The Third Miracle: A Novel - Hardcover

October 1995

A dark-haired man in jeans, black sweatshirt and dark blue windbreaker emerged from the crowd at the pulsating corner of Union Street and Northern Boulevard. Making his way past the mixture of Korean, Chinese, and English neon signs which lit that dense corner of the world at Main Street, Flushing, in the Borough of Queens, he seemed oblivious to everything around him.

The early October breeze of twilight was cooler than normal and the man, his large brown eyes ablaze with some inner passion, seemed oblivious to it all. He had a mass of thick black hair and a handsome face that was half hidden by a thick black beard.

The Iranian, who sold hot dogs on the corner, saw the darkhaired man in the dirty windbreaker pass the corner of Union and Northern every day at the same time -- between five and six. He saw the man emerge from the small SRO Hotel on Union Street, next door to the car service, and watched him walk toward Northern Boulevard as rush hour traffic flowed more east than west at that time of evening.

He also saw that the man talked to no one, acknowledged no one, and looked around for no one. He could see how the man was engrossed in his own thoughts, not even distracted by the car horns or low-flying planes on their way toward night landings at LaGuardia airport, over Flushing Bay.

Across from the hot dog man was an old armory now used to shelter the homeless. Every day at six, the man in the windbreaker waited for the flash of car lights on Northern Boulevard to stop. Then he walked across the island, across from Sears, passed the twelve-foot stone statue crowned by the large head of an eagle, dedicated to the dead of World War I, and made his way to the castlelike fortress.

Every day at six, he walked past the open steel gates, up four flights of stone steps, and entered the large doors of the shelter. Once inside, he would acknowledge the heavyset black security guard with a quick glance.

"Hey, Frank! How ya been doin'?" the smiling guard asked.

Frank Moore ignored the guard and walked down a stairway, where he found a long line of homeless men, mostly black, some disturbed, some just out of luck, waiting for the clock to strike six so they could walk up to a long metal table and get their dinner.

Another security guard, a black woman in her forties, nodded to Frank as she twirled a set of keys, balancing a dark blue security guard cap on her short but rich, thick head of hair. "We got chicken and rice," she grinned.

It must be Monday, Frank thought.

Sitting down with the roomful of men, Frank hungrily ate his meal, while watching the faces of the destitute and the lost. He saw the morose face of an elderly black man with smooth skin and gray hair, eating slowly as he stared out into the distance, facing some unknown agony. He could see the hunger in every one of the quiet faces, eating, sipping their cans of soda, all thinking quietly or talking softly to themselves.

Suddenly a white man in a dirty, baggy blue coat with a dirty blue shirt underneath it stood up. He had a ring of long white hair that circled a large bald spot at the top of his head. Tiny grains of rice clung to his chin and his light blue eyes seemed focused on some tiny object miles away.

"God is a dog!" he said to no one in particular. "God is a dog!" He then turned to Frank and glared at him. "I said God is a dog!"

"Okay, God's a dog," Frank answered.

Pleased by Frank's response, the man sat back in his chair.

After his dinner in the shelter, he walked out of the armory and down to Main Street where the Keats, an old, eight-story movie theater, stood. He walked to the large building, admiring the architecture, then continued past the old town hall and looked up Main Street, where a thousand signs flashed something to sell.

Sky black, and stars invisible, he walked in the neon glare and made his way back to the SRO Hotel on Union Street. He walked past the small desk where a thin white man in his fifties sat reading a magazine and made his way up a flight of stairs that looked as dirty as the pale green walls that bordered it.

Reaching his room, he opened the old rotting door with a key, happy that the rotten wood around the lock withstood one more day of use. Once inside, he put on the bright ceiling light and ignored the roaches that infested the once white kitchen sink. He sat in a dirty, old leather chair. Turning on the small radio, an old transistor, which sat on a small table against the wall, he listened to an inane talk show for a few minutes, then quickly changed the station to one which played opera.

Frank sat quietly, allowing the dramatic, forceful music to fill his room. The eloquent voices of sound competed with the night sounds coming from outside his window: the voices, the cars passing, and the occasional cry in the night. The only other items in the room were books and journals. There was also a pad on the desk. Frank sat at the desk and wrote, immersed in a grotesque kind of freedom.

