Chapter 26

A dark, warm room full of fog. White faces frozen on the red wall above me, so many faces. Not faces, masks of faces. Their eyes and mouths wide open like black holes. Are they in the midst of horror or in the midst of bliss? Hard to say. I'm lying on a white chair shaped like an S. Slippery, no armrests. I'm in a robe of white silk that shines in the dark, how pretty. There's a red flowerlike thing on the breast pocket. It could be a flower, it could be a fish. The petals look like tentacles, very pretty. Where am I? What is this place? Whatever it is, I'm not the only one here, it seems. Others with me, sitting in S chairs of their own. Everyone smiling. Everyone looking so peaceful, like we're in a spa place. Perhaps we are. And this is the waiting place before. There's a sound of chimes, a perfume in the fog that's lulling. All very peaceful, but I'm a little nervous, funny. Maybe I should get up, take a look around in the fog. Orient myself.

"Oh, don't get up," says the woman next to me. "Not yet, they said."

She's smiling at me in the dark. She's also in a chair like an S, wearing a white robe with a red flower-fish on the breast.

"Who's they that said it?" I ask. That can't be the right way to ask, but it's how I ask.

She smiles sleepily at me. She's so extraordinarily beautiful. Her face is like a lake. Lakesmooth. Pale, but something tells me she wasn't always so. Like she's been drained a little of her color. Brightened.

"Who's they?" I ask.

"Can't remember," she says. So dreamily. Everything is a dream. The fog is a dream. I'm a dream. She's smiling in it. "They're a color."

"What color?"

"Can't remember the color," she says. "Funny, that. It's so close in my head, you know?"

"Yes," I say.

"It's roses. Blood. Fish that float with many legs. You put it on your face with a brush to make yourself pretty. Anyway," she says, "soon. Soon is when they're coming for us."

She knows so much, I think. She's so wise. And familiar, too. I feel as though I may have sat with her before in this very waiting place. So I ask, "Where are we?"

"The Relaxation Chamber. Where you come post treatment. The After Place."

I look up at the white faces on the wall frozen in screaming. I breathe in the perfumed fog. The After Place. Yes. It makes sense. So I've just had a treatment. "And who are you?"

And she smiles, but then stops. "I'm not sure," she says. "Funny."

"Yes, that is. Really funny."

She looks at me. "Who are you? Maybe if you know, then I'll know too."

I try to think, but my mind is a blue pool empty of fish. Light from a sun streaming down. But no words there. No name that's mine.

"I'm not sure too."

"Funny," we both say.

And we smile. You have to smile or you'll something else. The thing that happens to your eyes when they begin to leak salt water. It's a little funny how we don't know. It's also not funny. It's the opposite of funny. What's the opposite of funny? Forgot. Whatever it is, I'm feeling it spread through me and it's making me cold. It's spreading through her, too, I see. See it on her… face. She looks the opposite of funny.

"Can you favor me something?" she says.

I look at her. "Course, yes."

"Do you mind telling me if I look… how I look? If it's beautiful at all? Because I can't see a glassthing anywhere."

"I can't either," I say. "Just these white faces on the walls. Do you see them?"

She nods, looking all around. "I see them. I see them and I don't love them at all."

She begins to do the opposite of smile again.

"Don't," I say. "Please. Look at me. I'll be your glassthing."

She looks at me and I look back at her for a while like I'm really looking. Like I'm finding the words in her face though I already know what to say. "You're beautiful," I say. "Like a lake of ice. Smooth and Bright."

This makes her smile again. "It's true?"

"Very. Can you tell me what I am now? What about me?"

She looks at me.

"There's a Glow," she says. "A Glow like a light. Moonbright."

We smile at each other in the fog. Who needs glassthings when we can give each other our eyes? But oh god. Feet sounds now. We hear them coming our way. A gong thing ringing through the chimes. Rings through me. Making me vibrate like a bell. I watch the fog clear like clouds parting.

"Sounds like soon is coming," the woman whispers.

"Sounds like soon is now."