American Elsewhere

CHAPTER TEN




Mona’s been walking for what feels like an hour, up and down hills of many intimidating gradients, but she hasn’t broken a sweat yet. There’s something to the morning air here—it’s cool, but not chilly. It seems to wriggle into every crevice of your body, waking it up and reminding it it’s alive. She comes to a hill and looks out at a small vista—the road loops down to encircle a small adobe bungalow, where an ash tree slowly waltzes in the wind. She keeps thinking of that word.

Alive: that’s how everything feels. It’s like she’s gotten a really good sleep, even though she definitely didn’t last night, not in that huge, empty house.

Mona hasn’t made much progress on her mother—though the people here are gregarious and eager, they are also totally useless on that front—so this morning she’s turned her attentions to the town itself. It’s small, so she knows she should be nearing the end of the town soon, but it never comes: there is always another twist to the road, or another hill behind a hill, or an immense tree hiding a path she didn’t see before. The town goes farther and farther, tunneling inward. It is a very disparate feeling, as if Wink is not one place, but a place made of many smaller places, little bubbles accessible only by one entry point each.

She looks ahead and sees a small knoll that is half covered with bobbing wildflowers. It’s a curiously uneven sight—the flowers are restricted to the sunward side, so the knoll looks a little like someone with a half-shaved head. The flowers are so dense and so brightly colored that Mona immediately thinks that were she a little girl, she’d love to go rolling down the hillside among them, petals of bright yellow streaking by as the blue sky whirled around her.

Since Mona is not a little girl, she opts to go walking in them instead, rounding the hill and looking up at the sight above her. On the other side of the hill is a little trickling brook that has carved a small green scar in the landscape. It seems a bit out of place—Mona saw no sign of a brook on the other side of the hill—but, curious, she follows the brook down to where it winds through the trees.

She keeps following the brook, ducking under branches when they’re too big to push aside, and suddenly there is the flutter of sunlight…

Mona looks out, and gasps. She’s standing on the lip of a rocky cliff, and below her is a fifty-foot drop into the valley. Vertigo beats on her senses, telling her she’ll step forward anytime, and go plummeting down…

“Maryanne, hon, I told you I wanted to be alone today,” drawls a voice nearby.

Mona wrestles her eyes away from the drop and looks right along the cliff. There is a little clearing not more than twenty feet away, grassy and shaded by a tall spruce, and in the middle of the clearing is a woman sunning herself on a deck chair. There’s a second unoccupied deck chair beside it, along with a small table, on top of which is an aluminum shaker sweating with condensation.

Mona relaxes, steps away from the edge, and walks to the woman. She is tall and lean, and she wears very short white shorts and a blue halter top, and a pair of pink cat’s-eye sunglasses with rhinestones. In between her thighs is a half-empty martini glass.

“Sorry?” says Mona.

The woman raises a finger to tug down one lens of her sunglasses. An eye of lapis lazuli peeks from behind it. “You are not Maryanne.”

“Nope,” says Mona.

“Who are you? I don’t know you. Wait. Wait, are you the…”

“Yes,” says Mona. “I am. Didn’t mean to disturb you, I was just following the creek down here.”

“Ah. Well, you’ve stumbled onto my secret hiding spot. So. You’re the new girl in town. You certainly are making yourself known. Not that that’s a bad thing. What’s your name?”

“Mona.”

“Mona. That’s a good name. Not used very often anymore. Suppose people think it’s too… gloomy.” She licks her lips. Mona gets the impression that the martini between her legs is not her first. “Mona. Moan. See?”

“I see.”

The woman sits up. She’s definitely of A Certain Age—her tan is interrupted by liver spots flowering on her wrists and the backs of her hands, and her cat’s-eye sunglasses can’t conceal the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “I’m Carmen, Mona. It’s a pleasure to meet you. How are you doing on this fine morning?”

“Good enough, I guess.”

“I’m going to have to guess that no one here’s exactly thrown you a welcome party yet?”

“A welcome party?”

“Sure. Welcoming you to the town.”

“Well. I wouldn’t want to bad-mouth anyone, but… kind of.”

“You’re not bad-mouthing anyone.” She sighs and sits back. “I’m not surprised.”

“I imagine the funeral sort of put a damper on that.”

“Oh, I suppose it did. But even more so, though we like fun here, we just don’t like to make a show of it. Hence the, ehm.” She slurps noisily at her martini and waves at the surrounding trees. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I didn’t really want to intrude.”

“Oh, you’re not intruding. I’m just being neighborly.”

“But I thought you said you wanted to be alone?”

“That was because I thought you were my daughter. I’ve been helping her and her kids—she’s married with her own kids, you see—and I insisted on having a few moments of my own. I mean, they can take care of their own shit for a few hours, can’t they?”

“I guess?”

