On this day, like every other day, the bustle of the city grew all around Lowell. People passed before him like clouds across the sky. A young woman with a very large cup of coffee — Seattle’s Best — sat on an adjacent bench, glancing furtively at Lowell as she took her seat. She carried a newspaper, but didn’t open it to read. Instead, she reached into her purse and extracted her cell phone. Lowell could hear only the outline of her speech — a staccato march of purple D notes, a thick F-sharp, and back to D; slowing now: largo, largo. How beautiful, he thought.

Pigeons congregated in the small stone plaza in front of where Lowell sat, cooing and pecking at the crumbs of bagel and muffin and scone dropped by passers by. A young man with a backpack and wires hanging from his

ears strode through the birds and they scattered — some taking flight; others just hopping indifferently out of the way. A tall man with a gray ponytail and a black briefcase scattered the perturbed pigeons again as he walked past in the other direction; stopped; and pressed a Sacagawea dollar into Lowell’s hand. Lowell curled his fingers back and grasped the coin lightly. The gray ponytail continued on his way and Lowell contemplated the coin as the pigeons reassembled.

What have we here? he thought. A gift. And what shall we do with this totem, Lucy? What shall we do?

Lowell took the coin and felt its contours with his fingers. Very well, he thought, and held it securely in his hand. A beam of sun slipped through a crack in the cityscape

behind Lowell and etched a brilliant parallelogram into the plaza stone. Lowell projected the parallelogram onto his ethereal canvass and listened carefully to the sound the light made as it rose to heaven. How glorious, he thought. It has the vibrato of a xylophone; a bold silver B-flat warming my soul.

Lowell consumed the moment fully and allowed the next moment to progress. As each moment passed, the light grew. It would be after 10:00 o’clock in Manhattan, he thought. How marvelous. So many moments of wonder dotting the land from coast to coast—like the points in a Seurat. Moments that have come and gone; each new one emerging fresh, spring-fed from the infinite source of time.
The light in Manhattan would be much grander at this moment, yet spliced in

so many more threads. The thread of light that had shown into Lowell’s office window often obscured his work, casting a luminescent film across his field of vision and placing his hands and pen into a ghostly, otherworldly dimension. Lowell had to stop; the sunlight diffused the colors on his board and he sat back on his stool to change perspective. But the light was persistent and everything remained a lustrous black and white.

Ah, forget it! Lowell said to himself and set down his pen to go get a cup of water. As he leaned in to fill his cup from the water cooler, a voice spoke to him from behind: “Lowell.”

Lowell straightened and turned to face Robert Stinson, the young account executive.
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