The Labyrinth

They were headed to the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral for their final rehearsal before the show opened the following weekend. As they car-pooled to Nob Hill, everyone seemed edgy, and either giddy or on the verge of tears as their caravan inched up the steep hills past downtown, and then drove around some more looking for parking on the crowded streets. Horner felt he had infected the others with this feeling, though perhaps he had only caught it from them. During last week’s rehearsal, there had been anger and frustration, which Kyle and Marni had channeled into an intense duet. This week, Horner had brought along a vulnerable sort of energy, and it mingled with everyone else’s into a volatile soup. Would they finally solve the problem of moving through space? Had they already, somewhere in the endless improvisations and breakdowns, recoveries and new ideas, solved the problem without even realizing it? As he walked up the hill to the cathedral, having parked at last, Megan trudged along beside Horner in her black spandex bicycle pants with a yellow racing stripe down the side. Her face puckered in a pout as she told him about school and work, and the various projects she was working on, sighing doubtfully as though she could foresee the doom of each one.

Like many of the others in the troupe, he supposed, Horner imagined the labyrinth being some kind of maze made of tall hedges, perhaps stone, with the ghost of the Minotaur chasing after them. But as it turned out, there were two labyrinths at Grace Cathedral — both of them modeled on the one at Chartres in France, a broad, circular maze designed on the stone floor. One of them was inside, in the nave of the church. The other was outside, in the courtyard underneath the gothic-style cathedral’s towers. This labyrinth was the one Hannah chose for the evening’s rehearsal.

There was a strong element of ritual involved. The idea was to slowly traverse the narrow, symbolic corridors of the labyrinth, letting go of one’s doubts and fears along the way, until reaching the center, the point of illumination, where one could stand for a while and quietly contemplate the divine. Then, relieved of earthly burdens of sin and remorse, at one with God, one could retrace the steps back out of the labyrinth. This effect was heightened by the open-air environment — after focusing on the path itself, casting one’s eyes down at the stone floor for however long it took to navigate, one reached the infinite space of the center, where one could turn about and breathe, able to take in the whole skyline of the City, the stained-glass windows on the face of the cathedral, the nearby Gomorrah of downtown, trees, birds, the honking of cars and clang of cable cars and bite of chill in the air… all these rushed in as well, washed clean by the absorbing struggle through the maze, and one seemed to soar into them, fresh and new.

Hannah had found some second-hand smock-type dresses for everyone to wear. Horner picked out a big blue one with huge, sand-dollar-sized buttons down the front, and pulled it on over his jeans and t-shirt, managing to fasten the hook in the back, although the zipper eluded his reach. The women each hoisted on one of the dresses, while Kyle put on a slip. Then they made their way up through the church to the labyrinth.

Horner felt solemn and holy. He was not particularly religious, but he had always harbored a strong sense of reverence for the rituals and trappings of the church, its icons and images and architecture. There was definitely something holy about the labyrinth. Call it the accumulated weight of all the pilgrims who’d preceded them, the stones still heavy with their steps, their patient devotion and the deep sighs of their prayers. The group witnessed two such penitents as they waited to enter, men in business attire having come here straight from the office, it seemed; they moved at a deliberate pace, their eyes locked to the path, having to endure the admonishments of a guitar-wielding crank who called from nearby that they were “walking Satan’s path,” an accusation they ignored until reaching the center, when one of the men, glancing up, angrily responded.

They took turns entering the maze, heads bent like monks. Rachel went first, then Kyle and Kayla, and Ashley right before Horner. At first, they were spaced evenly. Rachel had charged in very quickly, but turned around and around by the twists in the path, and seeing how slowly the others were proceeding, she stopped. There was a sort of petulant, dead-set look on her face as she waited for the others to catch up.

Upon reaching Rachel, everyone had to stop. Horner was annoyed by this, having up until then felt pleasantly blank and prayerful. After a moment, all hell broke loose. It was Horner who started it. Growing bored with having to stand stiffly with eyes focused downward, so as not to lose his place on the path, he tried a head-stand. When that didn’t work, he tried another. Next, everyone began trying to find a more interesting and dancerly way to move, quickly getting “lost” as they ignored the lines of the path and treated it like a stage. Once they began moving again, Horner found that he was walking backwards. Ashley promptly lay down and didn’t move at all. Kyle, Hannah, and Horner eventually rolled her over and lifted her above their heads, carrying her along the path — but it began to feel spooky, at least to Horner, as though they were transporting a corpse, and they set her back down.

As he walked, Horner could see how the labyrinth stood for the Alice Project, if not for life itself: You progressed in various ways, moving in concert with someone for a while, you helped or hindered one another, you had to decide whether to leave that person behind, whether to break the rules and step out of the lines or continue to follow them; you found yourself on some desolate part of the path, far away from anyone else.

But that was only the most obvious metaphor one could make of the maze. Horner wanted it to simply be what it was, or what it was supposed to be: a solemn magical journey which, through its sharp turns and long loops, paradoxically led straight to God.

He walked on.

The guitar player who’d harassed the two businessmen had settled down, perhaps won over by the group’s irreverence, and now sat on a stone bench serenading them, strumming a mournful dirge. Hannah kept leaping in and out of the maze to adjust her camera. Inside the maze, people got lost and found each other again, falling into strange, silent duets.

It was then that Horner walked straight into Kayla, who was coming the other way on the path. They stopped and smiled at each other and hugged. They stood that way for a long time, all the tentativeness and tension draining out of their bodies, letting the other one further and further inside, letting go of all the barriers between them. And then Horner did something that just came into his mind and his mouth and limbs, without thinking about it.

“I love you, Kayla,” he said, into her neck, into her flesh.

They kept embracing a moment longer. Then they pulled back, searching each other’s faces, still stuck together at the eyes and sharing a long, mysterious smile. And then with a dancerly flourish, they disentangled themselves, and continued on their confused and separate ways.

It felt so good to Horner to say those words and really mean them. In that moment, he knew that he loved Kayla, somehow he always had and always would, loved her in a way that was beyond love and that never had to be said at all, never could be said, except that he wanted her to know it. These were the only words he spoke while he was in the labyrinth.

It seemed, then, that he was now free to do anything he wanted to do. Other pilgrims had begun to accumulate, waiting to enter the maze — one woman had actually walked through, dodging the dancers with good grace whenever a tangle of arms or legs obstructed her progress. Someone whispered that a priest was peering down at them through binoculars from a high window, no doubt alarmed by their blasphemies. Horner decided he must take off all his clothes.

He began with the dress, unhooking it in the back and pulling it carefully over his head. Then he stepped out of his shoes and socks, and stripped off his shirt.

The others who had yet to complete their time in the labyrinth — Rachel and Kyle — perhaps reacting to the increasing scrutiny of those around them, felt compelled to collect his discarded clothes and carry them back to him, as though he’d dropped them by accident. They pressed the items on Horner — he refused, letting them scatter here and there on the path. But then Rachel tracked him down and forced the dress over his head, jerking it down his body like a mother getting a child ready for school.        

In this way, a compromise was tacitly reached: Horner continued to strip off his pants and underwear, but without removing the dress — thus avoiding whatever sacrilege he was in danger of committing. He had been trying to time the conclusion of his striptease to coincide with his exit from the labyrinth, but this was difficult, given the twists and turns of the path. He wound up walking for several minutes with nothing covering him but the dress, feeling the cool evening breeze stirring between his bare legs. And then the path turned one final time and he was done. He stood there putting on his clothes, silent and smarting from the experience as though he’d just emerged from an ice-cold river.

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