by Nevada Barr
The razor in the sink, pink and thick-handled, Polly’s razor, made him think that maybe death was the better part of valor. He pushed the thought away, opened the envelope Danny had given him, shook two pills into his hand, added an Imitrex, and washed them all down with water from the tooth glass.
Thank God for Danny and drugs.
He replaced the bottle, closed the door of the medicine cabinet, and stared into the sink to avoid the face in the mirror.
A kitten. Why in God’s name did she want to get Gracie a kitten? If he’d stuck a Chihuahua in the freezer what would he do with a cat? Deep-fry it?
Jesus.
Vertigo caught him on the crest of a wave, and he held onto the sink to keep from falling. The razor was between his hands, the mirror waiting for him to look into it. Turning, he half fell into the upstairs hall.
Seventeen more steps and he’d be at his office. Despite what he’d told Polly, he hadn’t come upstairs to work; he’d not come for the drugs, though he wished he’d dared to take twice as many.
Marshall had to come upstairs because he had to see.
Leaning into the psychic wind, he pushed forward two more staggering steps. Outside the master bedroom the mental storm reached gale force. Holding onto the door frame, he tried to overcome the need to go in. Three times this evening he’d made the pilgrimage through the stairwell’s nightmares to this room to see if it had reappeared. He didn’t know whether this time would be a relief or further proof that he should get to know his wife’s razor more intimately.
Maybe he’d imagined it in the first place; maybe it had never been there at all. A fourth time was killing him; his head was imploding behind his right eye. A fourth time was beyond careful, beyond compulsion. It was not normal.
Normal was something he knew about. His life had been a case study in normal. Normal didn’t live in a garbage heap; nor did it obsess about minutia. Normal wore clean clothes but did not panic if a stain or a spill marred the fabric. Normal shook hands for one point seven seconds.
Normal did not look repeatedly for something that wasn’t there because he, himself, had taken it away. That was the hitch. He’d taken it back to the basement and hung it on the two nails driven into a beam for that purpose.
As if from a distance, he watched himself cross the carpet to the bed, saw himself staring down at the coverlet. His doppelganger fell to its knees, reached down, and folded the bed skirt neatly up onto the mattress.
With a suddenness that snatched the breath from his lungs, Marshall slammed back into his body, a body kneeling in prayer to a dead or indifferent God.
Taking a lungful of air as if he was about to free-dive forty feet, he bent double and looked under the bed.
Nothing.
Shoe boxes, hat boxes.
Nothing.
With exaggerated care, he folded the bed skirt back into place and smoothed the bedspread. Then he laid his head on his fists, thumbs hard in the corners of his eyes to keep the tears from beginning.
24
The Woman in Red, she thought as she leaned across the tiny bathroom sink to get closer to the mirror. The sink was black with use, and the mirror hazy from years of accumulated dust, hairspray, bath powder, and other bathroom effluvia. In a way, the filth was her friend; as footage shot through gauze, it softened the less pleasing aspects of her face. Blubber drowned the ravages of age, lard filling out wrinkles and rounding what would have been a sagging jaw line. Close in, just eyes and lips in focus, she occasionally even felt attractive.
Her left eye crossing slightly to accommodate close vision, she concentrated on her lipstick. Red. Always red. Tired of it after so many years and tubes, she’d tried other colors, but they’d looked wrong, as if her mouth belonged to some other woman.
“Fuck,” she whispered as the shaking of her hand smeared a red line nearly to her nose. “Darn,” she amended firmly. Mr. Marchand did not like the F word. He used to like it just fine, but a year, or two, or twenty ago, he had slapped her silly for using it in front of him. After that she never heard him say the word. It was like he’d gotten religion or culture or something. He didn’t have to slap her like he did. All he had to do was ask. Saying no to him had never been an option.
Not since that first night.
Remembering then was better than remembering now. Snow was drifting down from a low dark sky. The world was cold and quiet, not hot and hungry like Louisiana. Her mom and dad were at a prayer vigil for a deacon who had passed. Stillness, snow, and darkness swaddled the house. She was at the window on the second-floor landing looking into the next-door neighbor’s house.