“Of course they can. And Hector—Hector, that’s my husband—he could weigh in and actually do something occasionally, too. It’s good to let them be on their own. Sink-or-swim kind of thing. Now sit. You look like you’ve been working yourself half to death. Here.” Carmen fetches a martini glass from underneath her chair and pours something cool and clear. “I would like to state that this isn’t something I do often. I don’t just hang out here in the woods drinkin’ all morning. Life does not permit. But, you know, I sure would if I could. I can’t think of a better use for a morning.” She hands the drink out to Mona.

“Uh, I’m not really a gin person.”

“You’ll be this kind of gin person. I promise.”

Mona sips, not wishing to be impolite. But the drink is cool and biting and refreshing, like a dash of cold rain on a hot afternoon. “Huh,” says Mona.

“I told you it was good,” says Carmen. “Where you from, Mona?”

“Texas.”

“Where in Texas?”

“All over.”

“All over? That’s a big all over.”

“I didn’t quite have a permanent address, I guess you could say.”

“I see,” says Carmen. “Then what brings you to Wink?”

Mona recites her usual explanation.

“Goodness,” says Carmen. She appears honestly affected by Mona’s story. “It sounds like you’ve had quite a time.”

“You could say that.”

“Well. Why don’t you lie back and enjoy the morning with me? Sounds like you’ve earned it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—”

“I’m willing to bet you possibly could. Do you have anything else to do today?”

Actually, Mona does. She’d meant to ask Mr. Parson more about Coburn today, and to see if she could get him to make a damn bit of sense. But she says, “Nothing that couldn’t happen later, I suppose.”

“That’s the spirit. Relax. We get to relax so rarely. Give it a shot.”

Mona lies back. Relaxing isn’t something she does easily, but she finds it easy here: the sun is warm but tempered by the overhanging tree, and the chuckle of the nearby brook makes her worries melt away.

“So what do you think so far, Mona?” asks Carmen. There’s a soft slurp as she sucks at her own drink.

“I think I could get used to this shit.”

Carmen laughs. “I believe you, but I meant about Wink.”

“Oh. Well. It’s… it’s damn nice.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it. I guess we get too used to it. Acclimated. Take it for granted. But then a morning like this happens, and you remember.”

“It feels… a little different at night.”

“Hm,” says Carmen, but she does not comment further.

“New Mexico is a damn pretty state. I wish I’d come here sooner.”

“You know, I’ve been here all my life, but I can’t imagine any place more pleasant than this. Well. I’d be lying if I said you didn’t have to look. Like this place here. Sometimes you have to work for your bit of peace. But it’s there. And I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking, what the hell would a housewife know about work?”

“I actually wouldn’t think that at all, ma’am,” says Mona.

“Oh, really? Pardon my forwardness, but I didn’t quite see you as the family type.”

“Tried it once.”

“Didn’t take?”

“Something like that.”

“Ah,” says Carmen. She turns her black-glassed eyes to the sky. “Well, if anyone gives you any shit about that, you can tell them to go to hell for me. If they haven’t been there, they can’t talk.”

Mona tries to smile gratefully at this bracing advice. “So is this part of your property?”

“Kinda,” says Carmen. “Our house is back toward downtown more. This is just mine, really. I asked Hector for it. For my little bit of sun I could lay out in—though I did ask for a little bit of shade, occasionally—and he went and got all that arranged. That’s kind of how things work for us. A lot of favor-corralling, I guess you could say. I’ve no doubt you’ll figure it all out, if you hang around long enough.”

Mona looks around at the glen. Maybe it’s the gin, but it’s hard to have a troubling thought here. Yet there’s also something vaguely hermetic about this place, as if the trees have sealed them in and this tiny glen and its stunning vista are totally detached from Wink.

“Will you be hanging around?” asks Carmen.

“Sorry?”

“Around Wink. You’ve got a house, you said, but are you thinking to stay?”

“I don’t know,” says Mona. “Maybe. I guess the real estate market might not be exactly hopping here, if I want to sell the house.”

Carmen gives a husky laugh and finishes her drink. “You’d be surprised, m’dear.”

“I have to ask—you wouldn’t happen to have known my mother, would you?”

“Sorry, hon. I didn’t. Or if I did, I don’t remember, which ain’t out of the question. My memory isn’t what it used to be. But if you ever need anything—advice, or a drink—I’m always available. Or I’ll make myself available, even if I’m not.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Well, you seem like someone who’s seen a lot. It’s like I said, peace flourishes here, if you ask for it. I hope you’ll find some here.”

Mona considers it as she finishes her martini. As she does, there’s a snort from Carmen, followed by a second one that never quite stops until it’s a snore. Mona sits up and looks in the shaker, and is not surprised to see it is totally empty.

She gets up and follows the brook back up to the street, walking until she emerges in a greenbelt where three small girls play hide-and-seek, giggling and shrieking as they dash among the trees, and she turns toward home, thinking of peace.


