I’m having such a time that I scarcely notice Willy when he shuffles up beside me, wearing a charcoal suit and a shit-eating grin. He grabs my hand, pulls me close, and whispers in my ear, “Turn around, ya goof.”

I turn around and see the fire hall’s prize possession — a forty-eight-inch wall-mounted flat screen TV — flicker to life as The Doors’ “Hello, I Love You” struts out from the speaker. Pictures of me begin flashing across the screen. Me as an egg-headed newborn. Me, cake-faced on my first birthday. Me, beaming in my red velvet dress at the Christmas concert in grade three. Me and Mama at the beach, taken by Grubby Alward on his mother’s stolen Polaroid. Me, Allie, and Char on the way to a high school dance. Me and Willy, shooting the shit down at the smoking grounds when we should have been in chemistry. My university graduation photo. The uber-serious professional headshot I had taken for the Viva Rica website just last year. And a selfie of me and Willy in the cab en route to the hotel, all birthday grinch-eyed and grinny, on the night that I got pregnant. As Jim Morrison wails out his final orgasmic hellos, the picture dissolves into words: “Crow Fortune, will you marry me?”

Willy’s grin gives way to a nervous laugh as he flips open a small black box to reveal the biggest, gaudiest glittering rock I’ve ever seen in my life.

“It’s not made of corpse ashes. But she’s still a doozie, wha?”

And then, there’s a sharp cracking noise and a blinding flash at the door.

Char, engulfed in a flare of searing red brilliance, is making the final few paces of a mad dash toward the man who just walked in. She hauls off and clocks him, sending a flurry of silvery blue sparks flying from the side of his shaved head.

“Christ Almighty, Charlotte!” Peggy wheezes as she bustles over to stop her wild child from taking another swing at the guy. He straightens himself up, smiling as his fingers pat the faint fleck of blood seeping from the spot where Char’s fist met his mouth. He nods benevolently, assuring everyone he’s fine as he smooths the front of his burgundy robe and scans the crowd with his cool, clear, azure eyes.

And then, through the rising tide of whispers and murmurs and curious colours, I hear Peggy gasp.

“Dear God! Alec?”

It’s all I can do not to vomit on the shoulder of poor old Mr. Patterson’s tweed sports jacket. In the commotion that follows, I almost forget to tell Willy that my answer to his proposal is a resounding maybe.

Some people escape the trappings of ordinary life or extraordinary pressure by slipping into shadows and dissolving into darkness. Others hide in plain sight. Over the last thirty-some years, Smart Alec Spenser Brother Gyaltso Hottie McMonk Pants did both.