But the wardrobe, or memories of that fiery red car for that matter, were neither her nor there in the here and now. What brought this all to mind was that feeling of exhilaration that Edward had felt when his roadster was on the edge and the grip was starting to go from the tires. Screaming around high speed corners right on the edge and wondering if that last bit of rubber was going to give up its embrace of the hot asphalt blazing by at breakneck speed. The thought that maybe, just maybe , this time he would actually lose control. And, of course, the relief and self-satisfaction that he always felt when once again, Edward ‘s control proved immaculate.

At this moment, the exhilaration was there, surging through the room, ad Edward relaxed into to it ever so slightly, confident that once again he would remain in control.

11:24

The biggest problem Edward had had when he finally divested himself of the roadster was what to do with the clothes. A well dressed rabbit zooming by at 85 miles an hour was one thing, but a fashion forward bunny decked out in tweed and a classic wool flat cap strolling through the park was something else. It just wouldn’t do to.

It was, if Edward was honest with himself, like the thing he missed most of the motoring period. After all, there hadn’t been a lot of periods in Edward’s long life to be the well-dressed one and Edward was nothing if not just as vain as the rest of his species.

11:17

“Seriously? A mojito?”

11:8

That really described this near debacle of an operation didn’t it. Look for what was under the surface before you get your leg bitten off by alligators, or crushed by rocks, or shot by snipers for that matter.

But for now, there was just one focus. He needed to find the beaver, remove him as a variable, and retrieve the documentation that had been his primary objective all along. And, it seemed probable, that this could be accomplished on the other side of this rather shabby door.

Edward shivered and took a moment to preen his fur. Presentation counts, he reminded himself.

10:7

Edward gazed up the staircase and paused. An entrance strategy, that’s what I need. A bunny can’t very well burst in on the scene without an invitation, can he. Might cause all sorts of complications. Edward recalled that unfortunate series events that spawned from the locked door and the survivalist family… no, no let us not repeat that shall we.

Still, he thought to himself as he slowly hopped up the stairs, one needs to be prepared for anything.

At the first landing Edward again paused on a remarkably clean brown carpet and looked up the remaining flight of rose marble stairs. Tiny flecks of gold and streaks of brown ran through the cream stone and the overriding tone of pink seemed to come from the play between the dim stairway lights and the cream and the brown stone rather from any actually rose coloured impurities.

Ah, look at me, thinking about staircases and marble varieties. I do believe I am procrastinating. Still, when considering what is apparent and discernible, it is important to remember that not everything is uniform. Edward recalled one of his first visits to the Met. He had been enjoying the Byzantine galleries immensely — that being a period and geographical area that he had very little experience with — when he had turned into the crypts in search of an old coptic manuscript. This unusual room was carved from the space under the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Stairs.

Unfinished red brick arches created a series of spans that supported the stunning staircase he had seen from the main entrance. The staircase, designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Richard Morris Hunt in the late 1800s, had been constructed as a part of the new entrance hall and facade. An interesting fact was that Richard died before construction started and the edifice was completed by his son…

Right. Procrastination. Well.

But still, the point was that, upon entering the crypts and turning towards the low wooden and glass case that held the ancient tome that was his goal, Edward had been faced with a series of descending roof blocks made from rough hewn stone. It had taken a moment, but then Edward realized he was staring at the underside of the stairs. While the tops had been meticulously, carved, levelled and polished to give visitors the impression the treads were marble slabs a mere two inches high, the stairs themselves were in fact giant blocks of marble that incorporated the tread, the riser and an uneven and unseen amount of unfinished stone that descended in varying amounts below the finished part of the staircase.

Remarkable and unforeseeably beautiful.

Edward had spent not a small amount of time staring at those man made, yet seemingly chaotic patterns of stone and contemplating their eerie beauty. So much time that he had in fact been herded out of the museum at closing time without completing his sojourn in the Byzantine era; a fact he had rectified in a later visit.

But the humbling sight of what lay beneath the grandness of the upper gallery had remained with Edward and he, forever after, had much less of a tendency to ignore what may lie beneath the surface.

11:2

“Something is not right. Something is quite wrong. Something is not right, and so, we sing, this song!” The refrain from a long forgotten children’s video bounced along in Edward’s head as he stared at the building across the field. Something wasn’t right. He just couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

With the tune rattling along in his head, Edward made the decision to abandon his post and take a hand in whatever he was sensing. Waiting just didn’t seem to be the correct action anymore and this ominous sense of foreboding was making his ears twitch too much to sit still any longer. Even a rabbit has to move sometime, and this rabbit was moving now.

10:5

Waiting is a peculiarly unique experience. It is something we all do, starting from the moment we are born hung and cold and demanding succour until we we end our lives lying on a bed somewhere mulling over the unavoidable cessation of everything we know and understand. And we never do it well.

One would think after the inevitable practice at waiting that every living thing is forced to endure that it would become second nature to us. Many animal species see to have mastered the art, lying still and focused for hours on end in order to catch the elusive prey or perhaps huddled equally motionless to avoid that equally patient predator.

But it seems that unless one dedicates oneself to gaining hard won success at mystical practices or is trained, mentally and physically to reach that state of single-mindedness that thinking beings are generally unable to endure waiting with any kind of sang froid or avoid escalations of fear, anxiety, excitement or any of a number of equally adrenaline producing emotions. It is as if our brains fear us turning our backs on thinking and active participation in favour of just experiencing and enduring, somehow transporting us back hundred of thousands of years of evolution and becoming once again some sort or primordial glop. Not to say that some supposedly thinning creatures haven’t done jet the that, or at least the equivalent—I have definitely endure the company of more that a few—but overall thought seems to triumph over sedentarialism and, I believe whole heartedly, that is a direct result of the intercession of the ancient hind brain’s fear of reversion.

Be that all as it may, waiting is not a naturally satisfying state for most and a particularly discommodious one for we elect few who are creatures of action. And perversely—as the unites oh so often is— we few are the ones who so often needs must wait if success is to be attained.

Still, I hate waiting. And now I’m cold.

10:4

The weather was slowly turning. It wasn’t cold, but the heat was slowly seeping out of the ground, leaving an all but undetectable chill. The days were now marked not only by the passage of the sun across the sky but by the flow of warmth that invaded the air in the mornings but drifted off as evening approached.

The shorter days masked this desertion of summer’s ardor so many people went about their daily lives, not realizing that fall was upon them. But if one stood quietly, and experienced the day as it tumbled past, the sharp cycles of autumnal fluctuations were obvious and more than a little discomforting.

Edward thought it was a bit to cold for standing around waiting. But unfortunately that’s what the situation called for.