Page 21 of Exquisite Things
“Me too,” Cyril adds.
“Me three,” Jack declares. “Speaking of threes... has anyone ever tried a—”
“All right.” I nod decisively, a small movement to help work through my fear. I let Edna guide me to the piano. She motions to an older man holding court on the other end of the room. Soon, the music stops, and Edna announces a special performance by a new member of our community. I like the way she says that. She sees me as something to be appreciated and welcomed, not used and disposed of.
I choose Schubert. Because he’s my favorite. But also, because something in the melody feels deeply romantic to me, and I want Shams to feel I’m playing it for him. Perhaps we are strangers, I tell myself as I place my fingers on the keys, but don’t all children of the sun and earth and moon start out as strangers before they eventually meet their other halves? I can’t be sure he’s my other half, but I want to find out. And seeing how he responds to “Fantasie in F Minor” might help me know. Because if his eyes don’t moisten as the melody swells, I don’t know if he can ever understand me fully. These aren’t keys I’m playing. Not notes. This is my heart and soul, coming through my fingers, traveling into the world as music, as spirit.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me as I play.
I don’t take my eyes off him.
And then, as the piece crescendos and I let my fingers bang wildly, I see him flinch. Perhaps he thought it would stay soft the whole time. Thought I didn’t have this kind of passion in me. I watch him take it all in. The gentleness with which I play can lead to a hardened passion before the melody takes over and I’m all softness again. I see a tear fall from his eye. And I know, if not that I have feelings for him, that Icouldhave feelings for him. And that’s certainly enough for today.
Bram. London. April. 2025.
The rain has stopped. Replaced by the tears of Lily’s chosen family. Downpours and drizzles in the eyes of young and old as Archie reads a plaque in the Victoria Embankment Gardens. “This lily pond was presented in 1915 by Mr. Alfred Buxton.”
“Who’s Mr. Alfred Buxton?” That’s one of the young queers. Beautiful Black boy. Hair tightly braided. Beard. Worn jeans. Baggy brown wool sweater. A soft knitted scarf in the colors of the Jamaican flag. I’m certain Lily must have made it. Her voice comes back to me:Only national flag with no red, white, or blue. Jamaicans can’t help but be unique.
Archie takes his top hat off. Wipes the sweat from his wrinkled forehead. “I honestly don’t know, Tobi. What matters is that this lily pond is where our beloved Lily chose her name.” Archie’s hair is gone. His scalp is bald. Spotted with discoloration.
I don’t dare step forward and risk being seen, even though it’s not them I’m afraid of being found by.
God, how I missed them all. Dancing with Archie. Learning from Azalea. Eating Poppy’s home-cooked meals. She loved nothing more than emptying a tin of cayenne pepper into whatever shewas making. We would all cry and laugh when we ate together. Jerk chicken. Pepper pot soup. Fried fish. We always wanted more.
“Poppy, it’s your turn to lead the procession. Get up here.”
The crowd parts so that Poppy can make her way up to the plaque. She lifts the bell bottoms of her red velvet jumpsuit to make sure they don’t fall into a puddle. She’s shrunk too. She leaps over one of the puddles carefully. “Move over, Archiekins.” Poppy takes a dramatic pause before beginning to tell the story. “Lily and I wandered into these gardens on a rare sunny December day. It was 1973. Earlier that year, London had celebrated its very first Gay Pride march.”
“It was 1972!” The beautiful Black boy named Tobi has his phone out. All the knowledge in the world in the palm of his hand. Except the things that can’t be turned into data. The hidden emotional truths you can’t ask a search engine about. How thingsfelt.
Poppy doesn’t bristle at being corrected or interrupted. “So it was. Back then, we didn’t have no phones like yours to check a date on the spot. Nor to distract us from ourlives. So when we would walk, we would observe. We would think.”
I hide behind the trunk of an oak tree when I see Poppy’s gaze travel toward me.
“You might think the first Gay Pride made for a joyful year, but as I remember it, this was not the case. It was a profound moment of despair for us. We hadn’t found ourselves yet. Lily’s heart had recently been broken by a little twat who—” Poppy stops herself. “You know what, he was a twat, but he died far too young and I won’t speak ill of the fallen souls. What happened is this. Lily told me that she wanted her life to end. By this very pond, at this exact spot, in 1972.”
In the crowd, a few audible sobs as the mourners contemplate never having known Lily.
“I asked her why, and she said that there was no future for her. She said that she felt no liberation when she attended that very first Gay Pride parade. None of the joy or freedom that her gay and lesbian friends felt. Because she wasn’t like them. What she was, as we all know, was a woman. Like me, though she understood herself before I did. This was before the two of us saved up for our surgical trip to Casablanca. Thanks for nothing, NHS.”
Lily understood so much before others did. This was one of her many superpowers. A profound understanding of the human condition.
“I begged her to stay strong. To keep going.” Poppy wipes a single tear from her cheek. “I don’t want to take any credit for what happened next, because I don’t think she was even listening to me. She was staring at the pond as if in a trance. The sun seemed to be shining on her alone. Nature’s spotlight. What I need you to understand is that she was being reborn in that moment. None of us are born only once.”
How I know this to be true.
“When she came out of her trance, she turned to me and declared that from that day on, she would be known as Lily.” Poppy nods. “And that is how our beloved Lily Summers came to be born.”
The mourners bow their heads down to honor the personal history of this spot.
“On to our next destination, the National.” Poppy turns to Archie. He raises his top hat into the sky. “Follow Archie’s top hat. Funny, such a big top hat for such a big bottom!” Everyone laughs. No one louder than Archie himself.
I pick up a newspaper someone left on a park bench and covermy face with it as I follow them. Even in London, theNew York Timescan easily be found. That’s why Oliver and I chose that paper. We had to make sure to choose a means of communication that would work no matter where we were. I took out the same ad every day for the last month, to ensure he would see it. He must have seen it. Where is he?
The mourners stop outside the National Theatre, where Lily first worked as a seamstress for the theater in 1980. It was for the National’s production ofThe Romans in Britain. Oliver and I were at opening night. The play was magnificent. It juxtaposed the stories of Caesar’s invasion of Celtic Britain with the country’s relationship to Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Panic. Either Oliver is here, or I’ve been found and life as I know it is over. I turn around. I’m ready to bolt if I need to.
