Now I stare at my phone, its blank face. For a moment I glimpse the void. I see it gaping, black, bottomless. She went the way of roses, that woman at the funeral said, and smiled. Like that was so wonderful. Her blue eyes lit up.
“What’s the way of roses?” I ask aloud.
Just then, my phone buzzes. I brace myself. Some vapid sympathy note from a co-worker, maybe. Or Sylvia just dropping a line to remind me to come by our little shop tomorrow. Or Persephone checking in to see when I’d be coming back to Damsels. Take all the time you need, she lied, patting my hand. But I could hear the clock already ticking in her voice.
When I look, I see a notification from a name I don’t recognize. ROUGE. Who’s Rouge? There’s an icon of a wide-open eye inside an oval mirror. Staring at me.
Is Grief Afflicting Your Skin Barrier? Tap to Go Live, it reads beside the eye.
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.