Chapter 2

At the pink hotel by the sea, there's a bar right on the water. Don't know why I came here. Can't afford this place, not at all. And if the lawyer's tone on the phone is anything to go by, that isn't going to change. We'll talk tomorrow morning, Chaz said when I asked him to tell me the worst of it. Please tell me, I said. Tomorrow, he said. I've been staying at the hotel ever since I landed. Of course I'm afraid of the bill. But I'm more afraid of being alone in Mother's apartment. Have to face it tomorrow, of course. Pack up the place. But not now, not yet.

"Table for one, please," I tell the waiter at the bar. Because I may as well go down in style. You would have approved, wouldn't you, Mother?

"Of course," the waiter says. He looks a little like Tom Cruise, which is funny. Funny, too, how I suddenly feel a little dizzy looking into his face. Maybe it's just how intensely he's smiling at me. He brings me to a table with an ocean view but looks puzzled when I sit with my back to the water. I just smile. "Glass of champagne, please."

He stares at me. Still that smile, that puzzled look. What? I want to say. He looks up at my forehead. Is he noticing the faint scar there? Shaped like a warped star. Faded now but never gone, despite my regimen of acids and lightening agents. Barely there, really, Mother always assured me. No one can see it but you. But this man sees it. Does he see it? Very rude to stare, I want to tell him. I think he's going to ask me about it, but instead he says: "Do you have ID?"

My turn to stare now. Is he serious?

He doesn't flinch. Oh yes, he's serious.

I forgot this about America. How they card the very obviously over thirty. I give him my driver's license, and he stares at it forever, squinting. My mother's dead, you know, I want to tell him. I just left her funeral. This drink, it's deeply important to me. My fingers begin to twitch to show him the birthdate on the license. It's a Canadian license, so he probably has no idea where to look, and I should be patient, I should help. But I'm a little mesmerized by how long this is taking. How many times he looks at me, then at the license.

Finally, he hands it back. "Miss?"

Miss?"Yes?" I steel myself for his words. That he can't take this kind of international ID, sorry. He'll need to see my passport, please.

But he just looks at my face, sort of dreamily. "Whatever you're doing?" he says in a low voice. "It's working."

A smile in spite of myself. A vile flush of shallow happiness. "It is?"

"Definitely," he says. "Definitely."

Shouldn't matter at all. What this stranger makes of my skin. But there's my hand on my cheek, there's me looking up at his well-meaning expression.

"Thank you," I whisper, thinking of my bathroom counter cluttered with Marva-recommended jars and bottles and vials. My purse full of sunscreens and rejuvenating mists. "I have a whole thing that I do," I tell him, surprising myself. I never speak of what I do, with anyone. Because it's for you, isn't it? Marva says. A secret between you and the mirror.

He smiles. "Let me get you that champagne."

It comes in a chilled glass, bubbling like a cauldron. Like drinking stars, Belle, Mother would have said. I always rolled my eyes when she said that, but now look at me with my glass. Marva says alcohol is a collagen destroyer. Dries you up, dries you out. If you want good skin, you must stop drinking immediately, she says sternly. And when I watch Marva say this, I usually have a coffee cup full of champagne in my hand. Sometimes a cigarette in the other, also verboten by Marva. And I feel scolded, hideous, guilty. But Marva also says, We are human, aren't we? We all have our little fixes, our little indulgences, balms to this mortal coil, don't we?

We do, I agree. And there are tears in my eyes at Marva's compassion. Her understanding of the paradoxes. You should be kinder to yourself, she says to me softly, her eyes staring right into my eyes. Like they know. They know exactly how cruel I can be.

