As I walk up the path to the house, the roses sway gently in the black breeze, seeming to nod their red heads in welcome. I feel such welcome. It’s good I came, I think. They were expecting me. Then I see the front doors are closed. No woman in a silver dress with eyes of smoke waiting there. Smiling at me and my red shoes.
I stare at the closed doors and my heart suddenly sinks. Someone important to Mother. Even if it is just a scheme, I need to meet this person. I knock. Nothing. Knock again. Nothing. I notice there’s a peephole in one of the doors. I try to look through. Black. But I feel an eye looking right back at me. An eye I don’t see so much as sense. And then the door opens.
* * *
Tonight, the hall is shimmering grandly. Empty. No radiant rich people in red, silver, or black. No one there behind the door. Just the sound of my own footsteps clicking along the marble floor. Just that chime-y music, that airy spa drone. The boutique in the corner is dark, all the glass cabinets unlit. I look at the great coiling staircase where the woman in red stood on the landing, waving. No one on the landing tonight, though on the wall, a screen still plays the video of that blissed-out white woman with the black discs on her temples, ocean waves lapping endlessly over her face. Tonight her eyes are open. Smiling at me, it seems.
Above my head, the red chandelier blazes brilliantly. Though I crane my neck, there’s still no sign of a ceiling. In my mind’s eye, I see myself as a child, Mother reading me a story in the dark. About a beautiful maiden. A castle by the sea. This castle by the sea, I asked Mother. What did it look like inside?
Oh, you wouldn’t believe this place, Mother said. Great halls like labyrinths. A ceiling so high, you could look up, up, up and never find it. Only the chandelier blazing down. The grandest chandelier you ever saw. Dripping with honest-to-god crystals.
“Hello?” I call now. Nothing, no one emerges. I walk a little farther down the hall, toward the Depths. Tonight, the red curtains are drawn around the tank. Behind them, I feel the jellyfish float. I notice there’s a single champagne flute on a small silver tray on a lacquered black table. Filled to the brim with that red champagne. It’s bubbling in a way I’ve never seen before. Like it’s excited. There’s a little black card beside the flute that reads Santé, in elegant red scroll. I lift the glass to my lips. Cold bubbles course down my throat, sweet and sharp. In my head, I can almost hear the house applauding me. So many silk hands clapping. I look up at the video of the woman with the black discs, still smiling at me through the waves. Why do I feel as though I’m being watched tonight? As though the house is watching? Not just watching, but holding its breath. A particular person is holding their breath.
I take another sip and sigh. The whole hall seems to sigh with me. It’s strange but pleasant. The red curtains are drawn suddenly, quickly, in one velvety swish. And there are the red jellyfish in the great glass tank. Pulsing in the blue-green water. I’m surprised that I’m delighted at the sight of them. Delighted or horrified? I drink more of the excited champagne. Walk up to the tank, though I don’t want to come any closer to those creatures, beautiful as they are. So red. Bigger than they were last night. Do jellyfish grow that quickly? My face is right up against the glass now. The water’s cloudy tonight. A little darker, though still blue-green. I’m noticing one jellyfish in particular. Floating away from the cluster of floating spheres. Drifting toward me, close to the glass now. Like it can see me.
“Hi,” I say to the big jellyfish. And feel stupid. I even blush.
But it moves in closer still. It has some sort of pattern on its body, can’t quite make it out. And eyes. Do jellyfish have eyes? These ones do. Red and jellylike just like their bodies. Ghostly so it almost looks like a trick of the light. As I’m looking into its eyes, I smile. The eyes are looking back at me. Tense. Could the eyes of a jellyfish be tense? My heart begins to beat very strangely. I feel it fluttering in my chest like a panicked bird. Someone’s here. Watching me from one of the black mouths of the corridors. I hear a clicking sound. A breath drawn in. In the corner of my eye, a figure appears. The woman in red? No. A stranger clad in black silk. Clearing her throat. About to call to me in greeting.
But instead of walking toward her, my shoes walk me away, around the tank. Away? Why away? I think.
We’re circling each other now. She’s walking toward me and I’m walking away. We go around and around the tank slowly. Every time she takes a step forward, click, click go my shoes around the tank. Stop, I tell my shoes. Please.