Was this the street? So many years since, he, a frightened boy, so timid and uncertain, had stumbled into this cobbletone corridor, pushed along by the surging chaos and color of carnivale. The shop half as narrow as its neighbors, and hidden beneath climbing vines of bougainvillea, had beckoned to him with the soft tinkle of small bells. As he took a step, he had tripped on the uneven stones, falling into the fragrant floral embrace of the shop’s front facade.
He rememberd reaching for the oversized ornate pewter handle, as he glanced up at a sign that read, The Mask Shop of M. S. Irani. He remembered thinking it was an odd name for such a shop. If in that moment he had known that he was stepping across the threshold of the universe, and past the illusion that sustains reality, into the beyond the beyond, he would have dared not enter.