* * *
I’m in some sort of dark-red waiting room. Heavy with the scent of eucalyptus. Mirrors all around. Bon Voyage, the woman in silver said, and then she was gone. She took my clothes and my shoes and my purse with her. Left me standing here barefoot in a white-and-red robe. I hear a waterfall somewhere. The distant sound of chimes. Some red magazines, looks like, on a black marble table. Beside them, a vaseful of what looks like raspberries. Also chilled water jugs filled with… what is it, blood vessels? Pomegranate seeds. Get a grip, I tell myself. A little nervous, I guess. Why a little nervous? When they’ve been nothing but kind? Just a spa. Just a free treatment. I’d love to hear all about it. All the lavish details, that strange man, Hud Hudson, said. Me too, Hud Hudson. I want them too. I always did. How many times have I sat at the dress shop, looking up pictures of the fanciest spas on my phone? Wishing I could walk through those gilded gates and walk out again, lifted and glowing and reborn? Thinking the secret is just behind those gates. Secret to what? Something essential. And now I’m here. Within the gates. In the waiting room. Better, much better, than my Montreal spa’s waiting room with its dated copies of Elle and its cheap paper cups of weak tea. I go there twice a year, which is the most I can afford. Twice a year, a woman in a white smock takes me into a darkened cubicle and electrocutes my face. I taste metal in my teeth for weeks after, but it’s worth it for that slightly lifted look. After the electrocution （she calls it microcurrent）， she coats my still-spasming skin with marine algae. I lie there under the cold, black sea goop for as long as she’ll let me, dreaming of luminosity. How I’ll soon glow in the dark.
What the fuck did you do to your face? Mother would say when we FaceTimed afterward.
Nothing.
Liar. You did something. Tell me.
Don’t I have a lifted look?
You have a scared look. Like you’ve been stunned.
Well, maybe next time I visit you, I can go where you go.
She got silent then. Waved her hand as if to wave my words away. You don’t want to go where I go. I’ve told you, you don’t need any of this stuff. That Egyptian blood saves you. I’m another story.
Well now I’m here, Mother. I’ve gone where you go. Maybe I’m not another story after all.
I take a seat in one of the chairs shaped like a wave. I picture Mother sitting in this very chair. Imagine her in a white-and-red robe, listening to the chimes and the waterfall, partaking of pomegranate water. Soaking it all up with a non-wrinkle-inducing smile. This’ll be good. It makes me smile too. There’s another woman with me in the room. She’s beautiful. Her dark skin glows in the dim light. Her eyes are pale. Maybe she’s mixed too. Ethnically ambiguous, as Mother might say. Where are you from? I would ask this woman if I didn’t fucking hate that question myself. The way Mother would answer for me, smile and say Egypt, right as I said Montreal. The woman’s flipping a magazine. Too dark for me to see the cover. Can she really be reading in the dark? She looks up at me and smiles.
“First time,” she says. It isn’t a question. She knows it’s my first time.
“Yes,” I say, and my voice echoes in the room like it’s a corridor. “They offered me a free treatment.”
“A free treatment,” the woman repeats, raising an eyebrow. “Me too.”
“You too?”
“Lucky us. These cost a pretty penny, so I’m told.”
“Is it your first time too?” Not a furrow on her brow. Not a wrinkle. She’s flawless.
“I’ve had one. Still need a few more for the brightening.”
“The brightening?” I ask.
“The glow,” she whispers. She goes back to reading her red magazine in the dark. I’m glad she’s here. Another client. Otherwise I’d feel… not afraid exactly, that’s ridiculous. Just… sort of weird. Getting a treatment at… what time is it now? No clock on the wall and the woman in silver took my purse and my phone. Late, anyway, for a facial. Is it a facial that I’m getting though? Never really clarified that. Just took what the woman in red dangled. Said, Thanks so much.
“How is it?” I ask her.
She looks up at me like she forgot I was there. “How is it?”
“The treatment.”
“Oh. Well, it’s different for everyone, isn’t it?”
“Right,” I say like I understand. I notice black tapered candles on the table now, red rose petals scattered all around. There’s a mirror wall beside us, a thousand of me, going on to infinity.