First one glass, then another. Not going back up to the hotel room to start my evening routine, though I can feel the grit and dust and debris on my face. The many free radicals that are burrowing their way through my skin barrier, oxidizing my flesh as we speak. I'm in desperate need of a clarifying cleanse, followed by a regenerating cleanse, followed by a triple exfoliation, after which I'll likely baste my face in some barrier-repairing zinc. But not just yet. The sky is an unholy pink fire, the palm trees blackening. I feel the waves roaring at my back. Not too many people at the bar tonight. Just a man nearby staring hard at his laptop, clicking away. Working late, I guess. A breeze blows through the terrace. Warm. Gentle. I forgot that about California. How even the breeze is a dream. Where would I be right now if I were back in Montreal? Working late too, probably. Staring at the checkered black-and-white store floor. Avoiding the mirrors on the walls. Not wanting to see my face ravaged by a day of smiling falsely under bright lights. Smiling still, just in case anyone should push through the doors at the last minute. That ring of the little silver bell. I hear it in my dreams. I hear it now. People coming into the dress shop so hopeful. Wanting what? Never just a dress. Mother taught me that. What they want, she said, is an experience. A transformation. A touch of magic.

Can't happen, I want to say to them. You are who you are who you are. Trust me, I know. There's no escape. In my dreams, I tell them this. I tell them all the awful truth. But in reality, I just smile. I say it looks wonderful even when it looks hideous. Wow, I say. And ifyou paired it with this blazer, it would really finish the look. And I'm lying. There is no look. The blazer will finish nothing. But they always believe me. They thank me, still frowning at themselves in the mirror. And I stand beside it, another mirror, smiling. My hands folded over my crotch. Waiting for them to look at me instead.

At this time of night, in the empty shop, the mask that is my face would be coming off. My smile would be slipping. I'd be playing music for myself and not the customers. Something dreamy and dark, with distortion. Something I could close my eyes and drown in beautifully. Mother used to describe my music taste as Otherworldly Funeral. Or Bleakest Party. Can you please turn down Bleakest Party, darling? Some of us have chosen to embrace life. It's the hour when all the shop mannequins conspire to look menacing. When they all appear to be smirking a little. Reminding me, with their flawless whiteness, of Mother. I might even have called her out of guilt. Or because I missed her. Those last times we talked, she'd sounded strange. Hello? Hello? she'd call into the phone. Like she was calling out into a dark night with no idea where she was.

Mother, I said, staring at a mannequin.

Who is this?

Your daughter.

Pause. Who?

Belle? Your daughter? Mother, what's—

Oh, Belle of the Ball. Sunshine, yes of course.Sunshine was her nickname for me. Sunshine because I was such a rain cloud according to her, a glum drop. Sunshine to spite me.

You know it's seventy-two degrees and sunny here. The sky is so blue and lonely, Belle. You should see it.

Lonely?

Did I say "lonely"? I meant lovely, of course. You should see it.

I've seen it, Mother. Are you okay? You seem a little—

I'm roses. I'm wearing a dread—a dress made of stars. The question is how are you, Sunshine? Are you still exfoliating your face off?

No, I said, though of course I was. I had seven different kinds of acid on rotation, each one for what Marva called a different skin predicament. I had the Universal Brightening Peel Pads and the Overnight Glycolic Resurfacing Matrix and of course, the triple-exfoliating Lotion Magique, a cult French elixir that's still illegal in some countries—the one with the banned ingredient that reeks of sulfur and numbs your face. I also had the infamous blood-colored Eradikating Ambrosia, which smells like turpentine and looks like fresh goat placenta. Each night I rub one or more on my face with a cotton pad, and my skin screams beautifully. Goes an unholy red. I watch it burn in the mirror while an animal scent, a smell of sacrifice, fills the bathroom like smoke.

I'm not, I lied to Mother.

And Mother tsked. You know those cells turn over all by themselves, Belle. Your sin's beautiful on its own.

My sin?

Skin, of course, why would I say "sin"? So funny. Anyway, the point is, Mother Nature is a fucking wonder.

Is she?And I stared at the mannequin. Little sideways smirk. Little slant of her gleaming eye. Mother said nothing. Silence filled the connection as it often did between us. I could hear the waves crashing on her end of the line. Chiding me. That I should have stayed in California. Been happy. Sunnier of soul and mind. But no, I had to choose darkness, didn't I? I had to skulk back to our bleak homeland of snow and ice. To look after Grand-Maman, I always interjected. But then Grand-Maman died, didn't she, and I still didn't come back. No, I felt compelled to stay and brood in the Montreal shadows, working in a dress shop, no less. Talk about a slap. When she herself had a dress shop in paradise where I could work right alongside her, didn't she?

