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flush of the downstairs commode, followed by the rushing spray noise of aerosol room deodorant.
    A “New York second” goes by, and I stand. One step to the sink, and I calmly begin to scrub my dripping hands, careful to pick and scrape the words
sorrow
and
tragedy
from where they’re lodged beneath each fingernail. Already, the lovely bouquet of pink roses and yellow lilies poisoned with salt water, the petals begin to wither and brown.

ACT I, SCENE SIX
    The next sequence depicts a montage of flowers arriving at the town house. Deliverymen wearing jaunty, brimmed caps and polished shoes arrive to ring the front doorbell. Each man carries a long box of roses tied with a floppy velvet ribbon, tucked under one arm. Or a cellophane spill brimming full of roses cradled the way one would carry an infant. Each deliveryman’s opposite hand extends, ready to offer a clipboard and a pen, a receipt needing a signature. Billowing masses of white lilac. Delivery after delivery arrives. The doorbell ringing to announce yellow gladiolas and scarlet birds-of-paradise. Trembling pink branches of dogwood in full bloom. The chilled flesh of hothouse orchids. Camellias. Each new florist always stretches his neck to see past me, craning his head to see into the foyer for a glimpse of the famous Katherine Kenton .
    One frame too late, Miss Kathie’s voice calls from offscreen, “Who is it?” The moment after the deliveryman is gone.
    Me, always shouting in response, It’s the Fuller Brush man. A Jehovah’s Witness. A Girl Scout, selling cookies. The same
ding-dong
of the doorbell cueing the cut to another bouquet of honeysuckle or towering pink spears of flowering ginger.
    Me, shouting up the stairs to Miss Kathie, asking if she expects a gentleman caller.
    In response, Miss Kathie shouting, “No.” Shouting, less loudly, “No one in particular.”
    In the foyer and dining room and kitchen, the air swims with the scent of phantom flowers, shimmering with sweet, heavy mock orange. An invisible garden. The creamy perfume of absent gardenias. Hanging in the air is the tang of eucalyptus I carry directly to the back door. The trash cans in the alley overflow with crimson bougainvillea and sprays of sweet-smelling daphne.
    Every card signed, Webster Carlton Westward III .
    From an insert shot of one gift card, we cut to a close-up of another card, and another. A series of card after gift card. Then a close-up of yet another paper envelope with
To Miss Katherine
handwritten on one side. The shot pulls back to reveal me holding this last sealed envelope in the steam jetting from a kettle boiling atop the stove. The kitchen setting appears much the same as it did a dog’s lifetime ago, when my Miss Kathie scratched her heart into the window. One new detail, a portable television, sits atop the icebox, flashing the room with scenes from a hospital, the operating room in a surgical suite where an actor’s rubber-gloved hand grasps a surgical mask and pulls it from his own face, revealing the previous “was-band,” Paco Esposito . The seventh and mostrecent Mr. Katherine Kenton . His hair now grows gray at his temples. His upper lip fringed with a pepper-and-salt mustache.
    The teakettle hisses on the stove, centered above the blue spider of a gas flame. Steam rises from the spout, curling the corners of the white envelope I hold. The paper darkens with damp until the glued flap peels along one edge. Picking with a thumbnail, I lift the flap. Pinching with two fingers, I slide out the letter.
    On television, Paco leans over the operating table, dragging a scalpel through the inert body of a patient played by Stephen Boyd. Hope Lange plays the assisting physician. Suzy Parker the anesthesiologist. Fixing his gaze on the attending nurse, Natalie Wood , Paco says, “I’ve never seen anything this bad. This brain has got to come out!”
    The next channel over, a battalion of dancers dash around a soundstage, fighting the Battle of Antietam in