“I’m sorry, have we even met before?”
She smiles with a kind of pity. “Was it painful?”
“Painful?”
“Or was it beautiful? I’ve heard it’s a little of both.” She looks wistful. Then suddenly, she reaches out and grips my shoulder, drawing me close to her. Her face, I see now, looks very old. Her eyes are wild, yellowed in the corners. “Tell me,” she says.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re—”
“You found the place,” someone shouts from above. I turn and look up. The woman in red. From the funeral. From the video. Standing over us, on the first landing of the staircase. Smiling down at me like we’re old friends. She’s flanked by two people dressed in black. She waves at me to join them on the landing.
I look back at the woman in the white suit who’s bleeding rubies from the throat. She’s gone pale, looks even older than she did a minute ago. “I envy,” she hisses at me in a low voice, then disappears from my side into the shimmering crowd.
I envy? Envy whom? Surely not—
“Join us,” sings the woman in red from above. Waving her hand and smiling.
I take a step forward and trip spectacularly. Fall right on the red carpeted stair, my god. I get back up, apologizing, flustered. I try to climb the stairs once more, but it’s the funniest thing: I fall again. You know when you’re in a dream and you’re trying to run and suddenly you can’t run right or you can only run slowly? When what was solid ground suddenly feels like sucking mud beneath your feet? That’s how it feels to go up these stairs. I keep tripping on my feet, which keep feeling like they’re sinking beneath me. I have to grip the banister with all my might, like I’m climbing a rope. From above, they watch me wrestle with myself. They wait patiently. Sip their drinks. “So wonderful,” says the woman in red.
At last when I reach the landing, frazzled and out of breath, they smile. The woman in red does, anyway. The strangers on either side of her do not. They’re both wearing black veils over their faces. I can only just see their solemn expressions through the black netting. They look like they might be twins.
“So glad you could join us,” the woman in red says. The veiled people on either side of her nod slightly.
“Me too,” I say, even as I think, Who are these people? What is this place? But it’s true, I am glad to be here. I’m very glad to be here instead of Mother’s apartment, among the long shadows. To be at a party—when was the last time I was at a party? To be at a spa—is this a spa? Of course it is. Mother’s secret spa, no less. What else could it possibly be? I watch the woman pour me some more of the red stars.
“Sorry,” I say. “For my clumsiness just now. On the stairs.”
“Sometimes the first steps in our Journey are the most trying, are they not?” She lets out a laugh like a bark. The veiled people say nothing. “The most trying and yet the most crucial.” I look up at her face. Beaming so brightly at me. “Aren’t they, Mirabelle?”
It strikes me again that she really does look like Marva. Same dreamy smile. Same ageless white skin. Same pale knowing eyes that seem to look through me, right into my twisted, palpitating heart. “You remember me?” I ask her.
“Remember,” she repeats, and smiles, like she’s amused by the word. “How could I forget?” The way she says it has an air of tragedy, of knowledge. Perhaps she was a friend of Mother’s. Maybe that’s why I was drawn here. Somehow I knew that.
“Did you have any trouble finding us?” she asks me now, Mother’s friend. She looks so deeply concerned for my well-being.
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “No trouble at all. In fact, this is going to sound funny but—” They all laugh now in anticipation. I wait for them to quiet, and say: “I was actually led here by my shoes.”
They look down at my shoes. The veiled people hiss. Do they hiss? No, impossible. Surely I’m imagining that. What kind of person hisses? The woman in red smiles. “Interesting.” A light in her eyes like the girl at the door. “I’m glad there was no trouble. There’s already enough trouble out there, isn’t there? In the world?”
“Yes.” I nod. Why am I nodding?
“Tragedy likes to leave its mark, doesn’t it?” Her eyes flit up to my forehead scar. Immediately, I flush. Accident, Mother said whenever I asked her about it. You fell.