So far Mona hasn’t had a single good night in Wink. She tries to sleep, but it does not come easily. Often she awakens to roam the house’s empty hallways. The windows cast queer shapes on the faded wooden floor, and in some places the air takes on a hot, electrical scent, like the smell in a room with too many copiers and printers going at once.

Mona thinks herself a practical person, so she knows the world abounds in coincidences that can really f*ck with your head if you invest too much in them, and she tries to tell herself the shared date—of her mother’s suicide and the lightning storm—is one of them. Tragedies happen every day, and it doesn’t mean anything if two coincide. Yet each time she remembers that black, lacquered shard of wood leaning crookedly in the park, she is troubled.

When sleep finally takes her it is blessed and hard, a dreamless black slumber that will leave her covered in pink wrinkles from the sheets when she wakes. Yet eventually—it is hard to say when—she begins hearing voices in her sleep.

“… And she just came in the other night, she says,” says one voice. It sounds like it belongs to a very old woman who is standing just nearby.

“She says so because she did. I was there,” says another. This voice is masculine, firm and deep. “I was the first she came to.”

“To you? Was this your doing?”

“Her coming to me was purely coincidental. I had no hand in it. I had no idea she was coming at all.”

Mona does not open her eyes. She is sure she is dreaming, but she does not want to open her eyes in the dream, because then she might do the same in real life and wake up and ruin her sleep. So she lies on the mattress with her face in the sheets and her eyes tightly shut, listening to the two voices talk.

“And do you think it is all coincidence?” says the old woman’s voice. “I would like to believe so, I must say. Then we could rest easy.”

“Something this important… I cannot help but think otherwise.”

“Why do you think her arrival is important?”

“She comes right after a death. A new face, after an old one is lost. It is too soon for me to feel comfortable about it.”

“Ah,” says the old woman’s voice. “So you think…”

“Exactly. She is not here by accident. She was brought here. This is someone’s doing, but I am not yet sure whose.”

Mona has no idea what they’re talking about, but she’s slowly becoming aware that the air on the back of her neck is nothing like that of the air-conditioning in the house. It is far too cold and dry. It feels like a wind out of a barren desert, one that has never known moisture in all its life. And she feels she has heard those voices before…

She begins to lift her head a little. She is not going to look, she is certain of that, because this is still just a dream. She’s just going to crack her eyes a little, and maybe something will just trickle in.

She cracks her eyelids. And something does indeed trickle in.

Mona is on her mattress, but she is not in her house: the mattress lies on a field of black stone, like volcanic basalt, its surface cracked into nearly perfect little hexagons. There is a red light shining down on the black stone field, and Mona keeps lifting her head until she spies a familiar sight: the red-pink moon, as fat as a happy tick, and just below it is the blue flicker of cloud lightning.

This is some dream, she thinks.

“Do you believe she has any involvement?” asks the voice of the old woman.

“I do not think she knows a thing,” says the man’s voice. “She is mostly confused, and sad. She is a broken thing.”

“So she poses no threat.”

“I did not say that. With so much recent madness, how are we to be sure what is a threat and what is not?”

“Hm. I believe I may wish to confirm for myself,” says the woman’s voice.

“I do not think it’d be wise to attempt anything dangerous now.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be dangerous. At least, not for us…”

Mona is now sure these voices are familiar. Did she not once hear one of them offer her breakfast, and the other one offer her tea? Confused, she lifts her head higher and begins to roll over.

She sees there are two statues, one standing directly on either side of her, enormous ones done in odd shapes: one looks like a single queerly organic column, the other resembles a mammoth, headless bull with many limbs. They seem taller than the Statue of Liberty and the Sphinx, respectively, and appear to be made of the same black stone as the sunless wasteland. Both statues tower just above her, as if they were strolling by (if such things could stroll) and found her lying here and are investigating together. Yet the moon is just behind them, so she cannot see more of them as they look down on her…

“Wait,” says the man’s voice. “Is she looking at us?”

“Can she see us?”

“How can she—”

Then there is a flicker of movement, lightning-fast. It takes Mona’s brain a few moments to translate what it just saw, and though she cannot believe it her brain keeps on insisting it was real.

The statue that looked like a bull waved a limb. Which statues should not be able to do, she says to herself. If it really did wave a limb, then it could not be a statue at all, but…

Suddenly Mona is falling, plummeting away from the black wasteland and into darkness. She falls until she strikes her mattress—which is odd, because she is certain she was just lying on it—and she jerks awake with a gasp and looks around.

She is lying in the corner of the master bedroom of her new house. Though she could have sworn that just now she was not alone, she looks at all the dark corners and sees no one at all. The room, though spacious, is empty.

Then the braying, shrill peal of a bell splits the silence. Mona’s whole musculature flexes in surprise, causing a stab of pain in her belly and arm. Then the bell rings again, and she realizes it’s the aquamarine phone sitting in the dusty corner of her living room.

