I Saw Three Ships. Bill Richardson
“Oh, come on.”
“No.”
Philip is firm.
“Asshole,” she says, tosses it into a box, locates a felt marker, prints “Sally Anne.”
“It doesn’t take an e.”
“Does.”
“Doesn’t.”
“Does, bitch.”
“Doesn’t, faggot.”
“Fuck you, Nicola Harwood.”
“Fuck you right back, Davie Denman.”
They love each other, so this is how they talk. On and on they’ll go, on and on for longer than is appropriate for two people well into middle age on what is advertised as a silent night; old friends feinting and sparring at the corner of Heathen and Holy.
Philip is helping Bonnie sort through her stuff, winnowing grain (not much) from chaff (a lot), preparatory to her move from the Santa Maria. She’s agreed to let him be the final arbiter of what stays, what’s turfed. No court of appeal. Thirty-five years of needless materiality emerge from box after box after box. Why? For what? How has Bonnie, a lifelong freelancer, as impecunious a person as ever he’s met, managed to accumulate so much dross? It seems to seek her out as though on a current, like that growing gyre of discarded plastic in the Pacific.
“What about these?”
Bonnie shows off binoculars.
“Gloria’s?”
“She had a brief flirtation with ornithology.”
“Truly?”
“She heard some persuasive birders on the CBC and got all enthused. She bought the field glasses, bought a Peterson Field Guide, got up early one Saturday, hooked up with some club. Never went back. She said, ‘Oh, Bonnie. They caused such a commotion when I wanted a cigarette. I mean, why? Out there in the open, I was perfectly happy to go stand farther away in the swamp, but no, they just couldn’t abide it. It wasn’t the smoke, it wasn’t the smell, it wasn’t the dire prospect of wind-born carcinogens, it was just the nerve. Like they’d all decided I’d be the one who’d leap up from a blind in a fright wig, bellowing booga-booga-booga, scaring off the great tit. And the shoes. Oh, darling, their shoes. Did I ever tell you that I was all set to go into nursing, but I just couldn’t go through with it, not because of the blood or bedpans, but because of the shoes? Birdwatchers wear nurse shoes. Horrible. Maybe I’m better suited to philately. Or numismatics.’”
Philip laughs. He misses Gloria, misses her almost as much as he’ll miss his own mother, Frances, who says this will be her last Christmas. Her only regret is that she waited so long to learn how to text; she wants to stay alive long enough to avail herself of every available emoji.
Philip passes the binoculars from hand to hand, gauges their weight, their substance.
“Expensive?”
“Count on it. You remember how she was. If ever a little problem came along, she figured God created it so she could throw money at it.”
Philip raises them to his eyes, turns back to the window, notes that Vidal has finished draping the tree with fairy lights, plugged them in. He hums “Twinkle, twinkle.” He considers the apartment’s decor.
“I spy, with my little eye, icons upon the wall.”
“Our Lady of the Perpetual Boner?”
Philip gasps.
“Holy Peloponnesian War, Batgirl. Is that his mother?”
“There’s a picture of his mother?”
“No picture. In person. In the flesh. Wrinkly, but warmish.”
“Gimme.”
Bonnie applies the binoculars to a purpose unsanctioned by the Audubon Society.
“His mother or some relation. She’s a hundred, at least.”
“Twin triumphs of the Mediterranean diet,” Philip says. “Do you think she knows?”
“About the morning sausage show? No. Maybe. Consider the source. The land that gave us Oedipus.”
“Find out where she lives, send her the pictures.”
“Diabolical,” says Bonnie. “Maybe I will.”
Bonnie, a documentary filmmaker and photographer, documented Vidal’s morning burlesques for twenty-five years. She stopped when Gloria became ill; when, of necessity, she shifted focus.
Philip says, “Why was he so compliant?”
“He wanted to be seen. I was as brazen as he was. He respected that.”
Times change. Would Bonnie be so sanguine now, so laissez-faire about the quandaries of consent? Well. There was no question they were both willing parties. Bonnie was no innocent and Vidal was like a squirrel that comes to the same park bench, habituated to a daily offering of nuts.
“Will you miss him?” Philip asks.
“Things cooled between us so long ago.”
“Where are those photos?”
“Basement. Storage locker. Lockers. I’ve got two.”
“Two! Golly. Penthouse lady is special.”
Into this short phrase, Philip, famous for his impersonations, folds an encyclopedia of camp inflections, from Carol Channing to Jim Nabors to Ru Paul, with a dozen stops between. Virtuoso work.
“Boxes, boxes, still more boxes. Everything in them needs digitizing. Maybe I’ll get a grant, hire someone.”
There have been years, more than a few, when Bonnie subsisted entirely on cash awards from federally funded agencies, all for projects that rarely made it beyond the proposal stage. No one, not even Philip, suspects her of praying, but she does, every night, and never forgets to ask God’s blessing on the Canadian taxpayer, the munificent saver of her maple-smoked bacon.
She says, “It’s not just money shots of the Cretan cretin. God knows what’s down there.”
“God might know, but Nicola Harwood must care.”
“Feel like tackling it?”
“Can I wear that apron?”
“Shut up. Grab some bubbly from the fridge, okay?”
On Christmas Eve –
“You look fab, Rosellen.”
It’s Philip who says so. Rosellen wasn’t expecting him, but here he is, Bonnie’s reliable sidekick. Her wingman.
“Super sweater, Rosie,” Bonnie says.
“Holiday spruce-up,” says Rosellen, fingering one of the eight felt reindeer that prance across Poitrine Plain. Denim coveralls from Mark’s are her signature look, and the tool belt.
“Expecting company?”
“Santa. You know.”
Tepid chuckles.
“I’d ask you in, but –”
“No,