“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?
“? 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.
Part II
8
Light from a bright sun. Burning my closed eyes. I open them. See myself in the ceiling mirror. I’m lying in a bed the color of blood. There’s a squeaking sound somewhere. Squeak, squeak, what the hell is that? Where am I? I look around. Blood-colored curtains. Black vanity with a three-paneled mirror. I’m in a vast four-poster bed that sags dangerously in the middle. The red silk sheets bearing the ghost of violets and smoke, a scent of flesh and sweat. Achingly familiar. And then I remember. Mother’s bedroom. Must have slept here. Must have found my way home somehow. How did I leave that house? How did I even leave that hall? Didn’t it seem to be stretching infinitely into darkness? And yet I’m back here, smelling ocean and roses, the stink of the seals on the cove. Still wearing the silk silver dress, the train now covered in dirt and ripped at the hem. The red shoes are still shining on my feet. I kick them off. Who were those people last night? Those strange people (proprietors?) who claimed to know Mother. To know me, too, didn’t they say so? We hope you’ll come back, Daughter. And then the man in the fake black beard. His kiss in the dark hall. And those red jellyfish…
The squeaking sound feels closer, why am I hearing this sound? And then I realize it’s coming from inside not outside. In the house. Oh god, Mother’s ghost. Here, now, in the middle of the day? Impossible. Get yourself together. There’s her red silk robe hanging on the back of the bedroom door. Get up and put it on, that’s it. A little light-headed, a little shaky, that’s all. That champagne, I remember. Those red bubbles I sipped and sipped. Cold, bittersweet, bright as forgetting. That’s all I wanted was to forget. Squeaking getting louder. Does a ghost squeak? Of course not, I’m being silly. Only a living intruder. They know Mother’s dead and now they’re breaking in. I make my way into the hall, looking for a weapon, any weapon at all. In the bathroom, a curling iron. Not much, but it’s something to grip, get a grip. Living room just like I left it. Couch. Table. Roses floating in a bowlful of water and black, slick stones. Roses seem redder, how is that possible?
“Hey there,” says a voice.
I scream.
And there he is standing by the windows. Long blond hair. Shirtless, as yesterday. More shirtless somehow. Tad, the merman handyman. Squeegee in his fist. The wet sponge dripping onto Mother’s floor. Her cat, Anjelica, slithering around his golden ankles, licking the drops at his feet like a whore.
“Belle,” Tad says. “Good morning. Whoa, wait.” He looks at his watch. “Afternoon now.” He grins. Looks down at the red robe that I’m pulling tighter around my body (does he recognize it?), the curling iron clutched in my fist. “Uh-oh,” he says. “I scared you again. Did I scare you again?”
“No.” The curling iron slips from my fingers, clattering at my feet. Anjelica runs away, shrieking. “I mean yes, Tad. You did scare me a little. A lot. I thought someone was breaking in.”
“Oh no, I’d never break in. No, no. I have a key, see?” He points to it, one of several attached to his tool belt. I look at my mother’s key just hanging there on his hook.
“I see.” I try to smile. “I just didn’t expect to see you again. So soon.”
Tad nods. Waves a hand at the glass behind him. “Just here to do the windows.”
Though I don’t look directly at them, though I keep my eyes on Tad, I can see that the glass has indeed been cleaned again. So clear, it doesn’t even look like glass. It looks like there’s nothing at all between me and the palm tree–lined shore, the pelicans and cormorants flying through the blue sky. “Hope you don’t mind,” he says. “Tried to be quiet.”
“Didn’t you just do the windows yesterday?”
“Oh, I like to do them every day. Your mother liked it that way too.”