She goes to it and watches it ring four more times. Whoever it is, he or she isn’t giving up.

Mona expects it to be the same jerk who called earlier. So she picks it up and barks, “Who the f*ck is this?”

There’s an “Ah” of surprise on the other end, followed by an “Uh…”

“Yeah?” says Mona. “Go on. Talk.”

Silence.

Then: “You need to go home.”

“What?” says Mona. “What the hell do you mean?”

“You need to go home, Miss Bright.” The speaker is talking through what sounds like a sock pressed against the phone, but this cannot disguise the fact that the speaker is obviously very young.

“I am at home,” says Mona.

“No. The home you came from. You need to leave this town.”

“Okay, or—you could just mind your own f*cking business.”

“They’re watching you,” says the voice. There is a note of genuine terror in it. “They’re talking about you.”

“Who?”

“All of them. Don’t you know what they are?”

“ ‘What’?” says Mona. “What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“Go as soon as you can,” says the voice. “If they’ll let you.” Then there is a click, and the line goes dead.

Mona looks at the receiver, thinking, then slowly puts it down.

She knows that voice. She’s sure of it.

She is back in bed, just on the verge of slumber, when it comes to her: didn’t she hear that voice recommend the biscuits and gravy to her once? But then she returns to sleep, and the thought is gone, and forgotten.


Mrs. Benjamin’s luncheon is held in her backyard. It is a cool seventy-two degrees outside, and her cottonwood trees have been carefully pruned so that they form a light canopy that shields the yard from the noon sun. Her gardens are nothing short of astonishing: huge clumps of flowering vines sprawl along its iron fence, and blades of sprouting bulbs droop along the pink granite borders. It looks like something out of Southern Living, and, unfortunately for Mona, the same goes for the rest of the attendees: everyone here is wearing a sundress with matching jewelry, heeled sandals, and sleek sunglasses. Mona, who was raised in the oil flats with nothing but an unsociable ex–Army Ranger for company, has always felt profoundly insecure about her lack of femininity, and she feels incredibly out of place here, where she just can’t compete with this level of estrogen. It doesn’t help that she is quite short, dresses like she is planning for a hike, and is obviously Latina, unlike everyone else here.

Yet it is odd: the question of race never pokes its head above the waves. This is unusual for Mona, who has been all over Texas and worked in some of the whitest communities out there and has witnessed a vast array of reactions to her race. Since Wink is about 98 percent white, she expects at least something, especially from these socialites: maybe they would ask her, somewhat tentatively, where she was from, or clumsily inquire if she was bilingual (to which the answer is a sort of no—the only Spanish Mona knows is what she picked up on the force in Houston, which is limited to commands, threats, and thoroughly indecent questions). But these questions never come. In fact, now that she thinks about it, no one in Wink has ever said anything about her race: both it and her general appearance have gone mostly without comment or reaction. It feels as if the citizens of Wink have gotten used to people different from them.

Still, her insecurity intensifies as the luncheon goes along. These are a type of woman Mona has never encountered: they drink cocktails at noon and smoke cigarettes in slender little holders, and they discuss almost nothing but housekeeping and the states of their husbands and children. Perhaps they are what Carmen was fifteen years ago. They seem a cheery, bubbly lot, with their hair perfectly coiffed and their eyes bright and smiling behind their sunglasses, and they greet Mona with an enthusiasm she finds downright intimidating. None of them seem to be employed. The mortgage rate around here must be great for everyone to live so well on a single income. She manages to briefly redirect the course of conversation to her reason for being in Wink, and pop in a few questions about her mother—but of course they, like everyone else so far, know nothing: they laugh at their own ignorance, and bounce gaily to the next subject. Though Mona feels contempt for them—so privileged, so sheltered—she also cannot help but wish to be one of them.

For the most part they are all too happy to do the talking for her, but when they finally ask her a direct question it’s one Mona’s been dreading all along:

“So, Mona, any plans to settle down?” asks one, who Mona thinks is named Barbara. “I know you’re young, but don’t wait too long.”

The statement puts a bad taste in Mona’s mouth, but she still tries to smile. “I’m not that young,” she says. “I’m almost forty.”

“What!” cries Barbara. “Almost forty! You don’t look a day over twenty-seven! What is your secret? You have to tell me. I’ll bend your arm if you don’t.” The other women nod. Some even look insulted to hear her true age.

It is not a new response to Mona, who has watched friends grow gray and lined while she stays the same, more or less. She knows she’s lucky, but she’s never figured out why. Her mother and father looked well over their ages, but then one drank himself to sleep every night and the other was schizophrenic, so that doesn’t mean much.

“Just genes, I guess. I can’t say it’s clean living.”

“Well, it’s high time someone snatches you up,” says another, a platinum blonde who might be named Alice. “I notice there’s no ring on that finger…”

Mona tries to smile again, but it comes out as a grimace. “Well. There was, once.”

