“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.