab muted tones of everyone else’s legs.
Her skirt was tight around her waist, but frayed out in
carefully folded creases. It angled outward on all sides, but wasn’t so
dramatic as to create a triangle or pyramid; it was curiously in-between and
without definition. The soft blue sheen shifted in color with each motion of
her leg, as the lights bounced off in a chaotic dance.
The air in the
tunnel was thick and hot, and moved in ghostly waves. The yellow lights dimly
lit the slick concrete, and it extended a hundred yards to the white light of
the garage. The only sounds were our steps, and the distant sounds of horns
that may have been bouncing around for hours.
As I passed by her, I smiled, and for the first time noticed
her age. The wrinkles on the top of her cheekbones and corners of her jaw
revealed the five or six decades she had seen.
Now in front of me, I could see the beauty of her outfit
matched in her face. Her eyes were a deep brown, so deep that the pupils had
sunk into the darkness. In that moment, I wanted to comb her iris forever, in
constant expedition of the black center I was sure would be there. Its
astounding absence was a perfect reflection of her beauty; subtly humble and
quietly magnificent. Her lips were thin and brown, but somehow grew with her
smile. The corners turned up, but the tips turned down as she spoke her first
words to me:
“The doors are closed, right?”
I had to gulp to moisturize my suddenly dry mouth. “Yeah,
they are,” I responded, and immediately regretted everything. Yeah? Why not ‘yes mam’? At least ‘yes’. God damn it Michael, act
appropriately.
“Why do they close so early?” her words were coated in some
foreign accent, but I had never tasted it.
“I don’t know, it’s a little ridiculous,” my stumbling over
words continued. I was seeing her in intimidated fear, and she was seeing me as
yet another young man impatient for words.
She smiled once more, and we walked further into the tunnel,
the only sound her heels striking the smooth concrete in a confident tap. My hands shifted uneasily over my
jacket, and I was careful to keep the label hidden. My sleeves were rolled up, one
arm – as always – looser than the other.
Her smile flashed at me again. “Did you enjoy it?”
“The Little…”
“Yes, the Little Prince,” she quickly clarified. The Nutcracker had also played that evening,
and opera-goers were careful to distinguish themselves from the more blasé
ballet.
“I thought it was wonderful,” I said with a smile, slowly
working sophistication into my words.
“Did you read the book?”
“Yes, long ago. As a child.”
She said ‘child’ as I did, and my heart leapt. She either
approved of the word (as opposed to ‘kid’, ‘youngin’, or some other American
slang of which she clearly wasn’t fond of), or she too experienced it as or
through the eyes of a child.
“It was great to see all of those characters…” I paused and
waved my hands, rolling through words in my head like outfits. “…visualized.”
She smiled again, corners up, tips down. “Oh yes, it was
wonderful.”
We walked several steps forward in silence, while the opera
played in our heads once more.
“I’m glad someone’s accompanying me down here,” she said as
she glanced down the tunnel.
“Yeah, it’s a little spooky down here.”
“Yes it is.”
Her serves were strong, her volleys precise. It was as if
the leather stitching from her luxury handbag had leaked into her soul,
straightened her spine, and kept her internal thoughts organized into clean
folders. Again we walked in silence, as she looked through her files for
conversation starters, and I obsessed over my conversational failures.
“So what made you choose the opera tonight?”
“Well, I stumbled across it this afternoon, and made an
impulsive decision,” I replied.
“Good.”
“I’m a graduate student at Texas A&M, and also needed a
break from what seems like a constant work load.”
“Oh good” she
smiled, “And what do you study?”
“I’m getting a PhD in Agricultural Economics.”
“So then, what did you think of the rose?” she asked coyly.
I laughed, “I think that was one of the best parts. Not because
of anything to do with agriculture, but because he’s deriving importance from
something only because of the time he invested in it.”
“Yes,” she responded shortly, but her eyes hid some deeper
response I wish I could have heard.
“In a way,” I continued, “roses in general are meaningless.
We just have to create importance for something to be important, and I like
that.”
Her eyes scanned the ground in front of us. She didn’t say
anything, and I feared I had stuck a sensitive chord. The truth is, I didn’t
like the thought at all. In fact, I hated it. It simply a novel thought, a
perspective that hadn’t entered my head before, and like a child I necessarily
shook with excitement because it was simply new.
With only 24 years of words tucked away in a tuft of my brain, ‘like’ was the
only way I could describe it to someone I had just met. I wish I could have
said more.
“This is my car here,” she said as her taping came to a stop at the entrance of the stairs.
“Okay, great.”
“Thank you for your service, sir,” corners up, tips down.
“No problem. You have a good evening.”
“You too.”
She tilted her head slightly to the left with her smile,
closed her eyes, and curtsied. I turned to go back down the stairs, but walked
softly enough to hear her heels fade away.
I never got her name, nor gave her mine. I don’t know where
she’s from, or exactly how old she was. She drove somewhere, I drove somewhere
else, and our paths will likely never cross again.
I’ve planted roses in the soil of my family’s greenhouses,
the snow of Ithaca hills, the grime of Bombay streets, and the dust in the
Texas air. Some sprout, some grow, some die. I look to each one in fascination,
in childish hope it will root into my skinny arms and frizzy hair.
Someone had cared for that rose growing in the underbelly of
Houston. As I pulled onto the deserted highway stretching away from the city, I
hoped that one day I could watch such a beautiful rose grow.
You’re wrong, Little
Prince, I thought, the beauty of a
rose has never been measured in time.
