LITMIR.BIZ

Brigitte had a stroke that next spring. She managed to call 911 herself, was able to wave with her right hand from the stretcher as they carried her off to St. Paul’s; in her left she clutched the little overnight bag she kept packed with just such an emergency in mind. Rosellen went to see her in Extended Care. Patient visiting had not been covered in her property management course. The author of those correspondence materials had never imagined unlocking the combination of Santa Maria + West End Vancouver + 1985. Rosellen took up her position just as the plague years were gathering strength, amassing arms, sighting young men in the crosshairs. John from 201, Brandon from 304, Trevor from 206, both James and Robert from 109, and half a dozen others she could still name if she put her mind to it, all struck down. She went to check in on them, also at St. Paul’s, went at first because she wanted to, and then because she felt she must. She went to the funerals, too, until they became too frequent, too much to bear, desultory, often sparsely attended, and the inevitable, dispiriting, yet somehow admirable appearance of one elderly drag queen done up in dowager’s weeds who always arrived five minutes into the proceedings and made a show of taking a place in the front row of mourners. Better to stay home. Better to light a single candle and wait by the phone. Someone might call. When there was a funeral, there was a vacancy. The show must go on.

      “Keep an eye on my place,” Brigitte would say, whenever Rosellen dropped by. “I want it to look just like I left it, not a spoon out of place, when I come back.”

      Which she never did. Rosellen watched her weaken, watched the waning of her will. She was gone before Victoria Day. Suite for rent.

      Summer passed. Days dwindled. Rosellen grew accustomed to, if not fond of, the La-Z-Boy. Her poster – for which Letraset and photocopied clip art from the public library had been employed – was blameless.

      “Where’s Philip?” she inquired of Bonnie at the Second Annual Holiday Decorating Party, December 8, 1985.

      “With Gary.”

      “Gary?”

      “His new boyfriend.”

Rosellen took note of the exaggerated eye roll, didn’t inquire. She had lots on her mind. She was puzzled. It was that damned angel again. She herself had taken down last year’s decorations; there was not the same communal enthusiasm for the dismantling as there had been for the assembly. She waited until Twelfth Night had passed, as Brigitte had directed she must. Anxious to avoid any future kerfuffle, Rosellen took great, great care to put the angel, the Brigitte-approved model, mummified in tissue paper, in a box, alongside some red and silver balls and a whole flock of partridges. She took the trouble to write “Treetop Angel” on the outside of the box. She remembered saying, “There you go, you rascal. See you next year.”

      The one person who would truly have cared was no longer there to raise a fuss; still, it was maddening for Rosellen that Brigitte’s angel was, once again, not where she’d been so carefully 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

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