Chapter 11

I had to google what time Vespers was. Sunset. The sky is a pink blaze. The dark palm trees swaying, just like they always did in Mother's voice, so lazy and happy with beauty. I'm walking along the cliff by the water's edge in the red shoes. The dirt trail I've walked twice now in the dark. Third time's a charm, isn't it? In the light of day, it's a different beast. Just a winding path through shrubs and low-growing trees, on a downward slope of tall grass and wildflowers. I hear the water to my left, crashing serenely against the rocks, against the cliff walls. Bunnies hop along the path. Lizards dart into the bush as I pass. My phone keeps buzzing but I ignore it. Chaz again. Wanting to know am I selling the place or not, what have I decided? Funeral director reminding me to pick up those ashes, please. Persephone wanting to make sure I'll be back on the shop floor this Sunday. The house should be around this corner somewhere, shouldn't it? Yes, any minute now, I'll see it. Nervous. Nervous but excited, too.

After he drove us home, I told Tad to take the rest of the day off. But there's so much to do, he insisted. It can wait until tomorrow, I told him. At home, I fished the red diary out of the basement box. Anjelica was sleeping on it, but I lured her away with food. I put the little gold key in the little gold lock and it came right open. I held my breath, just like I'd held my breath when I'd first opened the box itself. And it was funny. When I opened the book, I knew exactly what it would say on the first page, beneath This Diary Belongs To. I knew before I saw the words Belle, Age 10, in my child's hand. My very careful print. Red and tight and tilting. 1988, I'd written beneath my name. The year I don't remember. The year that's in a box. Cold rushed through me. In my head, I saw a 45 of "Walk Like an Egyptian" turning slowly on a Fisher-Price record player. A pink room full of spiders, dusk outside the frilly curtained window, a screen full of holes. A princess bed cluttered with staring dolls.

I looked down at the diary. Hesitantly, I turned the page, my whole body suddenly thrumming with the beat of my heart. Blank. I turned the next page. Blank too. I turned the next and the next and the next, more quickly now. Blank and blank and blank—what the fuck? I flipped through the whole book. All fucking blank. All but one page, one sentence. Right in the middle of the book, in the middle of the page. Six words on a single line written in that same red ink in which I'd written my name and age.

He came to see me again.

How funny I felt, reading that. Who? I whispered. Who came to see you?

But the next page had been torn out. Someone had ripped it out hastily. In my mind, I saw a flash of a hand ripping. The pink room in my mind went black then. As I flipped through the book to see if I'd written anything more (there was nothing), a picture fell out. Floated down to my feet like a fallen leaf. I picked it up. Just another clipping. Tom Cruise again. Cut out from a magazine like the other shoebox clippings. It looked like it was from one of those teen magazines. Their ridiculous names came back to me. Tiger Beat. Big Bopper. Thin, bright pages full of cheap pinup posters of Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. Factoids about them in little heart-shaped sidebars. Tom was wearing a black suit and a red bow tie. His eyes were serious like this was a serious moment. His sober expression was undermined by the hot pink hearts around his face. Strange, the feeling I had looking at it. Light and heavy at the same time. I stared at Tom's eyes, and the room seemed to swim then. The ocean roared outside the windows like a veritable animal. I thought of the glass jaguar in the antique shop. I thought of the woman in red's face pressed against it. Contorted in that strange, hungry bliss. Clear your head, she'd said. And then I remembered the red shoes were right there by the door. Shining as if with new purpose. Free treatment, why not? Clear my head, yes. That's what's necessary. I think you'll find the results take your breath away, she'd said, her lips hovering by my ear. Take it, I nearly told her. Please.