And then there was our last phone call a couple of weeks ago. An evening shift at Damsels. No customers. I could see snow falling outside through the window, slow and fat. I remember the way the mannequins shone under the track lights. How they seemed to smile more broadly that night. Mother was speaking so quickly, so breathlessly. She kept slipping into French the way she did only when she was extremely distraught.

Mother, please, I said. What are you saying?

I'm wearing a dread of liquid gold that burns like the sun. I'm wearing shoes of reddest blood. The mirrors are cracking all around me. The waves are saying, entrée, entrée.

What? Mother, you're scaring me.

Belle, do you ever look in the mirror and see…?She trailed off. I could hear her breath quickening on the line. I thought I could hear her heart beating. Or was it my own heart I was hearing pounding in my ear?

Mother, what are you seeing?

I'm going the way of roses, Belle, she said at last, dreamily. Remember the roses? Te souviens-tu?

And my vision filled briefly with a red fog. Mother, you hate roses.

And click went the phone on her end of the line.

I sat there on my cashier stool with the phone in my hand, wondering, What the fuck? How she had answered the phone like a torrent. How like a torrent she was gone. And I was left. Left even though I was thousands of miles away, in another country. I could feel the slam of her door in my face. The wind blowing my hair back. The cloud of violets and smoke she'd trail in her wake. What the hell was she on, anyway? Drugs? Not drugs, surely, I told myself, trudging home through the snowy dark. Not Mother. Just her usual romanticism and joie de vivre gone awry, that was all. Getting stranger in her older age. A little more lost in her own world, her own reflection. (I'd have to be careful about that. Wasn't I going down the same road? I was, I was.) Or god, could it be early-onset dementia? I made a mental note to call Sylvia about it. To check in with Mother again the next day. If not the next day, I told myself, then soon. I'd go and visit soon too. I'd take her to a doctor myself.

It was the last time I'd ever talk to her.

Now I stare at my phone, its blank face. For a moment I glimpse the void. I see it gaping, black, bottomless. She went the way of roses, that woman at the funeral said, and smiled. Like that was so wonderful. Her blue eyes lit up.

"What's the way of roses?" I ask aloud.

Just then, my phone buzzes. I brace myself. Some vapid sympathy note from a co-worker, maybe. Or Sylvia just dropping a line to remind me to come by our little shop tomorrow. Or Persephone checking in to see when I'd be coming back to Damsels. Take all the time you need, she lied, patting my hand. But I could hear the clock already ticking in her voice.

When I look, I see a notification from a name I don't recognize. ROUGE. Who's Rouge? There's an icon of a wide-open eye inside an oval mirror. Staring at me.

Is Grief Afflicting Your Skin Barrier? Tap to Go Live, it reads beside the eye.

Something about this eye… I shiver as though I'm being watched. I look around the terrace. Just the sun sinking bloodily over the waves. Just the palm trees still blackening, swaying in the warm breeze. Just Tom Cruise making napkin swans at his station and whistling. An unease, cold and slippery, moves through me. I see the man sitting a few tables away, still clicking at his laptop. I look back at the eye in the mirror. Fuck you, I think. Fuck you and fuck the eavesdropping algorithms of the internet. Can they hear even our thoughts now? I'm about to turn off my phone, when I catch a glimpse of my own face reflected in the tabletop glass. What I see makes me colder still. Wretched. I look wretched. Is Grief Afflicting Your Skin Barrier?

"Yes," says a voice. My voice. I click on the link.

On my screen is a smiling woman in red. The woman in red from the funeral. She's standing on a stage, flanked by red curtains. What is she doing on a stage? What is she doing in my phone? She's staring right at the camera. Right at me the way Marva does. She actually looks a little like Marva. Same bright eyes. Same knowing look. Like she can see me sitting here on the terrace, my ravaged face and emptied champagne glass in hand. She's looking at me sympathetically.

"Bonsoir," she says. "Are you, at this very moment, in the grips of grief?"

