Very belle, this town. I never really saw that before, or maybe I’m seeing it today in a new way. Palm trees. Curving streets. Shop fronts of glass like an endless maze of mirrors. Better hurry to work, don’t dawdle. But I can’t seem to stop smiling at her in all the reflected surfaces along the way. Myself, I mean. When I say her, I mean myself. In the shop glass, I’m not wearing the hat and sunglasses, funny. Don’t seem to need them on the other side, I guess. I guess that makes a sort of sense. I look good, don’t I? More than good. Glowing, lifted, eradicated. Eradicated is the word that comes most strongly to my mind, but it can’t be the word I mean. Doesn’t eradicate mean “destroy”？ My face looks the opposite of destroyed. Well, but somehow it fits. Fits like the dress I’m wearing today, Mother’s dress, which I’d never seen before. It was tucked deep in her closet, buried among the black and white silks like a hot little secret, like it was just waiting for my hand to find it on the rack. When I saw it, I hesitated, but then I thought, Why not put it on? She won’t be wearing it anymore. And a funny thing happened then: in the closet mirror, I saw I was already putting on the dress. I was putting it on in the glass while my actual hand was still on the hanger, hesitating. I watched for a while and I thought how funny to see me getting a little ahead of myself like that. In the glass. Can that be right? Can we sometimes see ourselves just slightly ahead of ourselves? I thought of how I saw the goblin’s mouth in the mirror earlier, not quite syncing up with his words. How I saw my reflection smiling and nodding before I was actually smiling and nodding, laughing before I thought to laugh. Even mouthing my thoughts. So maybe it happens sometimes, a lapse or a kind of jump ahead, a glitch in the glass. Maybe I just forgot how mirrors worked because of this morning’s fog. It looked very pretty on me in the mirror, anyway. Mother’s dress. In fact, when I saw my reflection slipping her arms into the armholes, I quickly slipped into them too, catching up with myself so that we smiled and zipped up at the exact same time. A red dress, which is nice. Goes with the red shoes, which we’re wearing too. I do love red.
But I’m dawdling again. Got to get to work. My reflection in the shopwindows is actually jogging slightly ahead of me, I see, her heels clicking a beat faster than my heels, like she knows I’m late. Wait, I nearly say to myself. I’m coming. Which is a very funny thing to want to say to oneself. Surely I’m just not seeing things right. My phone buzzes. Heart jumps. A name and number I recognize, but not off the bat. Persephone. Goddess of the underworld. Why is she calling me?
“Hello?” I answer, a little nervous.
“Mirabelle, how are you?” Her voice sounds falsely mournful. And familiar. We seem to know each other, Persephone and I, but in what capacity?
“Been trying to get ahold of you for a while,” she says. Her voice insinuates power. Like it has some sort of dominion over my soul. In the shopwindows, I see I’m still clicking just a little ahead in my red shoes. I haven’t even answered the phone.
“Yes, well I’ve been busy. You know how it is.”
“Of course,” Persephone says. “I can only imagine. Well hopefully you’re at least getting some sun while you’re there?”
In the glass, I seem to be smiling right up into the sunlight, like it’s telling me a very pretty secret. Funny because I’m actually in the shade, shivering. “Some,” I say.
“Well listen, Mira, I just wanted to check in. First to see how you are, of course, and then also to confirm when you were coming back?”
“Coming back?”
“To work,” she says. Her voice is starting to sound tense, frustrated. The glove of power tightening on the hand. My boss. That’s why she sounds like she has a claim on me. “We’re expecting you at the shop tomorrow. For the afternoon shift.”
“Oh, well there must be some mistake. I’m actually coming in now.”
“You are?” I can feel Persephone raising her eyebrows on the other end of the line. I’ve shocked her.
“I should be there in the next few minutes. So it’s funny you called.”
“Few minutes? Well. That’s wonderful. We weren’t expecting that, but that’s wonderful. I didn’t realize you were already back home?”
“Home.” I look around me. Blue sky. Palm trees. Street that curves like a seashell, all the shop glass windows reflecting back my glowing self to infinity. I see I’m walking quite far ahead now. Quite far ahead of myself. But I can feel the smile on my mirror face. “Yes,” I say. “I’m home.”