As I turn the corner along the cliff, mansions appear like mirages in the jungly green. Old Hollywood monstrosities. Ultramodern temples of concrete and glass. No sign of La Maison de Méduse yet. Huh. On the path, a deep ravine ahead. To cross it, there's a rickety white bridge. Did I cross this bridge last night? I walk right to the shaking middle, look around. The house is still nowhere in sight. Just the mossy green walls of the ravine. Maybe I've gone too far? Below, white waves crash and hiss against sharp rock. In my mind, I see Mother. Standing on a bridge of black iron over a dark, rushing river. The Saint Lawrence in Montreal. She's leaning far over the rail, closing her eyes tight. Younger than I am now. Wearing a white-and-black Yves Saint Laurent coat she bought on credit from the Hudson's Bay Company. Snow falling all around us both like quick, bright fish. Falling onto her red hair and my coarse black hair where I know it doesn't look nearly as pretty. I'm watching her make a wish. Make a wish with me, Belle, she's saying. I'm looking up at her. I'm nine years old. The time just before the time that's in a black box. I'm wearing a pink coat the color of sick that I begged her for. She wanted to buy me a navy velvet coat, but I wanted this pink fluffy one. She shook her head at me like I had no idea, no style, like it would take me a very long time to realize things. She's impossibly beautiful with her eyes closed and her face tilted up to the dark gray sky and her lips curved in a secret smile.

Are your eyes closed, Belle?

Yes, I lied, for my eyes were wide open. Looking at Mother, leaning dangerously forward like she could fall into the river at any moment. All it would take was one push. A sudden wind. I closed my eyes then. I closed my eyes then and I'm closing my eyes now.

Are you making a wish?Mother whispered.

Yes.

"Be careful," says a voice now, its breath on my neck. And I scream. Open my eyes. Mother?

No Mother. No Montreal. I'm back on the creaking white bridge in the ravine, above the churning Pacific. The setting sun is blazing red overhead. But I'm not alone anymore. On the bridge with me is a man. I recognize him instantly. The taste of smoke and mint in my mouth. That fake black beard that chafed my face. Now he's clean-shaven. Wearing that same dark blue suit, that hat that shadows the top half of his face. He looks, as always, like he emerged from Mother's nighttime television screen, forever filled with noir or New Wave.

"Don't want to fall," he says. "There are caves down there, you know. Seriously treacherous."

"I wasn't falling."

"If you say so." He smiles. "Following me again, huh?"

"No," I say. "I wasn't following you the other night, either. We just happened to be going the same way."

"Are we going the same way tonight, too, I wonder?" His eyes look pale gray in this light. Knife-sharp face. He comes in closer. There's the scent of green tea again. A warm, woodsy smell too, like forest herbs distilled in a brown bottle. Crack for the vagus nerve. Very spa-like. "Let me guess," he says. "A certain glass house on the cliff's edge. Where the red roses grow."

"So what if I am?"

"Call me interested."

"In what exactly?"

He smiles. I feel him taking in my skin. "Oh, I think you know."

I look at his mouth full of white teeth. He's wearing that lip balm that gives off a scent of roses. An image of kissing him rises up in my mind, but it might just be how close he is to my face. I flush. "I'm sorry," I say. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

"Really?" He moves in closer still, his sharp shadows falling over me. "Funny. I thought I'd met a fellow freak." Even closer now, grinning. "Snail mucin?" he says softly, looking at my face.

"Excuse me?"

"A mist, too, definitely," he whispers, eyes grazing like a touch. "Rosewater, maybe birch milk. A double-fermented green tea, algae, and rice essence. The infamous Brightening Caviar for Radiance. And of course the Revitalizing Eye Formula. Diamond-infused for brightness, but it bleeds is the thing." He brushes a tear from my cheek that must have just now fallen.

"How did you—?"

"Call it a wild, wild guess." He smiles. That's when I notice the scar on his cheek like a jagged slash. Flashing redly in the dying light of day.

"Why did you kiss me in the hall like that?"

"Me?"He shakes his head. "Oh, I would never ever do something like that. Just like you would never follow me, right?" He pulls out a small tin of what looks like red candies. "Collagen gummy?"

I shake my head.

"You sure? They're really tasty. Cherry, I think. And they're in the shape of a rose, see? Really pretty. Rose shape, cherry taste. Nice little mindfuck." I watch him pop the red gummy in his mouth and hold it between his white teeth. I see his tongue press against it.