Through snowflakes half as big as her fist falling through the halo of the street light, she watched his mother, wearing a flannel nightgown with matching robe and slippers, just like June Cleaver, kiss his brother on the cheek, then sit on the edge of the bed and sing to him.
He came into the doorway and watched them. She loved the way his hair waved, long in front and short over the ears. She loved his dark eyes, the four-square way he stood, feet shoulder-width apart, like he could take on the world. He was what her grandmother used to call an “old soul.”
Leaning against the window to be closer, she’d fallen asleep. Then, for no reason she could think of, she opened her eyes. It wasn’t like waking up; it was like already being awake, and suddenly, in a pitch-black theatre, the movie comes on.
He was right in front of her, walking down his dimly lit hallway toward her window. He stopped, looked right into her eyes, and smiled that slightly crooked smile that made her weak at the knees.
“Sssshh,” she heard herself hissing. The sound dragged her back to the mirror and the lipstick running up to her nose.
She needed a little something. A stiffener.
A glass of bourbon sat on the back of the commode in a space carved out by repetition. The rest of the toilet tank was obscured by a broken eye shadow container, hair pulled from brushes, two bottles of hairspray, a dirty washcloth, and assorted hair pins and tissues. The overflow hadn’t far to go. A pile had built up over time until the space between the side of the tank and the sink cabinet was full. Where the glass rested was an almost perfect circle in the mess delineated by old rings from the bottom of the tumbler.
Lifting it carefully, she pushed out her lips to do the least amount of damage to her makeup and took a sip. “Cocktail,” she said to chase away the word “booze” that clicked into her mind.
The bourbon was just to steady her hand; she didn’t want to get tipsy tonight. Fortified, she tried applying the lipstick again. Better. Not perfect, but better. At least most of the color was within shouting distance of her lip line. Since her lips were naturally thin, she colored outside of it anyway to make them look fuller. Admiring the effect, she shook a cigarette from a partially crushed pack of Dorals and lit it. “Shit.” The lipstick was okay, but she had another cigarette burning on the edge of the sink, adding its burn-and-nicotine footprint to half a dozen others. Pinching it up, she dropped it in the toilet and set the new one down in its place.
Another hit of bourbon and she began on her eyes. Most days she just ringed them with black shadow and piled on the mascara. Back when she was boring, before she’d come to New Orleans and become the Woman in Red, she would never have dared wear so much makeup. If she had, either her mother would make her wash her face or some nosey parker would say, “And just who are you supposed to be?” and then that biddy would tell her mother. New Orleans loved masks, and makeup was a mask of sorts. Paint to cover youthful extravagances and sins, to let a woman be who she should be instead of who she had to be. When she’d first caked it on, she’d been putting on a character, the Woman in Red. Now heavy base, white powder, carmine lipstick, charcoal eye shadow, and gobs of black mascara were part of the persona she’d worn for so long it ceased to be an act.
Tonight, she wanted to look nice, have the charcoal shadows neat and the mascara without clumps. Squinting through the fog of bourbon, smoke, and di
rt, she carefully combed out her lashes with an old toothbrush. At least she hoped it was the old one.
At eight o’clock she was going to meet Mr. Marchand, and she wasn’t going to shame herself. Not this time. She wasn’t going to be too tipsy. She was going to have it together: nice dress, face on straight, hair done. This meeting was a big deal. Mr. Marchand was like family, but better-closer-and meeting him wasn’t a casual thing.
“It’s him moving forward in our relationship,” she said solemnly to the face in the mirror. In her heart she knew that wasn’t the way it was. He did things for his own reasons and hadn’t bothered to tell her what they were for years. No, he’d never bothered to tell her why he did things or had her do things. “This is like Mr. Marchand taking me home to meet his mother,” she said and took a long drag on the cigarette. Her heart put in its place, she picked up the hairbrush.
