Communion

The city turns gray the night Rochelle Reid dies. The skyline gives in to the festering grief in its core; the brightest of them all is gone, so what’s the point of any of it? In life she painted this place in vibrant gemstone color, but without her it’s nothing more than a stone city of cold haze and muted blues. It’s been raining steadily since daybreak. The hospital chaplain says that it was evidence of God weeping for one of his fallen angels. I know what he actually means but keep quiet out of respect for Rochelle’s mother, who is very old and doesn't quite understand.

The unrelenting tears of an imaginary God make neon red and green rivers that light up the dark evening alley as they snake through broken asphalt. I’m soaked down to my skin. Distant laughter from a young couple just outside Barn Tavern’s kitchen door cuts into the still night, and I’m both angry and jealous at their glorious ignorance. I guess no one told them that the entire world ended at 5:47pm.

I force myself to exist in little moments. Break the task down. Make it manageable was my therapist’s advice. Last week it was a bunch of hippie bullshit, but now it’s a mantra I’m clinging to.

Key in door.

Open door.

Walk up one flight. Now the next. And the next.

Key in D3.

Open door.

Step in.

Step in.

STEP IN, DAMNIT! STEP IN.

Rochelle was a collector; of strange and unusual wine and of strange and unusual people. Every Saturday evening she assembled to her apartment a mismatched assortment of folks she’d unearthed, and she carefully selected a few bottles of whatever seemed to strike her fancy. It became known as Communion; we were her congregation, and she-Rochelle the Almighty-was our Holy Spirit, weaving between velvet settees in a flurry of bright silk scarves and knockoff Chanel No. 5 and, refilling glasses and telling tales of her glory days at The Ballroom. Her stories seemed to reflect the wine we drank; Chardonnay for the mysteries, Chianti for the thrillers, Pinot Noir for the tragic sagas of love lost.

She added me to her top shelf on a bleak October evening in 2005 when Jenny finally soured on my noncommittal bullshit and fled to Rochester. Rochelle found me four Gimlets in at the end of the bar and suggested that perhaps I find myself better company to keep.

“You’re not vodka, my love. You’re Merlot.”

“I don’t drink wine.”

“You will.”

Rochelle peeled me from that barstool and brought me home to Communion.

And to Emmeline. Emmy of the stormy seas; a wild-haired beauty with crystal eyes and a wandering spirit. She was a lost soul like me, but Communion was her harbor. She spent her days as a costume assistant at the Lutz Theater where Rochelle occasionally headlined, but she never found dreams big enough to chase. She was remarkably kind and wickedly vicious all at once, and I loved her instantly. I dreamed of her often and longed for her in my real life. I craved our late-night conversations on Rochelle’s balcony; shivering in oversized Rattan chairs, passing a joint between us and speaking about the stars when everyone else had gone away. I loved Emmy for five damn years and never once said a word. I probably still do.

My, my my. There are ghosts in this room, aren’t there?

This is a new wave of complicated emotions I didn’t prepare for. This is the room where I became a real person; where I spewed pseudo-philosophical nonsense until I’d purged it all and got to the actual substance underneath. I discovered that I was a broken person here. This room is my origin story, and Rochelle Reid is the God that made it so.

And yet no one knows Rochelle’s true origin story. She’s told so many tales over the years that the versions have woven together in some sort of mythical monstrosity. The photos in obnoxiously ornate frames tell a fractured story of Rochelle coming up throughout the 1980s and 1990s and raised on cocaine and Patricia Field and Dermablend. But I’m the only one who came closest to the truth. One night long ago, when everyone else had gone but my head still swam with Cabernet Sauvignon, Rochelle kissed me. It was long and deep and filled with an urgent sadness that I didn’t understand. When I pulled away, I tasted salty tears.

“I’m not gay,” I said.

“I know, my love.”

“But you’re not really a woman.”

“Life’s cruel that way, no?”

Her smile was stoic and genuine, but the tears that spilled freely from her perfectly perfect eyes betrayed her.

“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I babbled over and over until the words lost all meaning.

Rochelle patted my knee as a mother would to comfort her child and opened a bottle of cheap Cabernet Franc.

“My daddy was a farmer. Raised goats and was the first person to ever call me a faggot.”

She took a long swig straight from the bottle, her eyes misty and far away.

“You love our Emmeline. Our beautiful Sauvignon.”

“Yeah.”

“And yet you'll never tell her, will you?”

“No.”

“Did I ever tell you that Michael Alig lived in my building back in the day? He had a thing for me. Always got me into Limelight. He was a dreadful little fucker, but my God did he have the best ecstasy.”

The room knows that Rochelle is gone, and that I’m nothing more than an intruder here to pick through her things and shut the door forever. I’ve been a stranger here for more years than I was a friend. I don’t even know where the others ended up.

True friends don’t have to fly in from Denver, whispered the purple velvet armchair.

True friends would know where to find everything, hissed the antique Ethan Allen coffee table.

True friends wouldn’t flee in the first place, screamed the Moroccan tapestry on the wall.

She called me in Denver last summer because I'd always been her favorite.

"My Davey darling. I’m dying. "

"No, you’re not. "

"I am. They’ve given me a year."

"You’re not dying. You’re being dramatic. "

"Death is dramatic, my Merlot Love."

I called every day for six months until the day she stopped answering, and then I knew it was time to get on a plane. Except I wasn’t prepared for the reality of the gaunt, bald shell of a person who once cared so deeply about me and life and wine and everything lying so still and small and helpless in a too-big hospital bed. Smile faint and breath ragged, she beckoned for me to sit by the bed.

"Dear Davey, my love. They won’t let me have my wig. Can you believe such nonsense?"

I paced the hospital halls for two full nights, drinking too much coffee and wishing that I could save her from cancer like she’d once saved me from myself.

Wishing that the doctors would stop calling her Robert.

Wishing that she had one last story in her.

A few hours before she drifted away for the last time, Rochelle took my hand and squeezed with every bit of strength she had.

"My Merlot Love," She whispered with beautiful gravity. "Please... go get my 82 Petrus before my dirtbag brother ransacks the place and realizes it’s worth a fortune. Have a glass in my honor, won't you?"

And I laughed. I laughed right there in a stupid plastic chair in a hospital room in a city that used to be home in the middle of the night.

And I will, because I promised I would.

“David?”

My Emmeline stands quietly stoic beside the ornately carved wine cabinet where Rochelle stored the most precious of her collection.

“Em.”

She is fuller. Sadder. More subdued and yet more vibrant than I ever imagined she could be. Tears unabashedly streak her cheeks. “Rochelle made me promise, David. She made me promise that as soon as she was gone, I come for the Petrus and drink a glass in her honor.”

And now I crumble without even realizing how far and how much I needed to. Her arms are around me; the sweet cinnamon scent of her hair buzzes around my brain until I beg time to stop. After a very long time the world returns to normal, and we sit side by side on the faded velveteen sofa, a bottle of rare Petrus Pomerol-the pride and joy of our dearest friend- in front of us. Without preamble, my beauty pours two glasses of the gentle, ruby red Merlot and raises one.

“To Rochelle.”

“To Rochelle.”

We drink, and the rest of the world exhales.