"I should—"

"They're interested in you, you know," he says in a low voice. "Very. I'm jealous. I envy, to use the parlance."

"Who's interested?"

"They," he whispers. "The beautiful ones." He looks at me meaningfully. The woman in red flashes in my mind. The twins in their veils. The girl-woman in black smiling at my scar as we waltzed backward around the tank. "I saw you talking with them on the staircase the other night. Never seen the higher-ups do that before. Take so much interest."

I watch him turn the rose gummy around his tongue. Still intact. He's not even chewing, just letting it dissolve slowly in his mouth. Behind him the sky is the color of blood. Vespers, I remember. The voucher in my pocket starts to pulse.

"I should go."

"Not lost, are you?" he asks like he's concerned.

"No." Quickly, I scan the cliffs for any sight of the house. No sign. I start to walk away, but my feet are slow moving, my shoes suddenly heavy. I feel them sinking with each step, almost like they're refusing me. Almost like they're whispering, You are fucking lost.

"Because if you were lost, I'd be happy to escort you up there," he calls after me. "For your free treatment."

I freeze. Look back at him standing there on the bridge in the darkening light. "How did you—?"

"Another wild guess." He holds out his arm in offering. "You don't want to be late, right? They fucking hate it when you're late. So I hear, anyway." Attractive in the red light, holding his suited arm for me to take. Sharp, Mother would say of this man, her highest praise. The cut of his face and the cut of his dark suit and the cut of his shadows. The scar's jagged shape gleaming in the bloody sunset.

"I don't need you," I blurt out, almost reflexively. "To guide me, I mean. Thank you anyway."

He smiles, then looks serious. "Of course not. You're just using me tonight. Letting me be your eyes in the dark. After all, we are going the same way." Still holding out his arm. Go on.

I walk over and take it, and he smiles again, like maybe he won something.

"What's your name, by the way?" he asks me as we start walking along the darkening path.

"Belle." When was the last time I told anyone my name was Belle? Mira, I'll usually say, or Mirabelle at best. I can feel Mother smiling at this.

"Belle. Of course. You know you look like a Belle? From the fairy tale, right? About a pretty girl who fucks a monster. That's a classic."

"I don't know that they ever fuck exactly."

"Well, maybe not in the story, Belle. But I'm pretty sure they fuck eventually. Watch your step there. Wow, great shoes."

"Thanks." Smiling now in spite of myself. Gripping his suited arm. Breathing in his skincare scent, a heady mix of extracts and botanicals I know so well. Makes me feel… strangely happy. Strangely at home with him on this dark road. Dark now, very. Water crashing on one side of me. A smell of roses on the other, close and thick. "What's your name?" I ask him.

He raises his hat from his head, then lowers it again. "Hud Hudson."

"Hud Hudson?"

"Don't laugh. My mother wrote romance novels. All out of print now, sadly. Well, here we are." I see we're already at the gates. We must have been very close all along. I look at the man named Hud Hudson, grinning beside me in the dark. I feel tricked. How could I have missed it? Beyond the gates, the house glows red among the eucalyptus trees, glowing red too. The roses sway gently in the breeze, giving off a rich perfume.

"You go on ahead," he says.

"Aren't you coming?"

"In a bit. I'll follow you this time around."

I'm about to walk up when he reaches out a hand and holds me back. "After you get the treatment, I'd love to hear all about it. All the lavish details."

"Why?"

"Don't you want to make me weep with envy, Belle? Doesn't that sound like fun?" He smiles and raises his hat. That's Monty. That's Alain. That's Paul. "I'll be in touch. Sorry about your mother, by the way."

"Thank you."

He walks away. Leaving me there alone, wanting to say wait. Wait. But the word is stuck in my throat. The sun has sunk. Nothing but a dim red flame over the palms and the rocks and the distant waves I still won't look at. But I can hear them all around me. That gentle, relentless primordial roar. And it reminds me. I never told you about my mother. I never told you.