Chapter 7

Music. Laughter. Soft voices. Where am I—some sort of living room? No, too grand for that. More like a hall. Giant, coiling staircase. Tall, curving walls of glass all around. No actual ceiling I can see, though there must be one, because a massive red chandelier's dangling down. A million tiny red lights burning. Beneath it, people in the most elegant suits and dresses swan around in shimmering clusters. A party, must be. A party for the very beautiful and very rich. Not the typical California rich, looks like. No rumpled linen or slapping sandals. No jumpsuits or zombie eyes. This is what Mother would call another fucking level. What she might even call style. Everyone seems to be dressed in black or red or white. All quite pale-faced. That woman at the door probably mistook me for someone else. There's a drink in my hand now, where did that come from? It looks like champagne, except red. La Maison de Méduse etched on the flute in gold. I take a very long sip. Cold, bright bubbles go singing down my throat. Wow. Like drinking stars, Mother, I think.

"Like drinking stars," I hear someone behind me whisper dreamily.

I freeze. Turn around. Mother? A young-looking couple. Both luminous, both decadently dressed. They stare at me with eyes like the sky, dripping their dark silks.

"Sorry," I say. "Thought I recognized someone."

"A side effect of the Journey, perhaps," one of them offers in a zen voice.

"Perhaps," I echo. I have no idea what they're talking about.

They smile slightly. "Bon voyage," they murmur, raising their fizzing flutes and sauntering away.

"Bon voyage," I agree. Bon voyage?

"Aux recommencements," another woman says to me mysteriously as she passes. Also exquisitely dressed, also radiant.

"I'm sorry?"

"?‘To new beginnings,'?" she mutters over her white shoulder, like I've ruined something.

"Oh yes. New beginnings." I raise my glass to her. "Thank you. Merci." What the hell is this place? The music is louder now, a celestial drone full of airy chimes. Sort of like what you might hear in a spa. Just then I notice the signs in the arches above each corridor flanking the grand staircase: SIGNATURE RITUALS, reads one. VOYAGES MERVEILLEUX, reads the other. Up on the wall, there's a screen playing a video of a very white woman with her eyes closed. She has small black discs on either side of her head. She looks to be in absolute bliss. Superimposed over her pale face are lapping ocean waves. A Rendez-Vous with Yourself, it reads in red looping letters by her high, plump cheek. I smile. A spa. Of course. There's even what looks like a little boutique in that corner over there. Tall glass cabinets full of red bottles and jars. Each cabinet backlit like the products within are works of art. The red jars are just like the ones in Mother's apartment. She must have come here for treatments. Now I'm really smiling. So this was it, Mother. Your secret place. Probably you loved the little French touches, the old-Hollywood fashion. Sipping red stars. I take a long sip from my flute.

In the boutique, I see an older woman in a white suit—a customer, must be—ransacking one of the cabinets. I watch her greedily gather all the bottles and jars she can into her arms, then dump them into her large, glittery purse. She catches me watching her and frowns. Marches over to me briskly, her purse brimming with jars.

"So," she says, looking me up and down. "You've done it." She smiles a little warily. Probably around Mother's age. Unlike Mother, this woman looks it. Her skin has that preserved, almost pickled quality, suggesting a complex system, a rigid methodology that might be failing her. Still beautiful, though.

"Done it?" I ask her.

She laughs like I've just said something funny. Funny and painful.

"All right, then. Good for you," she says dryly. "Bravo." She doesn't look like it's good for me at all. I notice she's wearing a thick ruby choker around her neck. It makes her look like she's bleeding from the throat. "Did you get a tan or something?" she asks me.

"Excuse me?"

"Shouldn't do that on your Journey, they said. Compromises the result."

"I'm sorry, have we even met before?"

She smiles with a kind of pity. "Was it painful?"

"Painful?"

"Or was it beautiful? I've heard it's a little of both." She looks wistful. Then suddenly, she reaches out and grips my shoulder, drawing me close to her. Her face, I see now, looks very old. Her eyes are wild, yellowed in the corners. "Tell me," she says.

