Flaming Messiah
(page 3)
Anyway, as I was saying earlier, I had two sensations as we entered the room. The second sensation I got was that I was unusually tall, as if I was the tallest person there, or certainly, only one of a very small group of tall people in the room. It could have simply been that I was the only tall person standing at that particular moment and every one else was sitting, but it was hard to tell in the haze and the din.
Mind you, I'm only six feet tall, but most of the people here were, for the most part, were young adults who seemed to be awaiting a final post pubescent growth spurt. It was odd. Maybe it's a California phenomenon, but it seems to me that young adults nowadays don't finish physically growing up in high school the same way we did. Now they do it when they're in college, or after college. And as I think back, I'm certain that at none of the high school class reunions I'd ever gone to: the 5th, 10th, the 20th, the 30th, had anyone ever grown vertically after graduation. Here in California it seemed to be the norm to postpone reaching adult height until you were out of school. Of course, this phenomenon could be attributed to my imagination and nothing else. I was really feeling old tonight. I hunkered down to make myself look younger and I shuffled forward hoping no one would see my white shoes.
Despite the undeniable saturation of the room by the deafening, pounding music, I thought as I hovered over the short crowd, "No one is dancing." They couldn't if they wanted to. The room was un-traversable. It was wall-to-wall people. You could see only tiny, potential "micro-pathways" to, say, the food table or the beaded curtain, but other than that, it was just vertical, stationary bodies in black clothes having conversations.
There was one implied micropath that led to the other end of the room, but it was just as dark and noisy there, and with no food table. I was, in a way, comforted that I, because of my height advantage, could see micropaths throughout the crowd. I may have been the only person in the room with such an advantage. I was like a pilot flying over a swarm of wild gazelles on the Serengeti. Only I, at my current altitude, could witness and comprehend the river-like flow of the massive herd. Only I could see the paths to safety if lions should attack.
I shifted my gaze to the far ends of the room. Along each wall was a ledge, a sort of wainscot I suppose. On the ledges were Mexican novena candles spaced a few feet apart. It gave the room an exotic glow as the candles inside the glass cylinders flickered and illuminated the Jesus or the Virgin Mary or Our Lady of Guadalupe on their outside surfaces.
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