She shakes her head like she knows. "Lacrimosa" from Mozart's Requiem plays softly in the background. I hear the applause of an invisible audience. The word LIVE is flashing in the corner of my screen in red. "Of course you are. We all are, aren't we? And it shows up, doesn't it? Even when we don't want it to. It shows up in the mirror."

Now the camera switches to another woman, this one in a bleak-looking bathroom. This woman looks ravaged, sick, around my age. She's also staring directly into the camera, at me, like I'm a mirror reflecting back her misery. Frowning at herself. Shaking her head slowly in time with the Mozart swells, as if she can't believe her own face. I hear the woman in red, in voice-over: "Here at Rouge, we believe the secret goes far beyond exfoliation. The true secret? That lies somewhere else."

Here at Rouge? The true secret?What is this, a fucking ad? Turn it off, I tell myself. But I'm still staring at my screen. The scene has shifted. Now there's a red jellyfish undulating in a pool of dark water. I watch it pulse redly in a sea of black. My heart quickens. What the fuck? And then it's gone. There's the woman in the bathroom again, except now the room is bright white and she herself is glowing. Bouquets of red roses bloom beautifully on either side of her in tall black vases. She's still staring at me like I'm a mirror, her reflection. But now she's smiling at what she sees. Her skin is like glass, shining with a light all its own.

"Jesus Christ," I whisper.

And her lips curl up on one side like she heard me. She holds up a red jar of cream. Right beside her glowing face, like it's an apple. Didn't I see jars just like that in Mother's bathroom this afternoon?

"Where does the secret lie?" It's the woman in red talking again. A voice-over that sounds not like it's coming from my phone's speaker, but whispering right in my ear. "Do you want to know?"

Yes.

"The inside," whispers this voice. The red jellyfish in black water fills my screen again. And then like a flash, it's gone. The glowing woman in the video smiles wide. She brings the red jar closer to her lips like she's about to take a bite. Something about the look in her shining eyes. As if she, too, can actually see me sitting here with my back to the water. The future a void and I'm standing at the black mouth looking down. She sees all that. Sees and knows. Not just the truth of my face, but what lies beneath. "The human soul, of course," says the voice.

I turn off the video, put my phone down. But it continues to play, because I hear: "And if you choose the way of roses, you'll see for yourself."

What? Where's the sound still coming from? My eyes rest on that man with the laptop sitting a few tables away. Dark blue suit. Red handkerchief blooming from his pocket. He's staring at his screen like I was just a moment ago, transfixed. This man? Watching the same skin video? He must be, I still hear the Mozart. He looks up now. The sound changed for him, too, of course, when I turned my video off. Why did it change? is a question all over his face. A handsome face, I can't help but notice. Tan, angular, sharp. Very well hydrated. His brimmed hat and his suit remind me of old movies. The sort Mother liked us to watch together, mostly French New Wave and Hollywood noirs. A certain kind of man in those movies she loved. Mysteriously broken. Beautiful, but something off. Forever moving to a minor key. Always in the process of lighting a cigarette. Always half smiling through the smoke, sort of like this man is now. That's Monty Clift, Mother might sigh, pointing at the screen. That's Alain, she'd whisper reverently, meaning Alain Delon. Ooh, Paul Newman. Love Paul, she murmured. So much. She talked about these men like they were her personal friends. Now this man suddenly locks eyes with me, my phone hot in my hand. I feel myself instantly redden, blotches blooming hideously all over my face. Look away, I tell myself, but I can't look away. My eyes are locked with his, cold and pale against his olive skin. He looks angry, maybe. Like he's been caught at something or like he caught me at something. Something shameful. But then he sort of softens. Smiles, almost. Snaps his laptop shut. Raises his champagne glass to me, then drains it in one gulp, eyes on me the whole time. That's Monty, Mother might say. That's Alain. That's Paul. He drops some money on the table and gets up, tipping his hat to me. Whether he's greeting me or simply adjusting the brim is hard to say. He saunters away whistling Mozart, and I sit there watching him go, my skin prickling at the sound, my phone still hot in my hand.