Discomfort flutters through them, the first time on this sunny afternoon. “You mean you were engaged, and it was… called off?”

“No,” says Mona. “I was married. But we divorced,” she says, before they ask if her husband died, which is probably a more pleasant alternative to them.

“Ah,” says Barbara. Some of the women grow very still. The others are exchanging glances. After a few beats of silence, the subject is forcefully changed and the flow of conversation resumes burbling cheerily along, though now far fewer questions are directed to Mona.

Yet Mrs. Benjamin does not react at all to this news. In fact, she hasn’t done much all throughout the luncheon besides pass food around and watch Mona. Mona begins to find it very unsettling, for every time she looks up, Mrs. Benjamin is watching her with a small smile.


It’s not until the luncheon’s over and everyone is leaving that Mrs. Benjamin speaks to her: “If you could please stay behind, dear, I would appreciate it. I feel like we have a little to discuss.”

Mona obliges, loitering on her porch while Mrs. Benjamin sees the other guests out. When she returns, the small, clever smile is back on her face. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“It was certainly…” She trails off, wondering how to finish.

“Awful?” suggests Mrs. Benjamin.

Mona is not sure what to say, but Mrs. Benjamin just laughs. “Oh, don’t look so concerned, my girl. Anyone with sense can see they’re a bunch of empty-headed fools. That’s why I didn’t give them any of the good tea.” She winks.

“Then why did you have them over at all?” asks Mona, irritated.

“Oh, just to spite them, I suppose,” says Mrs. Benjamin vaguely. “Stir up trouble. They can’t stand one another’s company, you see. I have to get my amusement somehow.”

“And you brought me in to stir up more trouble?”

“No. I wanted to see how you’d handle them.”

Mona stops. Takes a breath. She then says, “Ma’am, I admit I do not understand the intricacies of your social spheres here, and to be honest I really do not wish to. But one thing that I really, really do not want for you to do is involve me in them for what seems to be no damn reason at all. And, believe me, you do not want that either, though you will have to trust me on that.”

“Oh, please hold on. I didn’t intend to be cruel. I just wanted to see how you’d be fitting in here.”

“Well, I will guess that I will fit in quite shittily, but that’s my problem and none of yours. Now… you got me here under the pretense of answering a few questions about the town, and my mother,” says Mona. “Can I ask you those questions?”

“Oh, certainly,” says Mrs. Benjamin, miffed. “Fire away, dear.”

They sit down on the porch and she tells Mrs. Benjamin about how she inherited the house, and her very strange trip here. When she finishes her story Mrs. Benjamin stays quiet for a long, long time. “Hmm,” she says finally. “Well. I’ll say again that I have no memory of a Laura Alvarez living or working in Wink.”

“I’ve got photos of her living in my house,” says Mona.

“From when?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

“I don’t know exactly… I guess sometime in the seventies.”

“Hmm,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “My memory goes back far, but… not all the way back. So I could be wrong. She could have lived here before I ever came.”

“I also have documents from Coburn saying she worked there,” says Mona. “Is there any remnant of their operation still in the area that I can go to? Any government agency? I just need to find something about her.”

“Coburn…” says Mrs. Benjamin, a little contemptuous. “That damn lab. Who knows what their papers say? I wouldn’t trust anything I heard about up there. All of their facilities were located up on the mesa, and those were gutted and abandoned when the lab was shut down.”

Mona makes a mental note of this. Because she intends to go up to that mountain, and damn soon. “What was it they did up there?” she asked. “I read they did government research, and something about… quantum states.”

Mrs. Benjamin stares off into the distance for a while. “They did nothing that was worth doing,” she says finally. “They should have put more effort into commercial prospects. Usable ideas. Rather than conceptual research. It did not end well.”

“Because they never came up with anything,” says Mona.

“Hm?” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Who told you that?”

“Mr. Parson. He’s the man who runs the—”

“I know Mr. Parson,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “We’re well acquainted. And Coburn, well… they only ever did one thing.” She thinks for a moment. Then she asks, “Here—would you like to see a magic trick?”

“A what?”

“A magic trick. The party bored me stiff, dear, so a trick should be entertaining. Come inside. I’ll show you.”

“I thought you said you were going to help me,” says Mona as she follows Mrs. Benjamin into her house.

“I am,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Just indulge me, please.”

She sits Mona down on the couch while she wanders off to the back. The inside of Mrs. Benjamin’s house is much less attractive than the exterior: everything is done in awful flowery wallpaper, except the living room, which has a bright red pattern depicting a foxhunt. There are also several stuffed owls, which Mona assumes were brought home from work. Somewhere there must be a room full of clocks, for she can hear a constant chorus of ticking. Everything smells of bad potpourri.

