Elvira managed to secure an empty warehouse in Tribeca. Over the next month, contractors cleaned the space and painted it white—walls, ceiling, floors, windows, doors, coat rack, everything.

      On the night of the opening, the New York Art World descended on lower Manhattan. Stevie Wonder was there, talking up his new photography exhibit. The olfactory artist, Fragrancia, arrived with her odorous entourage. There were painters, sculptors, filmmakers, actors, writers, and agents. Marty, Bobby, The Donald, Jerry, Woody, Whoopi, Bette were all in attendance. The Mayor showed up. Critics from every major newspaper and art magazine badgered Elvira to secure press passes. Patrons, investors, groupies, and hangers-on of every stripe elbowed their neighbors to grab a drink and jostled each other to secure a space from which they might be seen. Wine was spilled, canapés ground underfoot, the room resonated with air kisses and “Dahlings.”

      In the center of the gallery was a white pedestal with a small object covered by a white silk cloth. At the appointed hour, t entered. A hush fell over the room. t walked up to the exhibit and removed the cloth. There, balanced on the head of a pin, was one solitary grain of salt. Several overhead spotlights caught the sparkling edges of the crystal, refracting tiny beams of light and shining them over the heads of the onlookers.

      With the crowd mesmerized by the dazzling display, t bent forward and, with a pair of tiny silver tweezers, picked up the particle of salt and, walking among the attendees, passed the salt under each and every nose. The sea. They smelled the sea, and they were transported back through their individual reveries to long ago days at the beach—seagulls, breezes, boardwalks, beach balls, tans, lemonade, taffy, morning jogs and evening strolls, sunrises and sunsets.

      A new mother stood to one side with her infant held in her arms. t approached her and stroked the baby’s cheek with the tiny piece of salt. The baby gurgled and, as the faintest of pink lines appeared on its snowy cheek, the viewers rested their hands on their own faces, perhaps recalling a mother’s caress or a first kiss.

      t picked up a small silver spoon, and held it up to a microphone. He dropped the speck of salt on to the spoon. PING! The single note reverberated through the hollow warehouse. Heads turned as various amplifiers picked up this sound and bounced it from one wall to the next, at first becoming progressively louder then turning back in on itself and fading into the audible sighs of the assembled.

      Carrying the spoon and its salt particle across the room, t stopped in front of a woman dressed in a white sheath, a single strand of pearls around her neck. She’d let her hair down for the night, and her silver-white mane settled on her porcelain shoulders. t lifted the spoon to her mouth. She parted her lips, and t placed the single speck of salt on her tongue, as if bestowing a communal blessing. Her mouth closed, as did her eyes. She tilted her face to the heavens. At this moment, when the sense of taste combined with earlier sensations of sight, smell, touch, and sound, a single salty tear escaped from her eye and slid down her powdered cheek. From that solitary drop of salt water, an ocean of emotion engulfed the room in an explosive, startling, transitory, fading, vanished moment.