Rouge(9)

Something about this eye… I shiver as though I’m being watched. I look around the terrace. Just the sun sinking bloodily over the waves. Just the palm trees still blackening, swaying in the warm breeze. Just Tom Cruise making napkin swans at his station and whistling. An unease, cold and slippery, moves through me. I see the man sitting a few tables away, still clicking at his laptop. I look back at the eye in the mirror. Fuck you, I think. Fuck you and fuck the eavesdropping algorithms of the internet. Can they hear even our thoughts now? I’m about to turn off my phone, when I catch a glimpse of my own face reflected in the tabletop glass. What I see makes me colder still. Wretched. I look wretched. Is Grief Afflicting Your Skin Barrier?

“Yes,” says a voice. My voice. I click on the link.

On my screen is a smiling woman in red. The woman in red from the funeral. She’s standing on a stage, flanked by red curtains. What is she doing on a stage? What is she doing in my phone? She’s staring right at the camera. Right at me the way Marva does. She actually looks a little like Marva. Same bright eyes. Same knowing look. Like she can see me sitting here on the terrace, my ravaged face and emptied champagne glass in hand. She’s looking at me sympathetically.

“Bonsoir,” she says. “Are you, at this very moment, in the grips of grief?”

She shakes her head like she knows. “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem plays softly in the background. I hear the applause of an invisible audience. The word LIVE is flashing in the corner of my screen in red. “Of course you are. We all are, aren’t we? And it shows up, doesn’t it? Even when we don’t want it to. It shows up in the mirror.”

Now the camera switches to another woman, this one in a bleak-looking bathroom. This woman looks ravaged, sick, around my age. She’s also staring directly into the camera, at me, like I’m a mirror reflecting back her misery. Frowning at herself. Shaking her head slowly in time with the Mozart swells, as if she can’t believe her own face. I hear the woman in red, in voice-over: “Here at Rouge, we believe the secret goes far beyond exfoliation. The true secret? That lies somewhere else.”

Here at Rouge? The true secret? What is this, a fucking ad? Turn it off, I tell myself. But I’m still staring at my screen. The scene has shifted. Now there’s a red jellyfish undulating in a pool of dark water. I watch it pulse redly in a sea of black. My heart quickens. What the fuck? And then it’s gone. There’s the woman in the bathroom again, except now the room is bright white and she herself is glowing. Bouquets of red roses bloom beautifully on either side of her in tall black vases. She’s still staring at me like I’m a mirror, her reflection. But now she’s smiling at what she sees. Her skin is like glass, shining with a light all its own.

“Jesus Christ,” I whisper.

And her lips curl up on one side like she heard me. She holds up a red jar of cream. Right beside her glowing face, like it’s an apple. Didn’t I see jars just like that in Mother’s bathroom this afternoon?

“Where does the secret lie?” It’s the woman in red talking again. A voice-over that sounds not like it’s coming from my phone’s speaker, but whispering right in my ear. “Do you want to know?”

Yes.

“The inside,” whispers this voice. The red jellyfish in black water fills my screen again. And then like a flash, it’s gone. The glowing woman in the video smiles wide. She brings the red jar closer to her lips like she’s about to take a bite. Something about the look in her shining eyes. As if she, too, can actually see me sitting here with my back to the water. The future a void and I’m standing at the black mouth looking down. She sees all that. Sees and knows. Not just the truth of my face, but what lies beneath. “The human soul, of course,” says the voice.

I turn off the video, put my phone down. But it continues to play, because I hear: “And if you choose the way of roses, you’ll see for yourself.”

What? Where’s the sound still coming from? My eyes rest on that man with the laptop sitting a few tables away. Dark blue suit. Red handkerchief blooming from his pocket. He’s staring at his screen like I was just a moment ago, transfixed. This man? Watching the same skin video? He must be, I still hear the Mozart. He looks up now. The sound changed for him, too, of course, when I turned my video off. Why did it change? is a question all over his face. A handsome face, I can’t help but notice. Tan, angular, sharp. Very well hydrated. His brimmed hat and his suit remind me of old movies. The sort Mother liked us to watch together, mostly French New Wave and Hollywood noirs. A certain kind of man in those movies she loved. Mysteriously broken. Beautiful, but something off. Forever moving to a minor key. Always in the process of lighting a cigarette. Always half smiling through the smoke, sort of like this man is now. That’s Monty Clift, Mother might sigh, pointing at the screen. That’s Alain, she’d whisper reverently, meaning Alain Delon. Ooh, Paul Newman. Love Paul, she murmured. So much. She talked about these men like they were her personal friends. Now this man suddenly locks eyes with me, my phone hot in my hand. I feel myself instantly redden, blotches blooming hideously all over my face. Look away, I tell myself, but I can’t look away. My eyes are locked with his, cold and pale against his olive skin. He looks angry, maybe. Like he’s been caught at something or like he caught me at something. Something shameful. But then he sort of softens. Smiles, almost. Snaps his laptop shut. Raises his champagne glass to me, then drains it in one gulp, eyes on me the whole time. That’s Monty, Mother might say. That’s Alain. That’s Paul. He drops some money on the table and gets up, tipping his hat to me. Whether he’s greeting me or simply adjusting the brim is hard to say. He saunters away whistling Mozart, and I sit there watching him go, my skin prickling at the sound, my phone still hot in my hand.