“Here we are,” trills Mrs. Benjamin as she returns. She sets a wooden case down on the coffee table in front of Mona, and stops. Her smile vanishes, and she looks up at Mona with a dark expression. She opens the case. Inside is a silver hand mirror. “An ancient swami gave me these mirrors,” she says in a theatrically hushed tone. At first Mona is confused, for she can see only one mirror, but then she looks again and sees there are actually two, stacked on top of each other. “They came from far away, in the Orient.”

“They did?” asks Mona.

Mrs. Benjamin’s solemn demeanor breaks. “Of course not, silly girl,” she says. “It’s all part of the trick.” She resumes glowering. “He gave them to me, and told me they were entrusted with ancient…” Her expression wavers. “Wait, I already said ‘ancient,’ didn’t I? Oh, forget this part… let’s get to the fun stuff.” She takes out the mirrors and hands them to Mona. “Here. Take them.”

“I have to hold them?”

“Yes, obviously,” and Mrs. Benjamin sounds genuinely impatient now. “Take them. Hurry up.”

Mona takes one mirror in each hand. They are surprisingly light, and almost paper-thin. She expected something gaudy and decadent—this is a magic trick, after all—but these mirrors have almost no ornamentation. They are silver surfaces and silver handles, and nothing more.

“The mirrors are actually halves of one,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Like one mirror was split down the middle, shaved in two. The thing is, when the mirror was split, it never noticed. It still thinks it’s whole, even though it’s not. But this confusion has given it some interesting consequences. Let me tell you how the mirror trick works.

“First, hold one mirror in front of you at an angle so it reflects an object nearby. Say, this ashtray.” She points to a horrible brass tchotchke on the coffee table. “Then slide the other mirror behind this one, so they touch and are whole.”

Mona stays still, waiting for more. “Well, go on,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Hurry up.”

“Oh,” says Mona. “You want me to… oh, okay.” She angles the first mirror so that it is reflecting the ashtray. “Is this okay?”

“So long as you see the ashtray, it’s fine,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now place the other mirror behind it.”

Mona does so, sliding the second mirror behind the one reflecting the ashtray. They seem to click into place, as if magnetized.

“Now… concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly. “You must look at the reflection of the ashtray in the mirror, and do not look away. Stare at it, and concentrate on it. Remember what it looks like, and hold that image in your mind.” She is grim and serious again, but now Mona thinks it is not part of the act. The sickly-sweet smell of potpourri becomes intense and heady, and Mona feels a little ill. “Are you concentrating?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

“Yeah,” says Mona. She is staring very hard at the mirror. It has no frame, she notices, nor is there any flaw or scratch on its surface. It gets hard to remember she is looking at a reflection. The mirror is so smooth that it is like a window, or perhaps a little bubble of light floating in her lap, and inside the bubble is a picture of an ashtray…

“Good,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now, just keep staring at the reflection on the top mirror. Keep concentrating on it. And as you do, I want you to slowly, slowly pull the other mirror out from underneath it. Don’t just yank it. Do you understand?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t guess. Do you understand or not?”

“I do.”

“Then do it, please.”

This is the weirdest magic trick Mona’s ever taken part in, but she decides to keep indulging the old lady. She keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray, and begins to pull the mirrors apart. There is a click, like she’s just severed the magnetic attraction between them, and everything… changes.

It is impossible to say how things change. It is as if every object in the room is now a false version of itself, a cheap, manufactured copy of the real thing. The stink of potpourri gets so strong that the air seems to shimmer with it. But out of the corner of her eye Mona thinks she can see light seeping through objects she knows to be opaque: she can see the sunlight through the roof, through the chandelier, and even through the floor, as if it is all made of ice. And underneath that light are a thousand shadows…

“Concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly.

Mona remembers the task at hand, and she keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray in the top mirror.

And as the second mirror slowly emerges from underneath the first, she sees that the ashtray is there, too: the exact same ashtray is reflected in that second mirror. Even though she’s moved the second mirror enough that it’s not pointing toward the ashtray, or even toward the coffee table, but toward the dining room.

It’s not a reflection, she thinks, irrationally. The ashtray is trapped in the mirrors…

Mona tries to keep concentrating. And it is then that she begins to see that something very strange is happening.

For starters, the tchotchke ashtray is still sitting on the coffee table. She can see that. It’s also being reflected in the first mirror, which is totally fine, as the first mirror is pointing at it. But the ashtray is also being reflected in the second mirror, which makes no sense, as the second mirror is not facing toward the ashtray at all. And while this is troubling in its own right, what really gets to Mona is that the second mirror is showing the ashtray above the dining room table, ten feet away to her right, yet she can see the ashtray itself sitting on the coffee table right in front of her.

But is it her imagination, or can she see something floating in the dining room out of the corner of her eye, just above the table, perhaps right where the second mirror is suggesting the ashtray should be?

