I Saw Three Ships. Bill Richardson

messages. No response. Too late. Whatever’s there belongs to cranes, backhoes, diggers. She’ll find her lock, closed tight, pondering whatever secrets it contains in its tempered heart. For the first time in thirty-five years, she’ll whisper its “Open Sesame.”

Hello, old friend.

      We have places to go.

      Let’s get the hell out.

      Dead bulb in an Emergency Exit sign. Permits expired on the fire extinguishers. Not a moment too soon. She’ll go out the front door for the last time. She’ll have promised herself she won’t give the place so much as an over-the-shoulder glance. She won’t be that strong. She’ll do a Lot’s wife turn, will walk away backwards, eyes glued to the place she loved, the ship that came in the nick of time. That saved her.

      Of J.C. there will be no sign. Who knows – perhaps he’ll watch her quit the building, then move right back, make peace with his own lost past, revel in sole, if short-term, proprietorship of 101, of the whole damn place. Maybe, as Rosellen is making her way to her new apartment – she’ll have found one, at the last minute, two blocks north, one block west – he’ll be rolling about in the La-Z-Boy, may he lounge in peace. Never, not once, in thirty-five years did Rosellen sit in the bloody thing.

      Will they meet again, Rosellen and J.C.? Rosellen suspects not. She can reasonably forecast occasional bouts of nostalgia, but has no reason to expect paralyzing gales of grief. To endings, she’s no stranger. About them, she’s cultivated a level-headed serenity. One never knows. If next Christmas Eve she were to discover the angel in her popcorn maker, if she were to whiff in the air the unholy trinity of J.C.’s signature scent, she wouldn’t be so very surprised. For that to happen, however, he himself will have to find the angel. On her last night in the Santa Maria, before she shuts off the breaker for the stove, before the troublesome clock dims forever, Rosellen will spend a long time meditating on where best to leave her. About that concealment, she will be very very very very very very very very very very very cunning. So, good luck, J.C. Good luck to us all.

On Christmas Eve –

      Passing through the basement, J.C. beside, behind, all around her, Rosellen checks the washers, the dryers, checks the high ledges, checks the small hole in the drywall left when someone bashed into it moving out last month; she makes a note to repair it, even though no one will be left to notice or mind. She feels a familiar, welcome warmth as Jean-Christophe leads her up the stairs, leads her to the lobby – that last Decorating Party was a humdinger – leads her to where the tree stands, there in the corner, where it has always stood. Up, up. She looks up. That is where, for the first, for the last time, she finds the angel, hiding in plain sight, just where God, just where the Holy Ghost, just where J.C., too, intend her to be, beaming from the highest artificial branch, blameless, immaculate, radiant, her mouth a perfect O, wide open in silent hallelujah, there, in her rightful, proper place; there, right there, exactly where, in this time, in that place, she belongs.

      On Christmas Eve.