The surface of the water was still until he stepped in, lowered his head, and pushed himself off the side of the empty pool. With strong, sharp strokes, he powered his way down the center lane, feeling the smooth, calming waters surrounding him.

With each stroke he pushed his thin but muscled frame further through the warm waters of the indoor pool. Every few feet he would lift his head to the surface to take a breath, then plunge his head back under again. His goggles protected his eyes from the sting of the chlorine and his earplugs kept him from getting ear infections. But alone in the pool, floating without the acute sense of sound and sight, he felt weightless. He felt his body glide across the darkened surface of the water, free of the clamor of the world. With each stroke he came closer to another lap and with each lap he fell deeper into the privacy of his own thoughts.

Though the pool was smaller than the Olympic-sized pools he was used to, there was still no movement or sound coming from outside its waters; no one was around except the lifeguard, immersed in a book. Through a large window at the right end of the indoor pool, strong rays of light came through the smoked glass and lightly dappled the pool, bringing to the room a look of twilight.

Having just turned thirty-five, he had been swimming most of his adult life. He used to swim four, sometimes five times a week. He didn't smoke, so the breath he needed was always there for him when he decided to swim four or five hundred yards without stopping. He needed to feel his body afloat in a world without a top and a bottom to it, without a sky above and an earth below.

Frank liked the pool. It was housed in the Y only a block away from his room. It was clean and was never very busy, especially not at six in the morning, when he usually swam. It was his main form of exercise and his only refuge.

As he swam, his thoughts drifted back to his childhood in Queens. He remembered the large pool they had in school and how he loved to stay late to swim. Back then, he didn't swim with the same passion he had discovered as he grew older, but more to float. To float alone and feel free, but most of all, to hold his breath. To hold his breath and see how long he could stay under water without coming up. He loved to do that, to sink into the silence of the pool with no one around, with no one else there but himself.

And now, as he swam, he remembered how he held his breath and wondered what it was like never to breathe again. He looked down at the bottom and thought about the tranquility his mind craved: to hold his breath, not wanting any more air in his lungs; to close out the world beyond the silence of the pool and its warm, soothing waters.

There was no loneliness for him in the pool's watery quiet. There was himself and the wide world of water. It was a world where nothing moved, nothing mattered. The bottom of the pool had no day or night, no weekend, no language, no rules. It existed as a bare place, that somehow calmed and warmed. Frank felt his heart beat more calmly in this world.

One arm over the next. Up out of water for breath, then down again. Searching for the peace lost somewhere between what he had and what now was gone. Another stroke to forget himself and who he was. Another stroke to get himself closer to the bottom.

Halfway through his swim, time and space would begin to disappear. They faded out like a slow dissolve on a movie screen. In and out, he would drift. Suddenly everything would stop. Each second of time would disappear. Space merged with emptiness and he would drift through it, alone.

On this particular morning he was fascinated by the image of a woman he had never seen before. She came to him as he pushed his way through the pool. First, he saw her face. Though it was a blur, he could make out strands of dark gray hair and watery eyes. Then came a voice that was speaking softly to him, calmly but with determination. But he couldn't make out what she was saying.

Aquatic mirages had occurred many times before while swimming. Images from his past, people from his childhood, names he thought long forgotten, all came to him in those moments when time and space melted away. But this woman who came to him he felt sure he had never seen nor spoken to before. It was as if she were right there with him as he swam. Her presence was unmistakable.

Pushing off from one side of the small pool for another lap, he glanced up at the window again. And that's when he saw her. She was standing, a silhouette at the edge of the pool, the bright light of the window glowing behind her. He could see her small, dark face watching him. He could see the outline of her body, immobile and yet strikingly alive, calling out silently for his attention.

He stopped swimming.

Standing in four feet of water, his feet felt for the bottom. He stared at the dark presence through fogged goggles which he quickly pushed up onto his forehead. He squinted. He pulled out his earplugs to help regain his senses. She was there, standing silently. All he could hear was the sound of water rippling gently.

"Wh...