“Deeply perilous,” she says, turning to the mirror wall. Smiling at herself there.
“Perilous?”
“Did I say perilous? I meant personal, of course.”
“Of course. Personal.” Personal? Come on, lady. A facial is a facial is a facial. Even I know that.
There are white faces on the wall above the mirror, I see. Plaster casts, sticking out of black frames. Making expressions of open-mouthed horror.
“So is it a microcurrent then?” I ask her.
She just stares at her many reflections.
“Or a laser? Ultrasound? Radiofrequency?”
She smiles like all the words I just said are funny. Funny little things.
“A peel maybe?” I press. “Glycolic?”
She laughs, tilting her neck back. Not a ring on that neck. Not a blemish. “You certainly know some… terminology, don’t you?” She takes a sip of the red champagne. Hers looks thick and dark, the color and viscosity of blood. Does it have any bubbles? Not any that I can see. But then again the room is dark, isn’t it? Silly to be afraid. Sure the white faces in the wall are a little weird, but it could just be a rich-people thing. Like the jellyfish behind the red curtain. Part of the eccentric spa décor. Eclectic, as Sylvia would say.
The woman is still chuckling to herself, still looking in the mirror, her thick red champagne in her hand. “Glycolic,” she repeats, shaking her head. “Oh my.”
“Daughter of Noelle,” someone calls softly. A small woman in a black suit standing in a doorway. A woman like a whisper. “We’re ready for you.”
The woman with the magazine stops chuckling. She looks at me, suddenly so very serious. “Letting go is so worth it,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
But she’s turned away again, staring at her selves in the dark.
* * *
Scared. No reason at all to be, really. Just a treatment room like any other. Dark as a womb. Thick with herbal steam. Heated massage table in the middle. The woman like a whisper stands in the corner smiling. She looks like so many aestheticians I’ve seen before. Serene expression. Eerily ageless. Voice like air. Barely there, really, like a ghost. Her English accented slightly, though from where, I’m not sure. She’s telling me to undress, she’ll take my robe now. She doesn’t leave the room like they normally do. Just stands there and smilingly waits for me to strip. “Great,” she whispers. “Just great. Now lie down, please.”
What sort of treatment is this? I want to ask, but now the question seems stupid. Ungrateful. It’s free, isn’t it? I think of those white plaster faces screaming out of their black frames in the waiting room. Anyway, I tell myself, too late now, isn’t it? Your clothes and your purse are in a locker a maze of corridors away. You’ll have to be led back to them later like a lost girl. You’ll have to find the woman in silver somewhere on the winding stair. You’ll have to beg her for your shoes. A tightness in my chest. My breath is shallow and quick. The whisper woman is telling me to close my eyes. I feel her lay a blanket over my body. “Breathe,” she says. “Three deep breaths, there you go. I’ll take them with you. Shall I take them with you?”
“Yes.”
And then she rubs her hands with some sort of scented oil. Eucalyptus, maybe? Holds her hands suspended over my nose and mouth. We breathe together. I feel my chest rise and fall. “There,” she says. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say. And it is. Much better. I close my eyes in earnest now. The eucalyptus-y scent thickens. Fresh steam rolling in from somewhere like a fog. A warmth spreads through me that feels delicious. I let her wash my face about a thousand times. Rag after hot steaming rag descending upon me, smothering my skin. Her soaped hands sliding across the planes of my face, washing me away and away. I start to drift off as she applies a thick, cold paste to my cheeks. The first of several masks, perhaps? Just a facial, then. That much is clear now.
“I could really use this facial,” I say. “I haven’t had a facial in a while. I go to a place in Montreal, but it’s nothing like this, of course.”
The woman says nothing. Just continues to massage the cold paste onto my face.
“My mother came here though,” I offer to the dark.
Silence. More cold paste.
“She died recently. That’s why I’m in town. Taking care of things. That’s why I’m here tonight, too. I guess someone here knew her. I guess she was a member.”