“No. Because they have my purse. So it’s a misunderstanding.” And then something in me lifts. “Maybe this is why they’re making us sever now,” I say to Lake. “Because we got our treatments free. And now we must pay in some way. We should explain to them.”
Lake looks down at her tray. “I don’t know. That sounds like a lot to do. Anyway, I think this is right. I’m a Perfect Candidate, they said. You’re perfect too. That’s why we walk together. Maybe perfect means we don’t ever pay.” Then she looks up and smiles so suddenly.
“What?”
“Your jelly. Following you. Look.” And with her chin, she gestures to the glass.
And there it is. Swimming beside us. Floating along. One among many, but I know it’s the one from before by its eyes. Red like its jelly body, and watchful. It makes me smile a little inside. But on the outside, I do not smile. “Oh?” I say.
“Your prince,” Lake presses. “Or your fairy godfish maybe?”
“Hardly either of those,” I say.
“Yes,” Lake says. “How ugly it is,” she says, like she hasn’t already said this. “Maybe you’ll kiss it and it will turn into something beautiful. Like a silly story someone told me once. Every nighttime for so many nighttimes. The same story I asked for, over and over. Over and over they told it. Never tiring. In a voice of love. Love is funny.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Over and over,” Lake repeats in a trance. “The moon in the window. A hand on my hair. How ugly it was.”
“The story or the moon in the window?”
“Me,” Lake says. Not smiling now. Salt water spilling from her eyes of smoke. The silver tray in her hands begins to shake.
“Lake,” I say. “You’re beautiful.” Though I’m no longer so sure about that when I look at Lake. I think of the word that swam up like a gray fish when she asked how she looked. Dead. As I look at her Brightened face, more words come swimming.
Eradicated.
Destroyed.
Used.
A whole school of gray ones. How well they all seem to fit Lake’s new face.
“Look, we’re here,” she says. And she nods at a black hole up ahead of us, like a giant mouth. It reminds me of the mouths of the white faces in the After Place.
The red jelly that swims alongside me seems eager, like it wants to tell me something. Its head is pulsing so very fast behind the glass. Fast as my pounding heart. Its legs are like hands waving.
What? I say out of the corner of my lips.
Nothing. Silence. Or maybe not silence. Maybe it’s speaking but I don’t understand fish. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
And then Lake and I walk through the black hole.
30
A dark dining room on the top floor. The grandest dining room I have ever seen. A high ceiling of glass so I can see the night sky full of stars. A long black table decked out so beautifully. Rose petals scattered everywhere. Black candles, the flames tall and still. There isn’t a wind in this room. There is no air at all. That must be why it feels difficult to breathe. Is the grand table for us to sit at? No, there are already people sitting there. People all in black. Black suits and black dresses, wearing black veils over their faces like curtains. Beside the table is a large glass tank of water, like an open aquarium or an aboveground swimming pool. Seems like the same water we walked beside when we were going up the winding stair two by two. Same blue-green shade. Same red jellies floating and pulsing within. So this must be the very top of that glass tank, where it ends, like our Beauty Journey, where it opens up, like a flower-shaped pool. The way the table is facing the aquarium, it seems like the aquarium is the main event, the show, and the table is the audience, with all the seats taken.
“But where will we sit, if these seats are taken?” I ask Lake. “Aren’t we the honored guests?”
But Lake doesn’t answer. She’s mesmerized by all around her. Especially by the ones in black veils, staring and staring at us. “Who are they, Lake? Do you know them?”
“They?” Lake whispers. “The ones who architect our dreams, of course.”
“Who give them their shapes and names,” says a woman beside Lake, her skin so very dewy. “Their silky textures and wondrous colors and timeless scents. Bottle them in the prettiest of red jars.”
“Make creams and sprays of them,” Lake adds, “which they then sell, and which we are so lucky to buy.”
“There is no price too high,” agrees the dewy woman.