That’s not possible, she thinks, because a) How can an object defy gravity? and b) How can an object occupy two different spaces at the same time? For she can see the ashtray sitting on the coffee table just before her, yet it is also in both of the mirrors, and unless she’s gone mad it’s also floating very slowly out of the dining room at the same rate at which she’s moving the second mirror. It’s as if since the ashtray is reflected in both mirrors, the world is working to accommodate them and ensure that what is being reflected is actually there, even though it shouldn’t be.

“Good,” says Mrs. Benjamin’s voice somewhere. “Very good…”

Mona is trying to work all this out when she sees there is something slight and insubstantial about the ashtray on the table. It too has turned a little translucent, and she can see light filtering through it. And then the ashtray begins to shudder, like a strobe light, and it starts to disappear…

Mona gasps. “No!” cries Mrs. Benjamin, but it is too late. Whatever was floating out of the dining room plummets to the ground, then vanishes without a sound. Immediately things revert back to how they were: there is only one ashtray, sitting on the coffee table, and the rest of the house is opaque and hard and real again.

“What was that?” asks Mona. She hastily puts the mirrors back in their case. “What the hell kind of magic trick was that?”

But Mrs. Benjamin seems even more disturbed than Mona. Her face is gray as she stares at the ashtray on the table. Finally she clears her throat and says, “Perhaps I was wrong, my girl. Perhaps you do belong here in Wink after all.”

“What do you mean?” asks Mona.

Before Mrs. Benjamin can answer there is a knock at the front door. Both of them jump a little, and Mrs. Benjamin stares at the door, not comprehending. “Oh,” she says when the knock sounds again. “I suppose I ought to answer that…” She stands up and hobbles to the door.

As she does, Mona looks back down at the mirrors in the case. There does not seem to be anything strange or extraordinary about them now; they are merely two small mirrors, each reflecting the ceiling. But still she shivers a little.

She hears the door open. Mrs. Benjamin says, “Oh,” again, though this time she sounds far less pleased.

“Hello, Myrtle,” says a man’s voice softly. “I—”

“Oh, hello, Eustace,” says Mrs. Benjamin, quickly and loudly. “Please do come in. I have company.” She stands aside, and Mona sees it is the little old man who sold her her mattress, Mr. Macey. But he is not flirty or wry this time, but terribly grave.

“Company?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin. She ushers him inside. “This is Miss Bright. She’s new in town. Miss Bright, this is Eustace Macey. He works at the general store.”

“We’ve met,” says Mona.

“Oh, I’m so glad. What brings you here, Eustace? I was just showing Miss Bright a little magic trick of mine.”

“I came to discuss something with you,” says Mr. Macey. He does not even look at Mona. “Alone.”

“Would it be possible to discuss this later, Eustace?”

“No,” he says. “No, it wouldn’t, Myrtle.”

Mrs. Benjamin eyes him angrily and looks back at Mona. “Are you sure, Eustace?” she asks, her voice brimming with false politeness.

He nods.

“It can’t wait at all?”

He shakes his head, expression unchanging. Mrs. Benjamin is smiling so hard Mona is worried her cheeks will crack. “Fine,” she says through gritted teeth. “Mona, could you please excuse us for a moment? I know… weren’t you interested in getting some of my tea?”

Mona was most f*cking certainly not interested in getting any of Mrs. Benjamin’s tea, but the old woman is in such a fearsome mood that she doesn’t object.

“Excellent!” says Mrs. Benjamin. “My tea rack is in the kitchen. Feel free to help yourself to anything you’d like.”

Mona thanks her and withdraws to the kitchen as Mrs. Benjamin and Mr. Macey begin bickering in hushed tones. She wonders if she’s just been made privy to a lovers’ tiff (an idea that disgusts her) before she remembers the awkward way Mrs. Benjamin greeted Mr. Macey at the door, as if she wanted to stop him from talking as fast as possible. She wonders why this could be until she comes to Mrs. Benjamin’s tea rack, which, she discovers, is not a tea rack but a tea vault, an entire room with walls covered in shelves of little tins and vials and glass containers. Each has been carefully labeled: she sees one section of rooibos tea (of the lemon-and-honeybush variety), then several containers of oolong, white, and green tea leaves (each label paired with a Latin name for a different type of camellia, which Mona guesses is in the tea), then several pots of something called “brick tea,” and then there’s a section whose labels are all in Asian-looking writing.

It’s the section after this one that really catches her eye. These are the glass vials and beakers with old, yellowed labels, and what they contain is not tea leaves, or tea pearls, or anything so orthodox. These are teas Mrs. Benjamin seems to have made herself, and they have a distinctly fungal look to them. In one vial Mona can see thick yellow globs of pine pitch, and there is something green and loose sprouting from the top. Its label reads OLD PINEFEVER. Mona guesses this is what Mrs. Benjamin was drinking the other day.

