Rouge

“Oh, this is so difficult. So very difficult.” She sighs and shakes her head like it’s all too much. “This,” she says, gesturing at me, “is the daughter of a friend who passed away recently, you see. A dear friend. I don’t want to press charges, but she’s been harassing my staff, destroying merchandise. She gave one of our customers a nervous breakdown just the other day. And she seems to think she still works here.”

He nods. “I’ll take care of it. Belle?” Acting gruff, but there’s a softness to how he looks at me, speaks my name. I see a rickety white bridge over the Pacific. A hotel room in the half-dark. The smell of whiskey and flowers and smoke. His face very close to my face, like he wanted to kill me. Kiss me? Wanted something, anyway.

“You’re not going to arrest her, are you?” Sylvia says. “I don’t want anything to happen to her, I just don’t want her in the shop. I’m afraid she’s not in her right mind. Maybe you could call a psychiatric hospital?” So concerned, when just a moment ago she was ready to throw me out of my own shop.

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Holmes.”

Sylvia raises her eyebrows. How does he know her name? “Have we…?”

“No, but I’m familiar. Belle, would you please come with me?” Gray eyes full of dark water. I know that his lips taste like roses—why do I know that? I don’t necessarily want to go with him, but I also don’t want to stay here with Sylvia. In the mirror, no Mother. No ocean garden anymore. Nothing now in the glass but my three sisters. Looking at me with their golden eyes. Myself standing between them, gripping one by the shoulder. There’s a gray dress form on the floor at my feet. “I’m not leaving without my sisters,” I say.

Sylvia looks at him like you see, you see?

The man ignores her. Stares at me. “So bring them along.”





21


On my couch with a detective named Hud Hudson, who keeps staring at me. He gave me his business card and that’s what it said in silvery-blue font above the words Private Investigations. “Have we met?” I ask him.

“A few times now.”

“I had a feeling.”

“Belle,” he says, “I hope you know this is getting very serious.”

“Serious?”

Hud kindly drove me and my sisters home, carried them into the apartment since they didn’t seem to be able to carry themselves. Two under one arm, one under the other. Now they’re sitting all around us, smiling. At least this is how it seems when I look in any one of the mirrors in Mother’s living room. The mirrors are where my sisters come alive, so that’s where I mostly keep my eyes. It’s lucky Mother has so many, a wall of glass right across from where we sit. Whenever I look at this wall, I see them offering various kinds of support. One sister is sitting on the carpet playing with the coffee table flowers, deranging them like she’s a florist. Another is slouched by the open window, watching the water. Leaning pretty far out, she loves to breathe the ocean air.

“I hope she won’t fall.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Hud says, not looking at her. Looking at me. I see that in every mirror and even when I look at him straight on.

My third sister sits beside us on the couch. Keeping the closest eye. She looks the most worried, the most suspicious of Hud Hudson. She can’t deny that he’s beautiful, of course. We all think that. He’s a detective of Beauty, after all, isn’t he? Or a beautiful detective. Either way. And how he’s looking at us right now, with such intensity, such I want to get to the bottom of you. Even my most suspicious sister concedes it’s entrancing. But we’ve always liked a bit of distance, haven’t we, Sisters? Arm’s length is best. Not that we don’t have desire. We are human, after all, aren’t we? Just that in our bodies, something is sealed up, closed like the CLOSED sign I used to put in the shop door at night. Something is holding itself away as if behind glass, isn’t that right, Sisters? In the mirrors, my sisters smile. Exactly.

Meanwhile, Hud’s staring at us like he doesn’t know where to begin.

“May we offer you a drink?” I ask him.

“God yes,” he whispers. “Please.”

I pour some of Mother’s cognac for him, myself, and my sister on the couch. He and I raise glasses, but my sister leaves hers where it is. Doesn’t trust Hud at all. I don’t like this, she whispered again and again on the ride home. And I told her shhh, even though Hud didn’t seem to hear, and her mouth stayed pursed in that secret smile. It was in the rearview mirror only that I saw her mouth moving, that her eyes were wild with just how much she didn’t like this.

“If you don’t mind, Belle, I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he says now. And then he pulls out a pen and a small notepad from his pocket. Clicks the pen.

My heart begins to thud in my chest. “Questions?”

“For our records is all.”

In the mirrors, I see my sisters stiffen. They don’t like this for me.

“What’s your name?”

“Belle.”

“What is your full name?”

Nothing comes. Only one of those blanks. Is there a word that should come after Belle? Feels like there should be one, one that never felt like mine. Alien. Heavy on my tongue, a strange-shaped stone. Looks like “night” but means “light” is a phrase that suddenly appears in my mind. But it means nothing. So maybe this is a trick question?

“Belle,” I say. I watch him scribble on his pad.

“What about your father?”

A slanted eye of gold winking on my wrist, watching me. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“What’s your mother’s full name?”

My sisters and I smile at one another in the mirror. That’s an easy one. “Mother.”

Furious scribbling with his pen. “And where do you live?”

I gesture out the window at the blue sky, whose brightness hurts my eyes. “Eden. Obviously.”

“Where were you born?”

In my mind, I see a wretched island wreathed by a slushy river the color of Hud Hudson’s eyes. That can’t be right. “Here.”

“Where do you work?”

“At Belle of the Ball. A dress shop. You know that.”

“Your name isn’t Mirabelle Nour and you don’t live and work in the Plateau area of Montreal, Canada? At a shop called Damsels in This Dress?”

“In Distress? That sounds awful.”

“What about Montreal?”

“I’ve heard it’s pretty there but very cold. Too cold for me.”

“So you grew up here? And you’ve never lived or worked anywhere else?”

“That’s right.” Along the wall of glass, my sisters nod encouragingly. They love my answers so far.

“Where is your mother now, Belle?”

“Not sure, to be honest.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“Happened to her?”

“That she died?”

And I have to laugh. Isn’t he the one who’s supposed to be the detective of Beauty? He should really have his facts straight. “She was just here.”

“Where? Show me.”

“No.” For one, Mother isn’t in the mirrors at the moment. Just me and Hud in the glass—and my sisters of course, smiling a little more sadly now.

“Belle, listen. You’re in grave danger, do you understand? You’ve fallen into the hands of some very evil people.”

“Evil people? I don’t know any evil people. I only know my friends at Rouge. And you. You’re a friend too, aren’t you?”

Hud Hudson’s turn to look at me sadly with his clear gray eyes. “No, Belle. At least, I haven’t been. But I want to try and be one now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should’ve been straight with you from the beginning. I just never thought they’d move so quickly. So fuck me for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your second treatment.”

How does he know about the second treatment? I look in the mirror at my sister on the couch. She’s seething. Oh, he’s clever, this one, isn’t he? He thinks he’s very clever indeed.

“Second treatment?” I say. “I haven’t had a second treatment.”

He looks at me like come on. Am I seriously going to lie about this?

Why am I lying about this? I ask my sisters with my mind. And in the mirror, my sister on the couch smiles like it’s really very simple. Because Beauty is our little secret. Because we never tell. Not even over our dead body. We deny everything. We deny all.

I think you should be honest, says my sister deranging the flowers. Honesty is the best policy.

Don’t listen to her, she knows nothing! shouts my sister on the couch. Denial is really the only way forward.

The water looks so pretty from here, sighs my sister by the window.