He came to see me again.
How funny I felt, reading that. Who? I whispered. Who came to see you?
But the next page had been torn out. Someone had ripped it out hastily. In my mind, I saw a flash of a hand ripping. The pink room in my mind went black then. As I flipped through the book to see if I’d written anything more （there was nothing）， a picture fell out. Floated down to my feet like a fallen leaf. I picked it up. Just another clipping. Tom Cruise again. Cut out from a magazine like the other shoebox clippings. It looked like it was from one of those teen magazines. Their ridiculous names came back to me. Tiger Beat. Big Bopper. Thin, bright pages full of cheap pinup posters of Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. Factoids about them in little heart-shaped sidebars. Tom was wearing a black suit and a red bow tie. His eyes were serious like this was a serious moment. His sober expression was undermined by the hot pink hearts around his face. Strange, the feeling I had looking at it. Light and heavy at the same time. I stared at Tom’s eyes, and the room seemed to swim then. The ocean roared outside the windows like a veritable animal. I thought of the glass jaguar in the antique shop. I thought of the woman in red’s face pressed against it. Contorted in that strange, hungry bliss. Clear your head, she’d said. And then I remembered the red shoes were right there by the door. Shining as if with new purpose. Free treatment, why not? Clear my head, yes. That’s what’s necessary. I think you’ll find the results take your breath away, she’d said, her lips hovering by my ear. Take it, I nearly told her. Please.
As I turn the corner along the cliff, mansions appear like mirages in the jungly green. Old Hollywood monstrosities. Ultramodern temples of concrete and glass. No sign of La Maison de Méduse yet. Huh. On the path, a deep ravine ahead. To cross it, there’s a rickety white bridge. Did I cross this bridge last night? I walk right to the shaking middle, look around. The house is still nowhere in sight. Just the mossy green walls of the ravine. Maybe I’ve gone too far? Below, white waves crash and hiss against sharp rock. In my mind, I see Mother. Standing on a bridge of black iron over a dark, rushing river. The Saint Lawrence in Montreal. She’s leaning far over the rail, closing her eyes tight. Younger than I am now. Wearing a white-and-black Yves Saint Laurent coat she bought on credit from the Hudson’s Bay Company. Snow falling all around us both like quick, bright fish. Falling onto her red hair and my coarse black hair where I know it doesn’t look nearly as pretty. I’m watching her make a wish. Make a wish with me, Belle, she’s saying. I’m looking up at her. I’m nine years old. The time just before the time that’s in a black box. I’m wearing a pink coat the color of sick that I begged her for. She wanted to buy me a navy velvet coat, but I wanted this pink fluffy one. She shook her head at me like I had no idea, no style, like it would take me a very long time to realize things. She’s impossibly beautiful with her eyes closed and her face tilted up to the dark gray sky and her lips curved in a secret smile.
Are your eyes closed, Belle?
Yes, I lied, for my eyes were wide open. Looking at Mother, leaning dangerously forward like she could fall into the river at any moment. All it would take was one push. A sudden wind. I closed my eyes then. I closed my eyes then and I’m closing my eyes now.
Are you making a wish? Mother whispered.
Yes.
“Be careful,” says a voice now, its breath on my neck. And I scream. Open my eyes. Mother?
No Mother. No Montreal. I’m back on the creaking white bridge in the ravine, above the churning Pacific. The setting sun is blazing red overhead. But I’m not alone anymore. On the bridge with me is a man. I recognize him instantly. The taste of smoke and mint in my mouth. That fake black beard that chafed my face. Now he’s clean-shaven. Wearing that same dark blue suit, that hat that shadows the top half of his face. He looks, as always, like he emerged from Mother’s nighttime television screen, forever filled with noir or New Wave.
“Don’t want to fall,” he says. “There are caves down there, you know. Seriously treacherous.”
“I wasn’t falling.”
“If you say so.” He smiles. “Following me again, huh?”
“No,” I say. “I wasn’t following you the other night, either. We just happened to be going the same way.”
“Are we going the same way tonight, too, I wonder?” His eyes look pale gray in this light. Knife-sharp face. He comes in closer. There’s the scent of green tea again. A warm, woodsy smell too, like forest herbs distilled in a brown bottle. Crack for the vagus nerve. Very spa-like. “Let me guess,” he says. “A certain glass house on the cliff’s edge. Where the red roses grow.”