The soldier talking the other night when we got together for a few hours…

“I miss your makeup, P. Your case I mean.”

“What makeup case?” I asked.

“The one you had sitting in the bathroom in that first apartment when we were kids. It was huge! It was big and round. It was cylinder shaped and I always wondered where you got that thing.”

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember having a case or even wearing makeup.”

“Well you had a case all right and it had stuff in it. I don’t know if you used it. Maybe a little now and then but you had the case for sure. It was big and round and looked like a spaceship,” he said. ‘And I never forgot that thing. Boy I miss Elsa and her spaceship makeup case she kept on the bathroom counter, I’d think. I sure miss the two of them. Because you went together in my mind.”

I just stared.

“Yeah, it was white and it was big. And I sure wish you’d have kept that thing. Had you stayed with me, I’d have never let you get rid of it. I’d at least have asked you not to because it made me feel so happy just to see it. I was attached to it. It’s been part of my memories because I was never happier in my life than I was when I was living with you and it and I’ve remembered this all my life. It was padded.”

A picture of it flashed in mind. The thing was fugly. “Oh yeah, I remember,” I said.

‘You do? Well so do I! I thought about both of you while sitting in foxholes late at night, throughout my life. Elsa and her makeup case. Where did she get that thing, I wondered. I sure miss them.”

“You’re a freak.”

“Yeah but that thing was cool. I never saw anything like it for the rest of my life. You’re the only girl with a spaceship makeup case I have ever known and I sure loved you and I loved it too. I was a lucky man getting to live with the two of you. Because it was like another person it was so big.”

Is there some object that sticks in your memory like this? What?