And I go right in, don’t I?
Is there a moment where I wonder if I should enter this stranger’s house on the edge of the cliff? No. When I look back at this moment, this moment of going through the spiked black gates, down the path flanked by roses, through the wide-open doors of La Maison de Méduse, everything awash in red light, I’ll remember no hesitation at all.
7
Music. Laughter. Soft voices. Where am I—some sort of living room? No, too grand for that. More like a hall. Giant, coiling staircase. Tall, curving walls of glass all around. No actual ceiling I can see, though there must be one, because a massive red chandelier’s dangling down. A million tiny red lights burning. Beneath it, people in the most elegant suits and dresses swan around in shimmering clusters. A party, must be. A party for the very beautiful and very rich. Not the typical California rich, looks like. No rumpled linen or slapping sandals. No jumpsuits or zombie eyes. This is what Mother would call another fucking level. What she might even call style. Everyone seems to be dressed in black or red or white. All quite pale-faced. That woman at the door probably mistook me for someone else. There’s a drink in my hand now, where did that come from? It looks like champagne, except red. La Maison de Méduse etched on the flute in gold. I take a very long sip. Cold, bright bubbles go singing down my throat. Wow. Like drinking stars, Mother, I think.
“Like drinking stars,” I hear someone behind me whisper dreamily.
I freeze. Turn around. Mother? A young-looking couple. Both luminous, both decadently dressed. They stare at me with eyes like the sky, dripping their dark silks.
“Sorry,” I say. “Thought I recognized someone.”
“A side effect of the Journey, perhaps,” one of them offers in a zen voice.
“Perhaps,” I echo. I have no idea what they’re talking about.
They smile slightly. “Bon voyage,” they murmur, raising their fizzing flutes and sauntering away.
“Bon voyage,” I agree. Bon voyage?
“Aux recommencements,” another woman says to me mysteriously as she passes. Also exquisitely dressed, also radiant.
“I’m sorry?”
“？‘To new beginnings,’？” she mutters over her white shoulder, like I’ve ruined something.
“Oh yes. New beginnings.” I raise my glass to her. “Thank you. Merci.” What the hell is this place? The music is louder now, a celestial drone full of airy chimes. Sort of like what you might hear in a spa. Just then I notice the signs in the arches above each corridor flanking the grand staircase: SIGNATURE RITUALS, reads one. VOYAGES MERVEILLEUX, reads the other. Up on the wall, there’s a screen playing a video of a very white woman with her eyes closed. She has small black discs on either side of her head. She looks to be in absolute bliss. Superimposed over her pale face are lapping ocean waves. A Rendez-Vous with Yourself, it reads in red looping letters by her high, plump cheek. I smile. A spa. Of course. There’s even what looks like a little boutique in that corner over there. Tall glass cabinets full of red bottles and jars. Each cabinet backlit like the products within are works of art. The red jars are just like the ones in Mother’s apartment. She must have come here for treatments. Now I’m really smiling. So this was it, Mother. Your secret place. Probably you loved the little French touches, the old-Hollywood fashion. Sipping red stars. I take a long sip from my flute.
In the boutique, I see an older woman in a white suit—a customer, must be—ransacking one of the cabinets. I watch her greedily gather all the bottles and jars she can into her arms, then dump them into her large, glittery purse. She catches me watching her and frowns. Marches over to me briskly, her purse brimming with jars.
“So,” she says, looking me up and down. “You’ve done it.” She smiles a little warily. Probably around Mother’s age. Unlike Mother, this woman looks it. Her skin has that preserved, almost pickled quality, suggesting a complex system, a rigid methodology that might be failing her. Still beautiful, though.
“Done it?” I ask her.
She laughs like I’ve just said something funny. Funny and painful.
“All right, then. Good for you,” she says dryly. “Bravo.” She doesn’t look like it’s good for me at all. I notice she’s wearing a thick ruby choker around her neck. It makes her look like she’s bleeding from the throat. “Did you get a tan or something?” she asks me.
“Excuse me?”
“Shouldn’t do that on your Journey, they said. Compromises the result.”