Rouge(73)

I spray and I spray and I spray and it’s very lonely. All these worlds of hydrating possibility waft around us now, and in your garden the mist grows thick, but I’m still here and you’re still there, sadly. It’s hard to see you somewhere so pretty where I’m not also. Of course that was always the way with us, wasn’t it? You in your world of hydrating possibilities and me in mine is sort of like old times. Yet so close that I can almost touch your hand. But not quite, right? When I reach out my hand now, there’s just glass there. Cold under my finger pads. You’re reaching out too now, looks like. Just glass for you, too?

Mother smiles with her very red lips. Red as the flowers in the garden growing tall all around her. Are they growing even taller now, Mother? Am I losing you in the mist? Well I’ll just keep spraying until I get myself there. I’ll spray and I’ll spray and I’ll—

“Belle?”

Just then our bedroom door opens. And we both scream, Mother and I.

But it’s only a beautiful blond man, naked from the waist up. He looks like a merman. What is he doing out of the sea? Interrupting our ridicule, which we don’t love. Do we know who he is, Mother? Mother’s red lips smile in the glass like she’s been eating too many cherries. Of course we do. Our boyfriend, Tad. Your boyfriend or my boyfriend, Mother? Can’t remember. But he washes the windows so preternaturally, it’s amazing. You’d never know there was a glass there.

“Hi, Tad,” we say.

He’s dumbstruck, of course. No surprise there. After the transformational magic of acid, after the lonely mist, our Glow is really out of this world. Our Lift upends the natural law. To say nothing of the Brightening.

“Good morning,” we say.

Tad says nothing still. Look at him just looking at us like he’s afraid. Afraid? That can’t be right, can it, Mother? But he really does look afraid. Well, Beauty can be scary sometimes, it can take your breath away. Maybe that’s what’s happening to Tad. Maybe we need to give him a minute to collect himself. Regain the power of speech. We smile at him. Not too sluttily or anything. We try hard not to be too dazzling. Oh, but we’re failing. The Beauty just drips from us like our many hydrating possibilities.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispers at last. “What happened to you?”

“Happened?” Like we were in an accident. Well, we were in a kind of accident, weren’t we, Mother? In a manner of speaking, sure. Beauty, when you come face-to-face with it like Tad is right now, can be very like a collision. A kind of violence. This must be what Tad is experiencing. Beauty happened, Tad. A Glow. An unfurling of the red flowers of our faces.

“Belle. Please tell me.”

Don’t tell him, right, Mother? Because Beauty is our little secret, isn’t it? So we seal our lips into a smile that says over my dead body. The mystique must be putrefied. Petrified? Preserved. The mystique must be preserved. Far more magical that way.

“Belle, say something, you’re scaring me.”

Why does he keep only talking to me, Mother, when you’re here in the room too? Well, maybe not in the room so much, but in the glass, definitely. Smiling there with your very red lips in your misty garden of tall red flowers. And now look, he’s marching over to us, he’s sinking to the floor, his head is right between our knees. Jesus, this is quite the scene he’s making. But then, that’s what Beauty does, right, Mother? It makes people make scenes. It makes crazed fools of those who bear witness.

“What?” we say, so casual-surprised. Like we don’t know that we’re blowing Tad’s mind right now. His mind, his dick, his eyes, his soul, really.

“Belle,” he says. “Are you… sick? Did you give blood or something? Do you feel faint?”

Blood? Sick? Faint? Is he insane, Mother? Is he blind? Look at you, smiling in your lonely garden where the mist grows thick. Look at me positively dripping with hydrating possibilities. We’re the furthest thing in the world from sick, right? Mother? But Tad turns me away from the mirror so I’m forced to look away from you. Forced to look right into this merman’s eyes, so worried yet still serene. He reaches up and feels my forehead with his cold palm, what the hell? Like I’m a child with a fever. I want to shake him off, but his palm, the way it’s pressed into my skin, reminds me of something. Another time someone put their hand on my forehead. A long time ago. I think it was you, Mother. Can’t remember. I don’t know about you, but my memory hasn’t been the best lately. Making me emotional again, I admit. Look at me, ruining my misting like this.

“Belle, I’m sorry,” Tad says, wiping away my tears tenderly. “I know this is hard. Maybe it’s finally hitting you all at once or something. Maybe that’s why you look so…” And as he’s looking into my eyes, his expression shifts. Moves from concern to something else. He’s so taken with us, Mother.

“My god,” he whispers, his eyes fixed on us now, deep. Surely he wants to kill us. Kiss us. He’s our boyfriend, after all, and that’s what a boyfriend does. Who wouldn’t want to kill a lonely dream?

“You look just like…” But he’s drawing a blank. Looking at my face, words escape him. Which makes sense. I understand all about blanks, about words being slippery.

“I look just like…?” I say, leaning in, waiting.