Blue Rose In Chelsea (34 page)

     “I heard it was an aneurysm?” Evan asks gently.

     “Yes, suddenly and with no warning.”
     “If you have to go, that’s the way,” he says softly.  “No pain, no sorrow, a quick transition.”

     “Yes, I’m thankful for that.”  I hug the Dreamcoat about me as we skate, as if engulfing myself in Sinclair’s irrepressible essence.  “I’m so happy to have this coat back.”  I sniff the collar, somehow hoping it will smell of Sinclair’s cheap foreign cologne, but it seems to have no smell at all but that of the promise of snow that hangs in the bracing air.

     “It’s comforting to know that some things will never change, that there are places you can count on to always stay the same.  There will always be Rockefellar Center, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” he says, glancing over at the ethereal
 
blue shadows of the church as we round the rink.  "I’m glad we have memories here.  I once made fun of you for liking this tourist trap, but, if you hadn’t, we might not have a place to come back to, to remember, now that all the other places may be gone.  We should go together to see the old places, to see if they are still there, or to see what replaced them.  It’s good to remember.”  He sighs in that deeply soulful way of his. The beauty of his face is arresting, those perfectly carved features that seem to have barely aged.

     “Phantom is still playing on Broadway,” I say.

     “Wow, that’s a long run.  Whew, at least something is the same! You used to sing that song.”

     “No, the fabulous Carol, aka The Gum Goddess sang that song,
Think of Me
,” I say with sarcasm.

     He laughs.  “Oh yeah, I did that chewing gum commercial with her.  Well I haven’t
thought of her
in a long time,” he quips.  “Wasn’t that our song?  No wait, didn’t Sinclair sing that at the party?” he struggles to recall.

     My delight is unbounded that he has completely forgotten Carol’s operatic rendition.  “Yeah, Sinclair sang it,” I fib, not wanting to jar his memory of Carol’s perfect pitch.  I hum a few verses and find myself suddenly in the grip of emotion.   

     “I was wrong to cut off contact with you all those years ago,” I blurt out.  There is something in the mournful way he gazes up at the sky and over at the snapping flags that tears at my heart.

     “I’m just as much at fault.
 
I should have done something to
 
fix it,” he says, looking directly at me.  “I should have come back here for you.  I should have been stronger,” and then,  “I’ve read all your children’s books.  I bought every one of them.  But you never wrote about us.”

     “All my books are about us!  You are the blue rose, the wish, the enchanted city,” I confess, under the magnetism of his gaze. 

     “Hmm,” he says, in sudden realization, as if now seeing what was there before him all along.  “I never was good at literary interpretation.  You’ve always overestimated me.  I’m not so bright sometimes.”  He jabs at his temples, as if to mime an empty head.

     “You’ve always been the brightest object in the universe.”

     He grins, blushing.  So, I can still make Evan blush.
 
And laugh.  I am still able to wield some power over him.  “You never finished that novel about us?”

     “I couldn’t think of a good ending.”  I hold my hair back with my pink mittens, as the wind is blowing with us.  

     “I could help you with that.”  I feel my senses sharpen as I try to read between the lines of conversation.  It’s still there, my desire to leap into his pockets, like warm pennies,
 
and live there.

     “You look exactly the way I remember you.”  The heat of his gaze pours over my long curls, my face, and my figure now enveloped in the Dreamcoat.  “Brandon was right, you are caught in a time warp; you don’t look a day older.  It could easily be 1988 all over again.  It could easily be that day on your birthday, at the rink, all those years ago.
 
I think you were even wearing what you're wearing today,” he says, incredulous.

     “Feel free to continue this line of conversation,” I joke.  Now it’s my turn to blush.  His eyes float over every feature of mine.  I soak up the praise, and make a mental note to buy Brandon something divine for Christmas. 

     “I heard you have a slew of boyfriends banging down your door.  Brandon says some of them are younger than I was when we first
 
met, little horn dogs in their early twenties?”