"I'm sorry, I really don't understand what you're—"

"You found the place," someone shouts from above. I turn and look up. The woman in red. From the funeral. From the video. Standing over us, on the first landing of the staircase. Smiling down at me like we're old friends. She's flanked by two people dressed in black. She waves at me to join them on the landing.

I look back at the woman in the white suit who's bleeding rubies from the throat. She's gone pale, looks even older than she did a minute ago. "I envy," she hisses at me in a low voice, then disappears from my side into the shimmering crowd.

I envy?Envy whom? Surely not—

"Join us," sings the woman in red from above. Waving her hand and smiling.

I take a step forward and trip spectacularly. Fall right on the red carpeted stair, my god. I get back up, apologizing, flustered. I try to climb the stairs once more, but it's the funniest thing: I fall again. You know when you're in a dream and you're trying to run and suddenly you can't run right or you can only run slowly? When what was solid ground suddenly feels like sucking mud beneath your feet? That's how it feels to go up these stairs. I keep tripping on my feet, which keep feeling like they're sinking beneath me. I have to grip the banister with all my might, like I'm climbing a rope. From above, they watch me wrestle with myself. They wait patiently. Sip their drinks. "So wonderful," says the woman in red.

At last when I reach the landing, frazzled and out of breath, they smile. The woman in red does, anyway. The strangers on either side of her do not. They're both wearing black veils over their faces. I can only just see their solemn expressions through the black netting. They look like they might be twins.

"So glad you could join us," the woman in red says. The veiled people on either side of her nod slightly.

"Me too," I say, even as I think, Who are these people? What is this place? But it's true, I am glad to be here. I'm very glad to be here instead of Mother's apartment, among the long shadows. To be at a party—when was the last time I was at a party? To be at a spa—is this a spa? Of course it is. Mother's secret spa, no less. What else could it possibly be? I watch the woman pour me some more of the red stars.

"Sorry," I say. "For my clumsiness just now. On the stairs."

"Sometimes the first steps in our Journey are the most trying, are they not?" She lets out a laugh like a bark. The veiled people say nothing. "The most trying and yet the most crucial." I look up at her face. Beaming so brightly at me. "Aren't they, Mirabelle?"

It strikes me again that she really does look like Marva. Same dreamy smile. Same ageless white skin. Same pale knowing eyes that seem to look through me, right into my twisted, palpitating heart. "You remember me?" I ask her.

"Remember," she repeats, and smiles, like she's amused by the word. "How could I forget?" The way she says it has an air of tragedy, of knowledge. Perhaps she was a friend of Mother's. Maybe that's why I was drawn here. Somehow I knew that.

"Did you have any trouble finding us?" she asks me now, Mother's friend. She looks so deeply concerned for my well-being.

I shake my head. "No," I say. "No trouble at all. In fact, this is going to sound funny but—" They all laugh now in anticipation. I wait for them to quiet, and say: "I was actually led here by my shoes."

They look down at my shoes. The veiled people hiss. Do they hiss? No, impossible. Surely I'm imagining that. What kind of person hisses? The woman in red smiles. "Interesting." A light in her eyes like the girl at the door. "I'm glad there was no trouble. There's already enough trouble out there, isn't there? In the world?"

"Yes." I nod. Why am I nodding?

"Tragedy likes to leave its mark, doesn't it?" Her eyes flit up to my forehead scar. Immediately, I flush. Accident, Mother said whenever I asked her about it. You fell.

How did I fall?

You were a kid. Kids fall. End of story, okay?

She's still staring at my forehead. "Quite the mark it likes to leave." She reaches out with a hand and strokes my cheek. Shocking, her sudden touch, but I don't pull away. Maybe she's the spa manager or something. She's assessing my skin to divine the depth of my need for self-care. I close my eyes. Her touch feels strange. Soft and slightly sticky. My heart begins to beat more quickly. I feel her reach up and trace my scar. My eyes fly open. She's smiling at me, and so are the people in black. Their black veils have been pulled aside like curtains so I see their twin faces. One male, one female. Both impossibly exquisite. I remember the childhood dolls I found in the basement box. Staring at me with their glassy eyes.

"Quite the mark," the male twin agrees.

