placed. It was maddening that, once again, she resisted all efforts at discovery until, on Christmas Eve afternoon, she turned up in the breadbox. The mysterious waft. The creak of decompressed springs. The La-ZBoy in motion.
“Jean-Christophe?”
Fragrant zephyr.
“J.C.?”
Tropical billow, damp and warm.
“Ah.”
It took several Christmases for the game to develop rules, for Rosellen to intuit the “You’re getting warm / You’re getting cold” olfactory protocol of Hunt the Angel. One year in the crisper, one year in a box of Cheerios, one year wrapped in a fitted sheet among her linens. In 1993, the range of search expanded beyond the apartment, into the Santa Maria’s common areas. In the storage room, or tucked behind the framed forest-scene prints in the lobby, or in one of the long-dormant cubbies outside each apartment where bottles were left in the days of milk delivery: there were many places an enterprising spirit could conceal an angel. In 2006, for whatever reason, J.C. failed to manifest. Rosellen’s relief when he renewed their covenant a year later was deep and abiding.
“Where the hell were you, Puerto Vallarta?” she asked. From the bathroom she heard the toilet heave, belch.
“Do you know how he did it?” Bonnie asked.
“No.”
She’d called by to inquire if Rosellen could look in on her place while she travelled. She’d be gone for two weeks, out-of-town assignment, good money.
“Will I have to watch the Vidal Show?”
“I think he’s in Greece. On the Island of Hiatus.”
“So much the better.”
Bonnie looked around the room, appraising.
“This place was furnished when you moved in, right?”
“It was.”
“Was that recliner here?”
Philip was planning to open a second-hand store over in Gastown. Bonnie was on the lookout for stock. She had an eye for all things vintage; every so often one of the scandalous micro-skirts still made an appearance. Brigitte would part the veil, would whisper in Rosellen’s ear, “Mutton dressed as lamb.” Rosellen was amused to discern how, in her gathering old age, she didn’t disagree.
“It’s always been here. It was Jean-Christophe’s,” Rosellen said, then felt the ice thin under her feet.
“Philip knew him, just a little. From the bars. I gather he was a big old leather queen.”
“Oh,” said Rosellen.
Her heart felt swamped. She looked at her watch.
“He was one of the first to get sick. Took care of himself before it got bad. Do you know how he did it?”
(Frank in 203. Kurt, who was the first to move into Brigitte’s place and who came to the party a few months later looking unwell and didn’t last out the year. Janice in 310, who begged Rosellen to tell anyone who asked that it was because of a transfusion. No one ever asked. More than twenty years later, her L.L. Bean catalogues are still delivered.)
“No.”
There were places Rosellen would go with Bonnie. Not there, though. Not there.
“If you ever want to get rid of it – the chair, I mean – Philip would be interested. People like that kind of crap now. Hygge. You know.”
Rosellen nodded. She wouldn’t be getting rid of the chair. She knew it was crap, but it offended her to hear someone else name it such.
“I’m on my way out, Bonnie. I’ll look in, get the mail.”
“Don’t water the plant, I’m desperate for it to die.”
“Bon voyage.”
“So long.”
“So long.” So long ago.
On Christmas Eve –
Bonnie and Philip are in the Santa Maria storage room. It has about it the look of civil unrest, toppled towers in gross disarray. They’ve found the Vidal cache. It’s more extensive than Philip imagined or Bonnie remembered.
“It pains me to say so,” Philip says, “but in the summer of ’89, he was a hunk. I mean, totally.”
“No question.”
“He was in his prime,” says Philip, executing a perfect Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie, just as he did to frequent, hilarious effect at oh-so-many big old gay brunches, back when big old gay brunch was a thing, back when everyone was afraid or angry or both and he spent most of his Sundays and half his income at Delilah’s, drinking mimosas, and coyly resisting the importuning of the throng that he do Tallulah, just one more time.
“If I go down on a man it chokes me and if I go down on a woman it gags me. If I get buggered it hurts like hell and if I get fucked it gives me acute claustrophobia. So I’ve just gone back to reading, love!”
“Oh, Jesus,” says Bonnie. “What do you call that look?”
“Deborah Kerr on the beach in From Here to Eternity meets Susan Hayward in I Want to Live meets Nana Mouskouri on The Hollywood Palace. A little bit death. A little bit transfiguration. A little bit ‘Look ma, no hands.’”
“His poor mother.”
“His poor mother.”
Snorting, whooping, carrying on. Rosellen passes by with J.C., does nothing to intervene, even though they’re out of control, even though it’s 11:20 p.m. She couldn’t care less. It’s too damn late for caring. Too late in the year. Too late for the Santa Maria. Too late on Christmas Eve. Over and soon. Over and out.
“In here?” she asks J.C. as they navigate the hallways, shabbier and shabbier, the carpets frayed and stained. “In here? Or in here?” she inquires, opening the glass-fronted case that contains the fire hose, or peering up for a tell-tale shadow in the scallop-shaped wall sconces, on sale at Rona, that went up ten years ago, the last time the building had a makeover. No and no and no. J.C.’s ambrosial essence wavers and dwindles. Getting cold. Getting cold.
On Christmas Eve –
Rosellen, now closer to seventy than sixty, takes a breather in the boiler room. She sits on a plastic dairy crate, the same one into which she’d packed her few belongings at the time of the Great Marriage
