And there was something thrilling about it—I could hardly believe my luck. To me that careless splash of red seemed almost like a visitation—of the distant tulip past, yes, for here was the return of the virus so assiduously repressed, but of something else, too, some inchoate, underground force that riveted me. It was as if the whole grid of flowers and, by extension, the grid of the city itself had been put in doubt by that one ecstatic, wayward pulse of life. (Or was it death? I guess you’d have to say it was both.)