Before moving to New Orleans she’d never heard of tarot. Because she needed to stay close to Mr. Marchand, she’d had to find something to do that would let her hang around Jackson Square where she could keep an eye on his office door. Since she couldn’t paint or draw caricatures, and there was no way she could stand still like the statues, not even when she was thinner, tarot reading seemed easiest.
Turned out she was good at it. Too big, and too red, and too much of most things, and too little of everything else, she didn’t think she’d ever be good at anything, but she saw things in the cards that were true. People liked to mock her when she said that, especially Mr. Marchand, so she didn’t brag about it-but she didn’t stop believing it either. There wasn’t anything else she could say good about herself except for that. It was true and right and she would not think it wasn’t.
Privately she believed she was a good reader because she’d spent her life being not enough-not pretty enough, smart enough, rich enough, lucky enough-and that gave her a special insight into people.
Ego didn’t get between her and the deck. She could see where the clients who came to her table were broken, and the cards told her how to help them. Of course, lots of times it was an act. Tourists paid for the act as much as for the reading. But not always. Once in a while there was a true “seeing.” Like when she’d warned Mr. Marchand’s wife. That had blown her mind. The act was mirrored in the cards so exactly she knew it wasn’t an act at all. A window between now and the future had opened for just that few minutes. She’d looked right through it, right into the awful place that woman was headed. The words weren’t hers, at least not all of them, but the seeing, that was all her.
Her hand twitched and she jammed the mascara wand into her eye. Pain shot through her and she knocked the lit cigarette to the floor. Not the floor, the floor was no longer visible; a crust of garbage an inch or two deep at its thinnest covered the hardwood. The smoldering butt fell into a stack of magazines and rolled behind the toilet. Bourbon got her as she bent down, and she fell into the toilet, banging her hand against the bowl.
She’d accidentally gotten tipsy.
Grunting, she dug the cigarette out and pounded the place it had landed in case anything had ignited. Dropping the butt in the toilet, she saw the acrylic nail of her right index finger had snapped off, exposing a scabby stub where the real nail had been filed down to take the epoxy.
“God damn it!” she hissed as she levered herself back to her feet. Her nails were fake, but they were pretty, the prettiest thing about her. Upright, her finger in her mouth, she turned to the mirror once again. Sucking had smudged her lipstick and black tears poured down through her makeup leaving gray runnels that would be a bitch to cover up.
“Fuck!” She threw the mascara wand at the mirror. Leaving a black smear, it bounced off the glass and fell into her half-empty bourbon glass. “God damn it!” she shouted and started to slam her fist into the mirror.
Bad luck, seven years of it. That was all she needed!
Sucking in her breath, she closed her eyes and began to mutter. “Seventy-eight cards, twenty-two major arcana, trumps, cannot be changed, fifty-six minor arcana divided into four suites… ”
When she’d gone to read in Jackson Square, she’d memorized the paragraph marketers put on the card boxes for the tourists. That was the extent of her knowledge when her first customer sat down. The oft-repeated litany calmed her. As a little girl she’d used the Lord’s Prayer. It had never paid off in nearness to Mr. Marchand, let alone twenty-dollar bills like the tarot did.
“Okay. Okay.” She opened her eyes but didn’t let them veer to the mirror. “We’re moving slowly, carefully,” she coached herself, as she picked up the bourbon, fished out the mascara wand, and let it fall to the floor. “Both hands, that’s my girl.” Holding the tumbler as a believer might hold the grail, she took a long sip. Later, when her hands were steadier, she’d fix her makeup. That way it would be fresher for her date.
Date.
That cheered a smile from her. He would laugh if he heard her use that word. That, or he’d get mad. Lately, since Mr. Marchand’s wife had come into the picture, he’d been on edge. Before she’d come along, he’d made fun of her but he didn’t get so mad so much. He didn’t pace and hit. Polly Marchand and those little girls kept him upset. He was going to do it again. Mr. Marchand had told her that.
A shame. Ms. Pollyanna seemed nice, but it was hard to tell; the cards told a lot, but they had their secrets.
