Rouge(58)

“Not entirely clear?” She lets out a guffaw. “That’s a new one.”

And then I see in the glass, I’m staring at her coldly. Very coldly. Am I shaking my head? How can that be when here in the actual dressing room, I’m nodding and smiling?

“What does that mean exactly?” she presses. Annoyed, but also curious. Deeply wanting the words I’m supposed to give. I always have the perfidious words to give. Perfect, I mean of course. I meet my eyes in the mirror. Eyes that are supposed to be the other pair of eyes for this suddenly blurry customer. So bright and entrancing my mirror eyes are. But are they mocking? Surely not. Not when I’m smiling and nodding like this, being so nice and polite. Nodding so hard, my neck hurts, really. And yet mirror me is doing more of a grin. A wicked grin.

“Just tell me, do I look good or not?”

I watch my reflection lean over the woman’s blurry shoulder, my mirror eyes still on my eyes. A chill down my back from our cold, mocking stare. My red mirror lips hover by this woman’s out-of-focus ear. Lips so very red in the glass, did I even put on lipstick today? I’m mouthing a word right into the black hole of her ear. No.

“What was that?” she whispers.

Awful, chants my mouth in the mirror. Awful, awful, awful, right into the woman’s ear with my very red mirror lips. But on this side of the glass, my own lips are sealed. Literally pressed together as tight as can be. I’m shaking my head. “No,” I whisper. Yes.

“No?”

“I can’t say that. I won’t say that,” I whisper to mirror me in the glass.

“Won’t say what?” the blurry woman snaps. She grabs me by the shoulders and turns me away from the glass so I’m looking right at her. “Just tell me what you see!”

I stare into the woman’s face. Not blurry anymore. All too clear. The awful dress. Her awful soul. I hear an ocean roar suddenly all around us. Like crashing waves right here in the dressing room. Does the woman hear it too? No. Her mouth still seems to be saying, Tell me, tell me. So I do my best to tell through the roar. Words I can’t hear in the wave sounds, though I feel my mouth making their smiling shapes. I only hope they’re the perfid—perfect words. The ones I can always give. The ones she’s so desperately looking for. The woman just stares at me, her dark eyes going wide. Finally the roar around us quiets. I fall silent. The mirror is empty now. Shining like nothing. Once again, my reflection seems to have slipped away.

The seaweed woman shakes her head at me like I’m monstrous.

“I can’t believe,” she whispers, “what you just fucking said to me.”

Oh god, what words did I give?

“All right in there?” Sylvia says on the other side of the door, knocking. Her voice is smiling, but I hear the panic and rage beneath.

“Fine,” the seaweed woman snaps. She slowly turns to me, her dark, wet ringlets trembling before her eyes. I think she’s about to hit me. I wait for it, bracing myself. Then she sinks to her knees as if felled. I drop to my knees too, like a good reflection. She looks at me. “Is it really true?”

What did I say? “I should really let Sylvia or Esther help you now,” I tell her quietly.

I’m about to rise when she reaches out and grabs my wrist. “Wait.” Desperation in the press of her fingers. I look at her. Still shaking her head at me. Not with anger anymore. With a kind of wonder. A tear drips from her eye. “How did you see all that?”

Maybe I gave her the words she wanted after all.

“It’s all here,” I say, stroking her cheek softly. And then I recall the Treatment Room last night, the spa woman’s hands on my face in the eucalyptus fog. It’s all here, she said. Stroking my face just like this. Offering me the terrible mirror of her eyes. What I saw there.

“What?” the woman prompts now, bringing me back to the dressing room floor. “What should I do?” I’m on my knees with this stranger who’s also on her knees. I’m crushing her cheeks between my hands, giving her a fish mouth. She’s gazing hungrily, fearfully, into the mirror of me with bloodshot eyes. I see her soul, shattered like so much glass. Yet the shards are sharp and hungry, whispering feed, feed. Looking into her eyes, I feel a flicker of awful recognition. And then it’s gone.

“Mirabelle!” Sylvia shrieks, pounding on the door, rattling the handle.

“Boleros,” I whisper. “Or a blazer maybe.”

The customer stares at me. Her pink gloss is a slash across her face. Her ringlets have gone limp. “What?”

“They really finish a look. Especially in spring.”

I turn to look in the mirror. My reflection’s back, locked in. Blinking when I blink. That’s nice to see. But I don’t appear to be in the dressing room anymore. Not even at Belle of the Ball. When I look in the glass, I see myself standing at the gates to a house on the cliff. The house on the cliff where the red roses grow. The roses are swaying gently around me in an ocean breeze. I can smell them from here. I can hear the waves and I can hear the chimes making a lovely music. I’m smiling at myself with my very red lips. I’m telling myself it’s time to go.





16


The darkness is thick as the mist over my thoughts, but in a way that’s very pretty. The red shoes lead me right to the house along the winding path, along the cliff’s edge. The chimes play all around me, like a music of the spheres I’m hearing, like I’m privy to the vibration in all things. The damp, twitching grass, the shivering palms, the movement of clouds over water—a kind of hum of the world and my own clicking feet part of its pulse. Not sure what happened back there exactly. The woman on her knees in the fitting room. Sylvia rushing in, telling me to go, just go. And I did go, even though the woman kept calling after me to come back, please come back. Tell me more. Like I was some sort of awful oracle. Like we were an oracle, me and my reflection. Never had word slips like that before. Never had such a glitch. Almost like what’s inside and outside are just a little bit scrambled now. I’d be troubled by it, very troubled, if it weren’t for the pretty mist over my thoughts, making it already feel so faraway, farther with each step. And the promise of my reflection, being reconnected with her, hurrying me along. Funny to think of reconnecting with your own reflection. What is she doing at the house, I wonder?