"Quite," the female twin murmurs. Their voices are low and deep and rich.

They gaze reverentially at my forehead, which feels like it's on fire now. I swallow more red stars. I should say something. What are youstaring at? But I'm speechless before their luminous faces. Dazzled by how fucking beautiful they are. Maybe they're managers too. They seem more like owners than managers somehow with their black veils. They look, in fact, a little like the goth twins I slept with in college. Christine and Sebastian Whyte. I met them one afternoon when I was skipping my French literature class, trying to have a cigarette in the campus shade. They were smoking and reading Kafka side by side. Christine, the letters; Sebastian, The Trial. As I tried to spark up my lighter, they watched me with their black-lined green eyes. Hi, they said. Hi, I said. They were my first loves, my best friends. It was Christine who got me the Disney job. She worked there playing Snow White, for whom she was a dead ringer. Not because she loved it. No, she was doing it to fuck shit up, she said. Mess with the Mouse from the inside. You're pretty, Christine said to me, as if it were a curse. In that Disney-does-exotic way, isn't she, Brother? That's what she called Sebastian: Brother. He worked at Disney too, playing all the princes. Also supposedly to fuck shit up. I slept with Christine first, and then later, Sebastian, and then Christine again, but then she found she just couldn't anymore after she'd learned I'd been with Sebastian. You're tainted now, she told me, confronting me in the park in her Snow White costume. You're tainted in my eyes forever. I stood there contrite and sweating in my Jasmine costume, feeling like a whore in a cheap, spangled bra. I looked into her eyes where I was tainted. They were a green I'd never seen before and have never seen since. Sebastian's were like that too. These twins in black, they have eyes just like that.

"Fortuitous, isn't it?" they whisper to me now. "Your coming here tonight." Still staring in a way that makes me burn with shame. That makes me almost whisper, Am I really tainted, Christine? Am I tainted forever?

"Definitely." The woman in red smiles. "After all, self-care is really our only escape from the Abyss, is it not? I know your mother would agree."

"You really knew my mother?"

"Oh, intimately," she says. "Very intimately."

The twins smile now too. Did they know her? Can I imagine my mother having a cigarette with these doll people who so resemble my teen lovers? Clinking flutes with the woman in red?

"And you. We know so much about you, Daughter of Noelle," offers the male twin. I feel his voice in my vertebrae. He reaches out and strokes my cheek.

"So much," echoes the female twin, reaching out to stroke my other cheek. I stare at the woman in red, while these two gloved hands caress either side of my face. Cold silk against my burning skin. Inside me, a black box, locked tight, rattles.

"She told you about me?" I whisper.

They look at each other. "You could say that, couldn't you?" the female twin asks the male.

"Oh, you absolutely could." He smiles. "In a manner of speaking, yes."

What did she tell you?

"We're very happy to have you, Daughter," the male twin says, eyes still on my forehead. Gloved hand still stroking my face.

"Très heureux," the female twin agrees, also still stroking my face. So many soft silk fingers. Must be a communal assessment of some kind. They must take assessments very seriously here. I should probably tell them I can't afford this sort of spa. Can't afford any spa ever again, thanks to Mother. But their pale eyes and silk hands on me are like a bit of a dreamy drug.

"I'm happy too," I murmur.

"And we hope you'll come back," the woman in red says. "There's someone whom we'd like you to meet."

"Who?"

"Someone important. Very important to your mother," the woman in red says. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, Daughter? In this time of grieving?"

I picture another pale stranger stroking my face with a gloved hand. "Yes," I whisper. What am I saying? "I mean no."

Their smiles fade.

"I mean, I'd love to, of course," I say. "But sadly, I have to get back."

They look like they don't understand my words.

"Get?"

"Back?"

"I actually live in Canada. Montreal. I'm really just here for the next few days. To settle her affairs. Then I fly home." Home. When I say it, it feels like such an empty word. What does it signify? A one-room apartment, the walls lined with bottles and jars. A narrow bed where I lie each night curled around my laptop like it's a fire, like it could actually warm me. Watching Marva's face talk to me about my own face until my eyes close. And then? A dreamless sleep until my eyes open to the sight of her white face once more. Smiling kindly. Patiently. Like she was waiting for me the whole time.

