And it’s funny what happens then. I hear no music anymore. I hear only this voice. I hear it at the very bottom of my brain stem. Like a leash, tugging me. And then I’m in the arms of this voice, saying my name, Belle, Belle, Belle. I can’t see his face because he’s holding me tight to his black-suited body, so that I’m locked in, stuck looking over his shoulder. We’re dancing away. I could say, Do I know you, sir? But I say nothing. It’s like his arms are a drug, making jelly of me. So familiar these arms are, like the voice. Taking me to a basement place, a shadow place I know so well. I might have known these arms since I was a child—did they hold me then? I think they did. I know their feel, like being plunged into cold water. I know their ocean scent. Did I long for them to hold me in the dark, though I was afraid? Impossible. This man is a stranger, isn’t he? No, says my brain stem. Not a stranger, this one. I let him spin me around and around the floor though it makes me dizzy, the drug of him.
A little farther away, I see the girl-woman in black dancing with Hud Hudson. He’s looking wildly around the room for me. Where did I go? He can’t lose me. He must still try and save me. But I’m already lost, I’d tell him if I had words, if the spinning weren’t making me dizzy. So I just watch him look for me. The girl-woman in black takes his hands and presses them to either side of her small, heart-shaped face. He looks down at her. And then his face suddenly changes. Entranced. So taken he is by her skull shape, its exquisite symmetry of bones. By her Smoothness. By her Glow, most of all. He’s shuddering. A hairy moth moving toward her light.
She’s whispering something to him now, what is she whispering?
Whatever it is, he’s taken with it. A man in a dream. Lost himself.
She reaches out and touches his face too. And that’s how they’re dancing now. Cupping each other’s faces like you might cup a flame to keep it lit. Turning the slowest of circles in the middle of the floor. Until they aren’t really dancing at all anymore. They’re standing still. And she’s removing his disguise. His beard, then those blond muttonchops. First one chop, then the other. Then finally, the monocle. She drops it to the ground and crushes it with her little patent leather heel. He lets her. Doesn’t move at all. Lets himself be revealed, this tawny-faced man with glossy black hair, shuddering before her now. I watch her fingers float up to his naked face, tracing the deep scar there. She’s whispering something to him again. I watch her red bow of a mouth making words I can’t hear. There are tears in his eyes. And now he’s allowing himself to be led by the hand like a lost child. Down the very dark hall where only a minute ago he wanted to go with me, to save me.
“Belle,” says a voice now in my ear. The drug voice that is like the movies, like music. The only music I hear. And then the man I’m dancing with, the one who’s been holding me so that I can’t see his face, holding me in a way that brings me right back, like a scent that brings you right back, now holds me apart so that we’re facing each other at last. Black suit. Black-horned mask over half his face. Familiar. I know the dark hair like a wave. I know the blue-green eyes shining out of the black mask. I remember the cold ocean of them. I remember drowning.
“You haven’t changed a bit, Belle. Except that you’ve grown. So much.” Long white teeth. That smile that used to light me up, like wrong stars in my child’s body.
“I know you,” I whisper, shivering. Very cold suddenly. But happy. So happy. I know him, though my mind’s a blank.
“We know each other well, Belle. Definitely. Allow me to escort you to your final treatment. Seems fitting, don’t you think, that I should be the one?”
I nod. Of course he should be. We’re dancing so slowly. Like time itself has slowed. There are no bodies in the hall anymore. Just us. No harpsichord or opera singer. This man brings his own music, just like he always did, and I hear it inside and outside of me. A synthy, dreamy pop song. It sounds like bodies in blue silhouette. It sounds like all my dreams. I’m jelly like the fish.
“I always knew,” he whispers, swaying me, “that you would take your Beauty back, Belle. I knew you would find me here. A long road. A long, lonely road for you, hasn’t it been?”
“Yes,” I hear my soul say. It’s my soul speaking to him through my mouth now. He has a direct line to it.
“But you’ve followed the footpath to the castle by the sea. To me.”
“To you.”
“Didn’t I always tell you this place was a magic place?”
I look around the dark, empty hall. The arched ceiling, I can finally see it, like a cage of white bone above us. The tank of red jellies has gone black now. All around me feels like a void. Like nothing at all. “You did.”
“Well now you see for yourself, don’t you?”
And then we’re walking down a winding stair to under the Depths. He holds my hand, his own gloved hand cold and slightly sticking. I remember the cold and the sticking of his touch, but I still can’t place him. If he would only take off his mask and I could see his face. But my body remembers. My soul remembers. From where, from where?
We stumble at first down the stair. My red shoes won’t walk me down. But he just smiles. Kneels at my feet like a prince. He’s going to take them off. “I always hated these fucking things,” he says. “I never told you, of course. Because you loved them so much.”
“I think I wore them for you,” I say. Somehow I know this is true.
But the shoes don’t come off, won’t come off, they’re fused to my feet flesh. I think he’s going to flip out about this. Instead he just picks me up like a literal feather. Carries me down. I’m in his arms that are like a drug, and we’re going down and down. I’m smiling into his neck though I’m afraid. Shouldn’t be. Just my final treatment. This man’s accompanying me. Who are you? is still a bubble of a question, iridescent and floating around in the dark of my mind. I know the answer to it somewhere. Somewhere deep under everything—all my words and thoughts.
We pass through the red waiting room of mirrors with the white screaming faces on the wall, empty but for a pale, glowing woman reading a red magazine in the dark. I’ve seen her here before. She doesn’t smile at us as we pass. Just watches us, a little afraid-seeming. To her, we’re a strange ship in the night.
He carries me into a half-lit room full of fog. Lowers me onto a table in the center. The Treatment Room, of course. My final treatment tonight, that’s right. Very exciting. The ceiling of glass is exposed, and I see we’re under the Depths, blue-green as the eyes of the man in the black-horned mask. A sky of water shimmers above us like the northern lights. Red jellyfish swim over us like so many strange moons. The man stands over me as I sit on the table. Normally a woman comes in at this point, doesn’t she? Tells me to strip and I do. Lie down and I do. Breathe, and she breathes with me. Then a cold white paste on my face while I drift. But no woman comes. Just me and the man in the fog.
He walks over to a small aquarium tank on the other end of the table. Inside floats a single red jellyfish. Mine. My red jellyfish that started off so small and white. That I first pulled out of the black pool, held in my palm, where it glowed like a whisper of a wish. It’s grown so much bigger and redder since last time. The man in the mask is staring at it. “Beautiful,” he says, “isn’t it, Belle?”
“Beautiful,” I agree, looking from the man to the creature. Though I don’t know that it is anymore. It looks scary to me. Hideous. But the man in the mask doesn’t seem to think so. He’s lost in looking at it, like it’s a dream.
“Is it really so beautiful?” I ask him, jealous maybe. “Just a jellyfish.”
“Oh, it’s more,” he says, still smiling softly like it’s telling him a secret. “It’s something else now, thanks to the treatments. Can you guess?”
I stare at the creature. Its red bell pulsing like a strange heart. The hairy tentacles undulating. I shake my head. The man smiles his smile of long white teeth. His smile is a constellation. His smile is a movie and I’m in the dark, dreaming. Gently now, he takes my hand. “It’s the story of you and me.”
Inside the tank, the red thing begins to pulse more quickly.
“You and me,” I repeat. There’s a shiver in my voice now. The touch of his hand is making me cold. Something black and closed and buried deep in me opens. “What story?”