Dahlia's recognition did not change anything. She was still navigating her maze. Once the train was past, she stepped from track to track, continuing into the darkness. She wasn't aware how long she walked there. She meditated on her pain instead of wondering or calculating. This was an ordeal. There was no point in measuring it. God would set the parameters.
She dodged a few more trains and eventually the darkness faded. She had reached the 59th street station. Metal stairs led up to the platform, ending in a metal gate that pushed open easily. There was only one person around. He was wearing a white polo shirt and orange shorts. His pink stubbly face had a puzzled expression. In fact, it conveyed "puzzled" so well that it should have been illustrating a dictionary. But Dahlia did not acknowledge him. She walked up more stairs, past the 6 train, and up another set of stairs.
Dahlia was still walking through her maze, with a black sky ceiling and high bright walls. After a while she walked to a door as if it were the only door on the block. She walked past a doorman hunched intensely over his phone. "No, no, Maria. I'm not saying it like that. I just meant she was in it, in the thing..."
She pressed 24 in the elevator, and when she got there she walked through door F, an unlocked entryway into a beautiful Manhattan apartment. She walked directly to a bedroom where a woman sat motionless and cross-legged on the bed, as if she were floating on it. But Dahlia ignored her and picked up an ornate box on the night stand. She plucked at spokes that were engraved on the lid. This one 3 times, this one 7, this one 40. They shifted slightly each time and then when she was done the lid sprang open, revealing a small object wrapped in blue silk. She grabbed it with her right hand and lifted it to the ceiling.
"My thumb!" she cried. And then she smelled the roses.