Rouge



Tonight, the hall is shimmering grandly. Empty. No radiant rich people in red, silver, or black. No one there behind the door. Just the sound of my own footsteps clicking along the marble floor. Just that chime-y music, that airy spa drone. The boutique in the corner is dark, all the glass cabinets unlit. I look at the great coiling staircase where the woman in red stood on the landing, waving. No one on the landing tonight, though on the wall, a screen still plays the video of that blissed-out white woman with the black discs on her temples, ocean waves lapping endlessly over her face. Tonight her eyes are open. Smiling at me, it seems.

Above my head, the red chandelier blazes brilliantly. Though I crane my neck, there’s still no sign of a ceiling. In my mind’s eye, I see myself as a child, Mother reading me a story in the dark. About a beautiful maiden. A castle by the sea. This castle by the sea, I asked Mother. What did it look like inside?

Oh, you wouldn’t believe this place, Mother said. Great halls like labyrinths. A ceiling so high, you could look up, up, up and never find it. Only the chandelier blazing down. The grandest chandelier you ever saw. Dripping with honest-to-god crystals.

“Hello?” I call now. Nothing, no one emerges. I walk a little farther down the hall, toward the Depths. Tonight, the red curtains are drawn around the tank. Behind them, I feel the jellyfish float. I notice there’s a single champagne flute on a small silver tray on a lacquered black table. Filled to the brim with that red champagne. It’s bubbling in a way I’ve never seen before. Like it’s excited. There’s a little black card beside the flute that reads Santé, in elegant red scroll. I lift the glass to my lips. Cold bubbles course down my throat, sweet and sharp. In my head, I can almost hear the house applauding me. So many silk hands clapping. I look up at the video of the woman with the black discs, still smiling at me through the waves. Why do I feel as though I’m being watched tonight? As though the house is watching? Not just watching, but holding its breath. A particular person is holding their breath.

I take another sip and sigh. The whole hall seems to sigh with me. It’s strange but pleasant. The red curtains are drawn suddenly, quickly, in one velvety swish. And there are the red jellyfish in the great glass tank. Pulsing in the blue-green water. I’m surprised that I’m delighted at the sight of them. Delighted or horrified? I drink more of the excited champagne. Walk up to the tank, though I don’t want to come any closer to those creatures, beautiful as they are. So red. Bigger than they were last night. Do jellyfish grow that quickly? My face is right up against the glass now. The water’s cloudy tonight. A little darker, though still blue-green. I’m noticing one jellyfish in particular. Floating away from the cluster of floating spheres. Drifting toward me, close to the glass now. Like it can see me.

“Hi,” I say to the big jellyfish. And feel stupid. I even blush.

But it moves in closer still. It has some sort of pattern on its body, can’t quite make it out. And eyes. Do jellyfish have eyes? These ones do. Red and jellylike just like their bodies. Ghostly so it almost looks like a trick of the light. As I’m looking into its eyes, I smile. The eyes are looking back at me. Tense. Could the eyes of a jellyfish be tense? My heart begins to beat very strangely. I feel it fluttering in my chest like a panicked bird. Someone’s here. Watching me from one of the black mouths of the corridors. I hear a clicking sound. A breath drawn in. In the corner of my eye, a figure appears. The woman in red? No. A stranger clad in black silk. Clearing her throat. About to call to me in greeting.

But instead of walking toward her, my shoes walk me away, around the tank. Away? Why away? I think.

We’re circling each other now. She’s walking toward me and I’m walking away. We go around and around the tank slowly. Every time she takes a step forward, click, click go my shoes around the tank. Stop, I tell my shoes. Please.

And then they do. I turn around and look at the young woman standing a few feet away. She’s looking right at me as if she was waiting patiently for me to turn toward her all this time.

“Daughter of Noelle,” she says.

For a moment, my breath catches. I’m struck. A beautiful young girl. Maybe thirteen or fourteen. Translucent skin. Pale glowing eyes. A fountain of golden curls like a living doll. Long black dress, a grown person’s dress, on her child’s body. And yet there’s something about the way she’s looking at me. Cold, knowing. She doesn’t seem at all like a child. Familiar-looking, too. I’ve seen her heart-shaped face before. Felt those eyes on me. Was she Mother’s friend?

“I’m Mother’s friend,” she says. “Exactly. And Daughter of Noelle’s friend too, I hope.”

She smiles at me with her red bow of a mouth. The childhood memory comes flashing back again: me sitting on a princess bed clutching a doll I hated, watching Mother brush her red hair in my three-sided mirror. She’s telling me that fairy tale about the beautiful maiden. So beautiful, Mother said, that all admired her from near and far. I remember I thought ridiculous, even as I ached to be so beautiful. I thought what a lie, even as a picture began to form in my mind of a young girl. This young girl, in fact. Standing before me now. Same golden hair, same face of glass, same cold eyes. Same dress falling from her lithe white body like liquid jet. On her shoulder, a pinned red rose.

“You,” I whisper.

She smiles like she knows my child’s dream, though how could she possibly know it? Just a dream.

“No dream is ever just a dream,” she says.

My skin begins to crawl a little. When she smiles, I’m devastated by the awful symmetry of her face. “Excuse me?”

“Eyes Wide Shut. One of my favorites. So mysterious and full of fucking. Lots of skin. Have you seen it?”

I look at her heart-shaped face that is a child’s and not a child’s. The word fucking so comfortable in her little mouth. “No,” I lie.

“You like skin, don’t you, Daughter of Noelle? Like your mother.”

“You really knew my mother?” Why would this child know my mother?

She looks up at my forehead scar. But unlike the woman in red, she keeps looking at it. Smiling at it, like it’s telling her a joke.

“Oh yes,” she says. “And I know you, too, Daughter of Noelle.”

“Through my mother?”

“Perfect,” she says. “Yes, exactly. Through your mother.”

“You were important to her.” I say it like a question. Desperate to know all the things I don’t. To be out of the dark.

She stares at me, looking sadly amused. “Yes. And she was dear to me, too. To all of us here.” She smiles dreamily. “At Rouge.”

“Rouge?”

She holds up her excited red drink in a toast.

“A way of being. A way of becoming one’s Most Magnificent Self. Your mother was among our most prized members.”

She moves toward me. But as she does so, my shoes walk me backward, away from her. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Surely she’ll be disgusted at this rudeness. But she just smiles and catches up to me easily. Cups my cheek with her gloved hand. She’s tall for such a young girl. Tall as I am.

Now I’m walking backward and she’s walking forward at the same pace. We’re moving like this around the tank, with her hands on my cheeks like we’re a couple in the strangest slow dance.

“Dear Daughter of Noelle,” she sighs into my face. And her breath is cool and crisp as smoke. “This has been a very trying time for you. I imagine it must be.”