I glance down at all the beautiful people glowing redly under the chandelier. There's a man in a hat standing a little apart from the crowd. Staring up at me, it looks like. Do I know him?

"Home," the woman in red repeats, calling me back. A flash of something like anger in her face. Anger or hunger? But it quickly retreats. "Of course. Daughter has her worldly obligations." The twins drop their cool silk hands from my face. Terrible. It feels terrible.

"I really wish I could stay," I say. "This seems like such a lovely…" Is it a spa? Suddenly, looking into their pale eyes, I'm not so sure anymore. They smile widely.

"Well. It'll all work out, I'm sure."

"Sure it will," the twins say at the same time.

"Although you know, Daughter," the woman in red says, suddenly stepping in closer to me. Suddenly inches from my face. "Sometimes you gotta say what the fuck. Make your move."

"I'm sorry?"

"Risky Business, isn't it?"

I flash to the shoebox full of Tom Cruise clippings. The torn movie poster. "What?" My skin grows cold under her smiling eyes.

"I must say you're looking a little pale, Daughter," she murmurs, still inches from my face.

"Am I?" I do feel very funny suddenly. Perhaps those red stars are really beginning to hit.

"In need of some rejuvenation. Perhaps a visit to the Depths is called for."

"Oh yes, you must see the Depths," the female twin says.

"The Depths?"

"I'll take you down," the male twin says.

"I'll take you down," says the female twin.

I notice the lights have dimmed. They're leading me down the stairs, each taking an arm. Such a gentle grip. I can feel their finger pads through the silk gloves, caressing my arms. "We hope you'll come back and see us, Daughter," they're whispering into my ears as we glide down the hall. Are they whispering that? The words are only a bit louder than silence. We move quickly across the hall, through the glittering crowd, like we're floating. They stay close to me, whispering to me. Causing a chill down the sides of my neck. "We really hope you will," they say.

And then? They've left me. Their lips no longer at my ear. Their scent of bergamot and rose and oud hovering faintly in the air. I'm standing in a large crowd before some ceiling-to-floor red curtains. They surround what looks like a grand circular stage in the middle of the hall. Was this here before? The curtains are lovely. Heavy, velvety. So red. What's behind them, the Depths? Must be the Depths, because all around me people murmur excitedly, like they're waiting for a show. Like I used to when I was a child watching Mother perform onstage. Little independent theaters. Experimental plays. Mother bowing before a small audience of mostly men. All of them clapping fiercely when she came out from behind the curtain, as though their hands might break. To my child's ear it sounded like a roar. It would ring in my ears hours later in my bedroom full of spiders. But I clapped too in the audience, surrounded by those violently applauding men. I clapped slowly, quietly, my little rebellion. Mother didn't see me though. She could see only the light on her own face. She could hear only the roaring approval of the dark. I watched her bow humbly as bouquet after bouquet was thrown at her feet. Beaming in the spotlight like she was a plant performing photosynthesis, all the petals of her unfurling. Now I look at the red curtains, almost waiting for Mother to emerge from behind them. I hold my breath, afraid. But when the curtains are pulled back, no Mother. Not even a stage. A vast aquarium tank, ceiling to floor like the curtains. Bell-shaped, like a downward-facing flower. The glass walls aren't smooth, they're warped and convoluted, causing distortions. A dancing golden light like sunlight through the blue-green water. The tank is filled with what looks like giant red jellyfish. They glow redly in the water, swelling and undulating as they pass the uneven magnification of the glass. Everyone around me claps and makes sounds of delight.

"Merveilleux!" I hear under someone's breath.

"Bigger than last time!"

"Too beautiful," someone whispers right beside me.

