SOPHIE

As I slid open a window of Yoni’s suite, I smelled a gust of perfume like sweet fresh roses growing in the hot sun. I ducked my head inside and froze, perched on the windowsill.

The room seemed swamped, like a cottage I’d once seen on the marais after flood.

I turned on my flashlight and shone it at the floor—or where the floor should be.

The room was full of rose petals. They were piled as high as the windowsill where I crouched. Light from the street far below fell weakly on the ceiling. I snapped off my flashlight and waited for my eyes to accustom themselves.

I was in a lounge or sitting room. I saw sofas, easy chairs, a television screen hanging near me on the wall, and along the far wall, a bar.

On the bar sat a vase full of red roses. They foamed to the bar surface, tumbled off it. The ceiling fan turned lazily, making the rose petals lift and fall like little butterflies that couldn’t quite fly. A faint breeze from the ceiling fan pushed at the roses that nodded out of the vase.

The blooms were so heavy, they bent and touched the granite bar top. Petals fell off each rose in slow motion. One, two, three, four . . . endless rose petals. As I looked around the room, I saw that the ceiling fan made the petals float about, milling in gentle circles like fragrant dust devils. That was how they had filled the room.

A few petals escaped past me through the open window.

I became aware of the sound of traffic in the street below. If that kept up, soon people on the street would notice that this window was open.

I had my note already written. Yoni’s name was scrawled on the envelope. I wanted to put it on the bar, but I had no hope of reaching it without leaving a trail . . . and I wanted to be mysterious. I looked down at the sea of rose petals drying delicately like waist-deep potpourri. It would be lovely to throw myself into that and roll and thrash like a kid making snow angels. Rose-petal angels.

But better still would be a mysterious gesture.

I pulled out my envelope and reviewed the note in my memory, gave it a tender smile, and then, with care, whirled it toward the suite door, near the bar.

It landed, plop, on top of the petals, four feet away from the door. Perfect! There it would lie until the door opened—not long from now, I hoped—with the great drift of undisturbed rose petals under it. I would leave the window open. The faint breeze would draw more petals toward the window, and so they would not bury my envelope.

Then I heard voices in the corridor outside.

Yoni! And she was with a man.

I swiftly ducked back through the window and scrambled up the outside wall toward the roof.