There are many more. In one stoppered flask are half a dozen pink, fleshy roots suspended in something that looks a lot like Lucite. This is labeled ASTER’S CURL. In another a mass of white moss floats in greenish fluid, and this is labeled MAMMON’S TEARS. There is an Erlenmeyer flask with a powdery, cloudy fungus growing on the bottom that is paired with the name AL BHEEZRA’S REMORSE. And then there are three vials whose contents look like herbs ground up with white or yellow soap crystals. These are labeled AGONY, then WRATH, and finally GUILT.

Mona reads these a second time. She names her teas after emotions? she thinks. But a small part of her, one that has to be a little bit nuts, says, Or maybe she makes teas out of emotions.

Unbelievably, the tea racks get weirder. (And the farther Mona goes into the closet the darker it feels, though there is plenty of light.) The names become utterly unpronounceable: EL-ABYHEELTH AI’AIN, HYUIN TA’AL, and CHYZCHURA DAM-UUAL are just a few. What they contain is difficult to make out: the jars appear smoked, like someone left them in a barbecue pit. After this, the labels use an alphabet Mona has never seen before. She can’t imagine the country that uses this alphabet, either: it is such a harsh series of slashes and strokes, and so many of the letters stand at strange angles to one another, like they are not meant to be read left to right, but up and down, or right to left…

Where the hell did she get these from? Mona wonders. Did she make all these herself? Around here?

Mona picks up one jar and turns it over. Like the others, this one is smoked, but there are places that are a bit clearer. The contents look like a bunch of small grapes hanging from the jar’s lid, but they’re oddly yellowish, and they jiggle strangely. They keep jiggling even when she stops turning the jar over. It takes her a minute to realize they are turning, and on each grape is a dark spot that seems queerly reflective, and each grape turns until the side with the spot is facing her…

Almost as if it is an eye, Mona thinks. As if there’s a bunch of tiny eyes hanging from the inside of the jar, and they are all staring at her.

She gasps and nearly falls back, but a pair of hands helps steady her.

“Goodness, dear, whatever is the matter?” asks Mrs. Benjamin’s voice.

Mona jumps back the other way, for what she’s found in the tea racks makes her just as frightened of Mrs. Benjamin as she is of the thing in her hand. Then she looks around at the tea racks, and sees that all the strange jars are gone: she sees no smoked beakers with labels in an alien language, nor does she see any teas that resemble bizarre scientific experiments. Even the jar in her hand has changed: it does not contain eyes, but jasmine blossoms.

She looks back at Mrs. Benjamin, and there does not seem to be anything that frightening about her, either. She’s just a worried old lady standing at the door to the tea closet.

“Did I startle you?” she asks.

“I… I think I need to sit down,” says Mona.

“Did you lose your balance?” asks Mrs. Benjamin. She helps Mona to a chair. “It happens to me all the time. One moment everything is crystal-clear, the next the world is wheeling around me. One of the defects of this old body of mine, I suppose.”

She gives Mona a glass of water. Mona drinks it quickly while glancing back at the tea closet. She is half convinced that at any moment it might change into that room of disturbing specimens again, yet nothing happens.

“Did Mr. Macey leave already?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “He just stopped by to tell me some news. Or what he thought was news. It’s not news if you already know it, is it?”

“What was the news?”

“Oh,” says Mrs. Benjamin vaguely. “You know us old ones. We do enjoy getting into little competitions and skirmishes. Fighting over rose blooms and dead tree limbs and pets and such. And whenever someone hears of a new crime, they rush all over town telling everyone. Even if it is rather petty, once you look at it with some perspective. I suppose we have to find a way to distract ourselves.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Mona asks.

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “He’ll be fine, I’m sure. We’ll all be fine.” And she turns to stare out the window at the forest and the mesa beyond, but there is something in her eye that makes Mona think she’s trying to convince herself as much as Mona.

“Something the matter?” Mona asks.

“Why?” asks Mrs. Benjamin. “Do you think there’s something wrong?”

The answer to this is a resounding yes, of course. Mona feels that magic trick with the mirrors did something to her, like it broke something inside her (with the same little click as that of the two mirrors sliding apart), or perhaps it reached in and opened all the windows in her head. Perhaps that’s why she had that strange moment back in the tea closet.

Or maybe it’s something worse, she thinks. Her mother was mentally touched, to say the least. But Laura was fine originally, so she must have broken down all at once, at a later age… say around forty. And aren’t these things inherited, Mona thinks?

“I think I need to go home,” she says.

“Oh, you don’t look well, dear,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Are you sure you’re good to drive?”

“I’m fine,” Mona says quietly, and she thanks Mrs. Benjamin and walks outside and climbs into the Charger. But she does not start it just yet. Instead she just looks at herself in the mirror, examining her eyes, as if she might be able to see a change in them that would tell her if she’s gone as mad as she feels.