I stare at the red jellyfish, their bell-shaped heads pulsing in the bright aqua water. It looks like another time, another world, behind the glass. Mesmerizing to watch them undulate and float, trailing all those tangly tentacles. I can't seem to stop staring. Beautiful up close, I'm up close now. Somehow I've walked myself right up to the tank without realizing. I'm inches from the glass, staring deeply into the blue-green of this small sea. The light is what draws me. How it reflects me back to myself in the warped glass. And what I see there. Me as I've never seen myself before. Glowing skin. My features sharp as Mother's. I'm smiling. I don't feel like I'm smiling, but there I am, smiling in the glass. Gone are the folds around my mouth; the scar on my forehead; my misery lines; the sad, slack jaw and the puffy, dark-ringed eyes. All is sharp and taut. All sparkles. Brightly. Whitely. Beautiful. I look beautiful. Like a film heroine from the forties. Better than even my dream of myself. A red jellyfish swims through my reflection, but I still appear to smile as the tentacles move across my face. Wider, like it pleases me. Tears glisten behind my shining eyes.

And then I hear a gasping sound. Coming from the left and the right of me. Coming from all around. I see everyone's gathered around the tank. Everyone's gazing at themselves in the aquarium glass, transfixed. I can't see what they see. Only their gasping faces, the tears in their eyes. A woman covers her mouth and laughs into her hands. I look back at myself. She's still there, the other me. Still smiling at me with her red lips. This could all be yours, she seems to say. Like the twins' mouths whispering right in my ear. I could watch the play of light across her face forever. A jellyfish swims past her, through her, and then through her I see another figure. At the opposite end of the tank, on the other side of the glass. Standing there like I am. Gazing into the water. That man in the hat who was staring up at me earlier. He's got a black, pointed beard. Circular eyeglasses that make him look vaguely Victorian. He's familiar too, why?

I stare at his face through the glass. He's also looking at me, I see. A jellyfish swims between us in the blue-green water. It hovers there, blocking my view. Yet I can still see this man right through the red jellyfish. Like the creature is suddenly translucent, nearly transparent. In that instant, I see something I didn't before. Through the jellyfish, the man loses his black beard, his ostentatious mustache, his strange eyeglasses. For a flash, it's all stripped away and I know why his face is familiar. He's the man I saw at the hotel bar last night. The one who looked like old movies, with his dark suit and hat. Under the brim, his watchful eyes are locked with mine through the water. Looking deep into me. The water makes him look blurry around the edges, like he could dissolve any moment. Is he smiling at me? The jellyfish swims away. And then the man from the hotel looks the strange Victorian way he did before: His black beard comes back. His mustache. His glasses. It all looks like a disguise now. It is a disguise, I realize. "What the fuck?" I whisper.

And then he's gone.

My reflection's gone too. Just a tank full of red jellyfish and people with their faces inches from the glass, marveling at their reflections. A woman's laughing with such violent delight right beside me. She's clapping her old face with her old hands.

"Oh my," she murmurs. "Oh my, oh my, oh my."

The chime music is still playing, louder now. People are swaying with their reflections like they're slow dancing. One man's cheek is pressed against the glass, cheek to cheek with his other self. His eyes are closed so painfully, I have to look away. Suddenly, the red curtains close all around the tank. There's a collective sigh. People stumble away. I hear cries of anguish. The man beside me drops to his knees, clutching the curtains. The old woman is hugging her chest, caved into herself, like she's clutching a dagger someone stabbed into her heart.

Mother, what sort of spa is this? Did you really come here?

Get out of here, I think. Leave, leave, leave. But where and how? No exits that I can see. Only the grand hall that seems to extend into black. Only bodies hovering by the red curtain as if awaiting a second act. Only the spiraling staircase where the woman in red stands alone now on the landing, sipping her cold stars, watching the tumult below. Though I can't see her face, I sense she's smiling. The twins are gone from her side.

Then I see him again. Disappearing down the dark hall that gapes blackly like a maw. I follow him. Or I realize I'm following him. My shoes lead me down the hall, in spite of myself. I'm walking right behind him, my footsteps trailing his. He looks over his shoulder and, seeing me behind him, frowns. Quickens his steps. And though I'm angry about this, though I think, Fine, fuck you, I quicken my steps too. I reach out and grab him by his collar, surprising myself. He turns to look at me. Sort of smiling now. Like he's surprised that I grabbed him, but not entirely. Not unpleasantly. It's actually a very good disguise, I see. Much better than it seemed through the jellyfish.