     “Yes, that’s true,” I say with a sigh, as if it were a burden to be borne.  I bask a moment in my growing power.  Maybe I’ll just buy Brandon that new set of skis he’s wanted for so long.

     “They aren’t all boyfriends, more admirers, or suitors, as Sinclair would say,” I remark
 
offhandedly, as if it were a bore to be besieged by handsome young studs.

     “Oh, that’s right, coffee and a kiss on the cheek.”  He throws his head back and laughs, delighted with the memory.

     “These days it’s mocha latte,” I pun.

     “Yeah, at five bucks a cup,” he joins in.
 
 

     “Remember when we could get a cup of coffee and some kick-ass cookies for a quarter at Brandon’s poetry readings?”

     “Oh, those tortuous readings!” he says, his face full of fondness for the memory of them. 

     We reminisce about The Basement, with its ceiling lined with newspaper comic strips and the empty cat food cans that served as holders for the lumpy candles.

     And because I was never good at leaving Evan dangling in the wind for long I confess, “Sinclair used to say that I was trying to recreate you, that all my suitors seem to strangely resemble you when we met.”

     “That would be just my bum luck.  What a punishment that would be, to lose you to a younger version of myself."

     “Punishment?”  I say,  “That’s a strange choice of word.”

     "It would be what I deserve," he says, glancing skyward, as if
 
some saint may descend from on
 
high, dispensing his absolution.

     “I’ve gotten older,” he ventures, as if hoping for a rebuke.

     “You were a boy then, and now you’re a man.  A man is always infinitely more interesting than a boy,” I say, in the sultry tone that he used to refer to as The Voice.  The truth is that he’s gorgeous, but I’m not letting him know it just yet.  Mom always says it’s best to withhold compliments
 
from a man; never let
 
a man
 
get too confident, always let him believe that he is the main one benefiting from the relationship.
 

     “A man with a few gray hairs.”

     “I've perfect vision and I don’t see one,” I protest, which is true.  The modest Evan is as flawless as ever.  “Those are blonde,” I scold, in response to the alleged gray hairs he points to on his silky head, “probably from spending all your days out in the sun roping steers.”

     “Well, that’s not exactly what I do on the ranch, but I’ll take the compliment,” he shakes his head, smiling. “Yeah, well, they won’t be scrambling to put this face on any billboards today,” he says, although his mood is lightened as if he’s hoping for more reassurance from me.

     “You’ll always be the guy on the billboards,” I say with a playful smirk.

     “You say beautiful things, Sylvia,” he recites, as if this were an old routine with us.

     “And I like the goatee,” I add.

     “Do you?”  He lightly rubs the neat stubble that gives him a certain prince-in-exile aura.

     “It makes you look… a little dangerous.”

     “Does it?” He seems glad.  “You have nothing to fear from me.” 

     “
I mean you no harm
,” I quote him from ten years earlier, from that snowy day at Bergdorf’s under the pink tinsel trees and tunnels of evergreens when we bought the Princess Diana hat and the golden chocolates.  I’m not sure he makes the connection.  “So, how long are you here in New York?”

     “I’m here for good,” he states.  “I sold the ranch.”

     This news stuns me, and I bottle up the flow of skaters, until Evan gets me moving again.  “That can’t be, you’re always going, leaving, flying off somewhere.”

     “Not this time.”

     Evan fills me in on his family.  His mother remarried two years ago, a dentist with a practice in Dallas, and she has taken fondly to city life and is in the process of opening her own internet cafe.  His older sister, the buyer in Boston, the one who always loved Princess Diana, is married with three children and living in New Hampshire on a farm with her husband where they grow lavender; she has a website he informs me, they sell all things lavender.  His younger sister Janie is nineteen and dancing now with the Winnipeg Ballet.  The youngest, the spirited Kylie, is eighteen and studying fashion design at a university in Texas.

