Rouge(42)

Don’t I have a lifted look?

You have a scared look. Like you’ve been stunned.

Well, maybe next time I visit you, I can go where you go.

She got silent then. Waved her hand as if to wave my words away. You don’t want to go where I go. I’ve told you, you don’t need any of this stuff. That Egyptian blood saves you. I’m another story.

Well now I’m here, Mother. I’ve gone where you go. Maybe I’m not another story after all.

I take a seat in one of the chairs shaped like a wave. I picture Mother sitting in this very chair. Imagine her in a white-and-red robe, listening to the chimes and the waterfall, partaking of pomegranate water. Soaking it all up with a non-wrinkle-inducing smile. This’ll be good. It makes me smile too. There’s another woman with me in the room. She’s beautiful. Her dark skin glows in the dim light. Her eyes are pale. Maybe she’s mixed too. Ethnically ambiguous, as Mother might say. Where are you from? I would ask this woman if I didn’t fucking hate that question myself. The way Mother would answer for me, smile and say Egypt, right as I said Montreal. The woman’s flipping a magazine. Too dark for me to see the cover. Can she really be reading in the dark? She looks up at me and smiles.

“First time,” she says. It isn’t a question. She knows it’s my first time.

“Yes,” I say, and my voice echoes in the room like it’s a corridor. “They offered me a free treatment.”

“A free treatment,” the woman repeats, raising an eyebrow. “Me too.”

“You too?”

“Lucky us. These cost a pretty penny, so I’m told.”

“Is it your first time too?” Not a furrow on her brow. Not a wrinkle. She’s flawless.

“I’ve had one. Still need a few more for the brightening.”

“The brightening?” I ask.

“The glow,” she whispers. She goes back to reading her red magazine in the dark. I’m glad she’s here. Another client. Otherwise I’d feel… not afraid exactly, that’s ridiculous. Just… sort of weird. Getting a treatment at… what time is it now? No clock on the wall and the woman in silver took my purse and my phone. Late, anyway, for a facial. Is it a facial that I’m getting though? Never really clarified that. Just took what the woman in red dangled. Said, Thanks so much.

“How is it?” I ask her.

She looks up at me like she forgot I was there. “How is it?”

“The treatment.”

“Oh. Well, it’s different for everyone, isn’t it?”

“Right,” I say like I understand. I notice black tapered candles on the table now, red rose petals scattered all around. There’s a mirror wall beside us, a thousand of me, going on to infinity.

“Deeply perilous,” she says, turning to the mirror wall. Smiling at herself there.

“Perilous?”

“Did I say perilous? I meant personal, of course.”

“Of course. Personal.” Personal? Come on, lady. A facial is a facial is a facial. Even I know that.

There are white faces on the wall above the mirror, I see. Plaster casts, sticking out of black frames. Making expressions of open-mouthed horror.

“So is it a microcurrent then?” I ask her.

She just stares at her many reflections.

“Or a laser? Ultrasound? Radiofrequency?”

She smiles like all the words I just said are funny. Funny little things.

“A peel maybe?” I press. “Glycolic?”

She laughs, tilting her neck back. Not a ring on that neck. Not a blemish. “You certainly know some… terminology, don’t you?” She takes a sip of the red champagne. Hers looks thick and dark, the color and viscosity of blood. Does it have any bubbles? Not any that I can see. But then again the room is dark, isn’t it? Silly to be afraid. Sure the white faces in the wall are a little weird, but it could just be a rich-people thing. Like the jellyfish behind the red curtain. Part of the eccentric spa décor. Eclectic, as Sylvia would say.

The woman is still chuckling to herself, still looking in the mirror, her thick red champagne in her hand. “Glycolic,” she repeats, shaking her head. “Oh my.”

“Daughter of Noelle,” someone calls softly. A small woman in a black suit standing in a doorway. A woman like a whisper. “We’re ready for you.”

The woman with the magazine stops chuckling. She looks at me, suddenly so very serious. “Letting go is so worth it,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

But she’s turned away again, staring at her selves in the dark.



* * *




Scared. No reason at all to be, really. Just a treatment room like any other. Dark as a womb. Thick with herbal steam. Heated massage table in the middle. The woman like a whisper stands in the corner smiling. She looks like so many aestheticians I’ve seen before. Serene expression. Eerily ageless. Voice like air. Barely there, really, like a ghost. Her English accented slightly, though from where, I’m not sure. She’s telling me to undress, she’ll take my robe now. She doesn’t leave the room like they normally do. Just stands there and smilingly waits for me to strip. “Great,” she whispers. “Just great. Now lie down, please.”

What sort of treatment is this? I want to ask, but now the question seems stupid. Ungrateful. It’s free, isn’t it? I think of those white plaster faces screaming out of their black frames in the waiting room. Anyway, I tell myself, too late now, isn’t it? Your clothes and your purse are in a locker a maze of corridors away. You’ll have to be led back to them later like a lost girl. You’ll have to find the woman in silver somewhere on the winding stair. You’ll have to beg her for your shoes. A tightness in my chest. My breath is shallow and quick. The whisper woman is telling me to close my eyes. I feel her lay a blanket over my body. “Breathe,” she says. “Three deep breaths, there you go. I’ll take them with you. Shall I take them with you?”