Operti's Tropical Garden, 1876 (lantern photograph).

Look up, William. Look around. Operti's is cosmic, aromatic, an Edenic cove of high skies and blooms. Gas lanterns float like kites overhead. Potted trees shadow the paths. Gardenias spill. There are the bright flags of celosia and astilbe, the ballsy blues of the balloon flower, the yellow sleeves of forsythia forced well past their season, begonias the color of dandelions and fire, and in the midst of it all, the orchestra stand, which seems positively jungle-grown, carved out of an Amazonian forest. From most every wall hang frescoes-primaries and pastels-and along the very back someone has painted a rock cliff of schist and granite, then turned some sort of spigot on, so that water, real water, cascades down. The sound of Operti's is gush and violins, the squeak of a chair, the leak of gas in a jet above, a stifled sneeze in the vicinity of gardenia, and above that the silence of every single place that has ever lain in wait of an evening audience.

From Dangerous Neighbors, novel in progress, © 2008 Beth Kephart