Tonight she didn’t want to think about Polly Marchand. There was another thought she’d liked. For a moment she couldn’t remember what it was. The grail made another trip to her mouth, and it came back to her.
A date. The Woman in Red has a date, she thought and laughed. Nobody had to know she used that word. If he could keep secrets, so could she.
All night she’d think of it as a date, a real date. He thought he could read her mind but she didn’t think he could, not most of the time.
“Date, date, a date, I have a date. So there to you, Mr. Marchand. We are on a date,” she sang as she threaded her way through the crap on the floors to the cupboard in the next room. She was running low on bourbon.
Mr. Marchand paid for her to have air-conditioning, and she kept it turned up high so the apartment didn’t smell too bad. He’d promised he’d get her a nicer place if she’d clean this one up. She was going to do it soon. Lots of valuable things, though. It would be crazy to just throw them out. She’d make time to go through it. Things kind of kept getting away from her these last few years.
Two bottles left of the cheapest stuff. “Neat, straight up,” she said to an imaginary bartender as she poured three fingers. A swallow soothed the pain in her eye and her disappointment over breaking a nail. Refill clasped to her chest, she returned to the bedroom.
“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,” she sang as she rifled through red in her cramped closet, and more red, each garment more tired than the last. Over half of them no longer fit, but she kept them. As soon as the weight came off she’d be wanting them. Finally, she settled on a red polyester caftan. The fabric didn’t breathe in the heat, and there were tiny irons and coffee pots and mixing bowls in black on it but it fit and, if she wore it backwards, it didn’t look too stained. Back or front, what did it matter? The thing was shapeless.
Dragging it from the pile, she wondered when the clothes had migrated from the hangers to the floor.
Two winters before there’d been ice and she’d twisted her knee. Healing took a long time. The place had gotten out of hand while she was injured. The closet was one of the places she would start on first. There were probably some nice outfits in there, new shoes. As soon as she got squared away, she would organize the closet, she decided. Could be there was a whole new wardrobe just waiting for her.
The caftan had been squished, so she spread it over the stuff on the bed and ironed the wrinkles out with her hands as best she could. A small slop of the bourbon got on it but that would dry fast. Alcohol dried fast. Congratulating herself for remembering to mash her lips together so she wouldn’
t get lipstick on the dress, she pulled it over her head. Too late she remembered she had planned to put on a brassiere and panties.
Didn’t matter. Sexier this way.
Dressed, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror screwed to the back of the closet door. Really looked. Days, weeks, years went by when she didn’t. She’d fiddle with her makeup or her hair, buy cheap rings and arrange them in different ways on her fingers, file the acrylic nails or paint them, but the territory between lipstick and toes she didn’t address except to drape it with ever-growing yards of fabric. Red fabric. By the light of a single-shaded lamp she’d thought it would be okay-red light, red dress: romantic.
The shock of what she saw sobered her unpleasantly.
I don’t fucking fit in the mirror.
Maybe she was standing too close. Piles of clothes and shoes spilling out from the closet had held the door open for God knew how long, but she pushed it anyway. An inch or two was gained.
“I am not this fat. This is like a circus sideshow. Shit!”
With relief, she remembered the bourbon in her hand and took a healthy swallow from the cut-crystal tumbler. It was real crystal; she’d picked it up in a junk shop. Drinking out of a nice glass was okay. Swigging it out of the bottle was what alcoholics did. She was no alcoholic.
Another pull lowered the bourbon half an inch. Careful not to dislodge the unstable stack of unopened mail and socks from a scarf-draped phone table, she set the glass down. That mattered too. Alcoholics never set their drink down, just carried it with them all the time.
Shuffling backward, bulldozing dirty clothes, old newspapers, and two empty Diet Pepsi cans into an eight-inch berm of refuse with her heels, she gained a couple more feet. Still the mirror showed only her face and neck. And red, red from one side of the frame to the other. No arms, hands, hips, just red and fucking red.
