The younger woman translated to the mother, but not before throwing Olga a miserable look. After a moment, the mother laughed out loud, looked at Olga, and said, “My Jan too handsome!”
Olga politely smiled and turned away, relieved that the awkward exchange had come to an end. She felt a tap on her arm. It was the translator.
“Listen, I told my mother that Jan wouldn’t commit to you because he wanted to play the field. If anybody else asks, can you just—I don’t know—act the part?”
“She didn’t know he was gay?”
The sister motioned to the photo of John Paul.
“It’s bad enough he killed himself, she needs to know he was gay?”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Olga offered curtly, respecting the sister’s grief enough to suppress her own vexation.
The room, she saw now, was more battlefield than funeral parlor. At stake was the way in which Jan would be memorialized: with fact or fiction. Lest she come across as sympathetic with the enemy, Olga crossed the room, where Christian greeted her warmly.
“Darling, thank you for coming.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Olga truly meant it. She’d had dinner with Jan and Christian a handful of times over the years and while she didn’t know Christian well, she had a deep affection for him and had delighted in the playful aspects he brought out in a sometimes somber-seeming Jan. She leaned down to embrace him, inhaling him deeply. He smelled of Chanel No. 5, cigarette smoke, and vintage clothes. His scent recalled that of her grandmother, a woman who, even in dire times, would never run low on either Chanel No. 5 or cigarettes. Christian, a cabaret singer who’d met Jan while working a club together, had draped a black cardigan over his shoulders, and paired it, tastefully, Olga thought, with a sleeveless cream silk blouse with a tie collar. In a nod to Jan’s Catholic roots, Christian had accessorized this with several mother-of-pearl rosary strands. His face was weary, but his elegant demeanor did not appear smote.
“Girl,” he said, stepping back, “there isn’t anyone sorrier than that motherfucker. Wait until I catch up with him on the other side and give him a piece of my mind. Making me sit with his crazy-ass family like this.”
They chuckled in spite of themselves.
“How is it possible that they didn’t know he was gay?” Olga whispered.
“Olga, people always thought we had an open relationship because I was a ho, but really I just wanted to give him one place to have nothing to hide.”
She wondered aloud, “Was it the secret keeping that killed him, do you think?”
“Fuck that,” Christian said. “Jan was a sad motherfucker; he could get pretty … dark. But, mainly, I think he was scared. A few months back he found out that he was sick. I could never convince that man to get on PrEP; he always had a reason he couldn’t figure it out. He took some chances, tested positive, and I just watched him withdraw. A few weeks later, I found him in our closet.”
Christian teared up at the thought but continued.
“If that isn’t a metaphor and a half? He literally went back into the closet to die. It would be poetic if I didn’t know that it was the only practical place in our apartment to do it.”
“Fuck,” Olga said.
“So, not only was I the one to find this bitch, now I have to think about him hanging there every time I get dressed. The only considerate thing he did was leave his note on the coffee table, so at least I wasn’t surprised. I’m forty-four years old, I could have had a fucking heart attack.”
“Are you going to stay in that apartment?” Olga asked.
“Girl,” Christian replied, “do you have ten grand to move? Because that’s what it takes to get into a new place these days. To rent. To fucking rent. Lord, I can’t even talk about this right now. It will get me worked up.”
He sighed and fanned himself and she leaned in to embrace him. Olga rubbed his shoulders gently. She could feel him shaking as he again began to cry. She hadn’t factored in how the stress of money must be multiplying his sense of grief. Cater waitering wouldn’t make anyone rich, but with his wealthy clientele, Jan’s tip money had surely greased the wheels of their lives.
“You know what?” Olga muttered. “I should have brought it today, but I have a tip envelope for Jan that I’d never had a chance to give him. Probably at least five hundred.”
“Really?”
Jan’s gratuity for the Henderson wedding had, of course, gone to Marco, but the relief in Christian’s voice felt worth $500. Maybe she would send a little more. They were interrupted by another mourner and Olga figured it was a good time to go pay her respects to the dead.