"Can I help you?" he says in a low voice. Rough. Deep. Almost like it's wearing a disguise too.

"I don't know." I realize it's true. I have no idea what I want from this man. "I just… thought I recognized you. From last night. You were—"

He puts his finger to his lips, as if to say shhh. Glances both ways down the dark hall. Then he smiles. Looks at me through his spectacles, spectacles I suspect he doesn't need. Eyes a slate-gray that reminds me of river water. "Not here," he says quietly. "Not now."

"I'm sorry?"

He leans forward, puts his hands on my shoulders. As he leans in, I smell forest botanicals, something bittersweet like green tea. His skin's very smooth, what I can see that's not covered in fake facial hair. Could the green tea scent be from a hydrating essence?

"à bient?t, as they say," he whispers, as if people might be listening. "For now, just walk away."

"Walk away?"

"Don't follow me."

"I wasn't," I whisper back.

He lets go of me and straightens his suit jacket. Looks all around as though there are eyes in the walls. Then he smiles at me with one side of his mouth. A full mouth in that fake black beard. "Of course you weren't," he says.

He turns away and starts walking farther down the hall.

Don't follow him, I tell myself as I watch him walk away. But I'm following him again. My shoes moving more quickly as he moves more quickly. What the fuck am I doing? I think, my feet literally racing down the dark hall that seems to go on forever, lit now and then with a candle on a sconce. He speeds up and I speed up until we're both walking nearly side by side. He reaches out and grips my arm.

"What the fuck?" But there's still a smile in his voice. His grip is so different from the male twin's. Not silky and cool. It's warm and bold. Unmistakably of this world. "Didn't I just say Don't follow me?"

"I'm not," I lie. "I'm just going the same way. This is where I'm heading too."

"Is that so?"

I nod.

"And where are you heading exactly?"

"Home," I say. The word rips in my throat. Rips like a torn page. It's nothing. I know it's nothing when I say it. It's cracked mirrors. Rooms violently empty of all but her scent's ghost. A counter cluttered with bottles and jars.

He shakes his head. "Home, huh?" he says. Strangely, I hear the rip there, too. He pulls a cigarette from behind his ear. Sparks a silver lighter. In the light of the bright flame, I see three people gliding toward us in the hall. Dressed head to foot in black, veils over their faces just like the twins. They're carrying black umbrellas as though it's raining inside. How odd, I think. Although odd compared to what? The red jellyfish in their great tank? This house of curved glass, full of rich, beautiful eccentrics? Who are they? I wonder as they glide closer.

Just then he presses me against the wall and kisses me. His mouth on my mouth, lips crushing mine gently. The fake beard is surprisingly soft. I taste Altoids and cigarettes. A lip balm that gives off the faintest scent of roses. His scent, his mouth, his grip, it's all a shock to my body, which has been holding itself tight and away. Now opening, melting under this stranger's kiss. How long since I've kissed anyone? Months. The last time was a woman in a bird mask. Halloween party at Damsels. A friend of a co-worker. Lonely. We both were. Outside the shop, my back against a wall of bricks. Clear, cold night. A Montreal quarter moon like a scimitar above us. Come home with me, she whispered into my neck. Home, I repeated. But I knew I couldn't go back with her. It would have been like fucking my own loneliness. Also, it was Resurfacing Night, the night I apply my Radiance Rescue Exfoliating Dewtopia and follow it up with my NuuFace. Then, after administering various brightening, tightening, and refining serums, I slug my face with Vaseline and sleep on my back, emanating a vague scent of sulfur. But of course I couldn't explain all this. So I just said, I'm sorry. I have to go.

He pulls away suddenly. The black-clad figures have floated past us down the hall. He watches them go, then looks back at me and grins. His beard is slightly askew now. In his gray eyes, I see the Saint Lawrence River rushing darkly beneath the bridges of my city.

"Home," he repeats dreamily, tracing my cheek with his incredibly soft hands. "You're going the wrong way."

When he walks away this time, I don't follow. I just stand there, panting from the kiss, watching him disappear down the dark hall.