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The flags were lowered. The day was bright. I was ridden with angst. Barely three miles from me, brave people were pulling the bodies of other brave people from the ruins of a wedge of the Pentagon. The same was happening on a larger scale in the collapsed debris of New York’s World Trade Center.

It was the death of joy, and I was about to do something that didn’t seem right. I walked outside and lowered the top on the 2002 Lexus SC430 hardtop convertible.

It was a beautiful car — cherry red with chrome accents, low-slung, sexy, stunning in its overall elegance. On any other day I would’ve been euphoric behind its steering wheel of burled walnut and leather. I would have turned on its nine-speaker Lexus/Mark Levinson Audio System and listened to New Orleans jazz, and I would’ve been happy, happy, happy.

But those things didn’t seem right the day after terrorists, in a grand celebration of hate, hijacked and crashed four commercial aircraft — sending two into the trade center’s twin towers, one into the Pentagon and one into the ground in Pennsylvania.

A friend died in the New York carnage. Mourning and anger — and wonder at such senseless slaughter — filled my emotions. I raised the SC430’s top the same way I lowered it, with the push of a dashboard button. I thought raising it would make the car look less joyous.

But it was a day of crystal clarity, one of the prettiest days of a waning summer. If God didn’t send clouds and rain, why should I keep the top up? I pushed the button again and brought the top down. It was the natural thing to do. Why succumb to the unnatural because of an unnatural act of barbarism?

I have a way of rationalizing things. When people smiled at the SC430 on that horribly beautiful morning after, I took it as a vote to keep the top down. And it seemed that everyone smiled. Some even gave thumbs up and raved about the car’s looks. I felt I was doing something good, bringing cheer to lives newly framed by grief.

I motored on, ignoring the temptation to drive toward the Pentagon and gawk at the tragic remains. The dead and those tending to them should have their privacy. I drove west toward a separate peace, the beauty of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

The SC430 offered calm. It is a wonderfully quiet car, even with the recessed roof. A plexiglass screen between the headrests of the rear seats reduces wind swirl in the open cabin. The car’s 4.3-liter, 300-horsepower V-8 engine is as silent as it is powerful. There is minimal body shake and rumble — proof that Lexus’s corporate parent, Toyota Motor Corp., can make a tight, rigid convertible when it develops a convertible on its own, from the ground up. It would have been nice if Toyota could have done the same thing with the twist-‘n’-shake Camry Solara ragtop, but that is another story.

The SC430 was done right. I had some initial difficulty operating the roof, mo stly because I misread the instructions in the operator’s manual. There is a flexible, vinyl cargo cover that has to be extended and locked in place inside the trunk before the top can work. In the beginning, I did not understand that. I cursed the car.

The same thing happens between people. They misunderstand one another. Misunderstanding leads to distrust, and distrust begets hatred, which leads to the kind of madness that ruined what should’ve been a perfectly good time in a fine automobile.