     “Kylie is just itching to transfer to Parsons here in New York.  Thank God I got such a windfall of an offer on the horse ranch.  It was downright bizarre the way it happened.  Some eccentric old guy approached me to buy it, and offered five times what the ranch was worth.  He claimed his family owned the land in the last century, and that it was important to him to have it back.   I never even met the guy; it was all handled through his oddball British lawyer in a bowtie and bowler hat.  It was almost like a little miracle, the way it all unfolded.”

     “Well, I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a miracle than you.”

     “You say beautiful things, Sylvia,” he singsongs, with a wink.  “Maybe those sparkling particles were behind it.”

     I am stirred by how natural it feels to be here with him, as if it were only the day after we last skated this rink, rather than an eleven-year interim.    

     “You did good, Evan.  Everyone in your family is well settled, happy and thriving,” I say, with heartfelt
 
sincerity.  “It was all worth it.”

     “Was it?” he says, sounding unconvinced.

     “Yes,” I whisper, my voice failing me.  

     He nods, his gaze fastened somewhere in the blue shadowy distance of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  “I have a daughter.  She’s
 
nine years old.  Her name is Allegra.”

     "Pretty name," I say.

     He purses his lips in agreement.  Careen used to say that he had the lips of a young Marlon Brando.

     “Dylan has done well for himself.”

     “Yes, we watched him blossom from rocker to Renaissance man.  He has two little girls.”

     “My daughter is showing promise in ballet.  She has great feet, a good arch, and natural turnout and grace.  I was thinking I might try to get her an audition with SAB.”

     “School of American Ballet?  Your old alma mater.”  Then something occurs to me; I feel as if I’ve been waylaid by some unseen force.

     “Is that why you came back to New York?  Is that the reason?”

     “I came back for you, Haley.  That’s the only reason.”  We skate past Prometheus, reclining in his gargantuan gold glory.  Evan leads me off the rink.

     “I don’t know what I’m going to do for work here in the city, and you know what, I don’t care.  I’ve got enough money from the sale of the ranch to keep me afloat for some time.  I’ve got a small apartment for now in Brooklyn.  It’s a nice up-and-coming area, a good neighborhood for Allegra.  The building is a renovated old factory; it’s got a strange cylindrical shape, like a big can.  I feel like I’m living in a big soup can, but I don’t mind that.  Rumor has it that it was once an old bean factory.”

     When he tells me the location, I have the sensation that grips me sometimes in my sleep, where I cease breathing and awaken suddenly to gulp air.  “Beans?  An old bean factory?”

     “I think so.  That’s what I heard.  You know the area?”

     “I grew up around there,” I say, vacantly, like a sleepwalker.

     He takes my hand, covered in a mitten which is sticky from holding little Claire’s candy, and I realize that we are standing in the same place as the day The Joseph appeared out of the snowy ethers to rock Sinclair’s sedate little world.

     “It’s still there, isn’t it?  What was once between us?  Because I can feel it.  Time hasn’t faded it, at least not for me,” he says.  He still has those devastating bedroom eyes, like a warm saltwater sea of green that I could float effortlessly in for eternity.

     “It was there even before we met,” I whisper.

     “You say beautiful things, Sylvia.”

     We kiss beneath the rolling shadows of the international flags, furling and unfurling in a riot of color above us.

The Night They Invented Champagne

     Joseph arrives a month in advance of the wedding, looking every inch the Baron of the Manor in a debonair tartan coat and Balmoral bonnet, and with a month’s supply of Brodies tea and a well-coiffed terrier in tow.  He is chock full of ideas for the wedding and eager to take the reins.  “Is there anyone this guy doesn’t know?” Evan asks amused, as, in the ensuing weeks, Joseph squires Mom about in his rented Bentley, calling in favors to all his past clientele to secure an A-list team of florists, caterers, and dressmakers and tailors.