“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 you staring 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.
* * *