by Sunniva Dee
“You didn’t tell him anything, did you?” I blurt out.
Mom straightens and puts her fork down. “What do you mean ‘anything?’ I told him you’re in town, that you’re doing fine and working at a factory. He was about to ask more, but then his coach came.”
“I don’t want to see him.”
Now I have her full attention. “What in the world? You were best friends for years. Couldn’t detach you from him if I wanted to.”
“I know. It was a good time.” I pick crumbs off the tablecloth and deposit them on my plate. One by one, they keep me from having to meet her stare. “But things are different now.”
She leans in. Air sieves from her in a quiet hiss as she narrows the distance between us. “Paislee. Honey. You’re ashamed, aren’t you?”
“So what if I am? I have a good life and stand by whom I am—it’s okay. Doesn’t mean it’s always right to mix the past with the future. I’m not the girl from back then anymore.”
Mom knows when to ease up and let me be. She’s conscious of her own shortcomings, and she accepts others’ as small elements that form the complexity of each person. It might be Mom’s best trait. I rarely judge people myself because of her. With one exception. The monster who trapped me at the train station and changed the trajectory of my life.
“Remember Keyon’s lollipops?” I smile.
She chuckles. Lifts a napkin and dries mayo from the top of my lip. “Always with his lollipops. Always blue ones.”
“Raspberry.”
“And he used to bring extras for you.”
“He did.”
“Just go tomorrow, okay? It’s a masquerade ball. You can hide. Be the mysterious Southern Belle.”
A Southern Belle in polar-bear country? “Right, good idea, Mom. Wait, where did I put my crinoline?”
“Funny girl. You can rent hooped skirts and petticoats at ACME’s. But listen to me. You’d get to see your friend. Then you could reveal yourself dramatically.” She reads the horror on my face and adds, “Or make yourself completely unrecognizable and flee like Cinderella at midnight. You look nothing like you did when you were sixteen so that should work.”
Bitterness and sweetness mesh in my memories. Soon they intertwine, and old film clips push to slip out. I don’t want them to.
I stand slowly so she doesn’t see that I’m shaking. “Old-Man’s waiting. I gotta go.” My job. Yes, I have work to do.
“So you attending tomorrow?” Mack asks as he steadies Heaven, the latest of Old-Man’s creations. It seems like our boss has a theme going. I take my gloves off and run my fingers over its sunny surface to feel for abnormalities.
Smooth, cold, still wet from the hose-down we gave it, this mirror is irregular perfection like the rest of them. I open my hands, spread my palms fully so they move over the top part of the mirror in subtle caresses. Mack sees it. He’s reverent during this stage of the process too. It’s when my heart swells with having been admitted into Old-Man’s inner sanctum.
“No, I’m not going to any inauguration,” I murmur, concentrating. There’s a small rift at the top left corner, and Old-Man’s not going to be happy. I squint at the jagged millimeter-long opening. We’ve brushed green paint over the back of the glass, then added a few layers of copper. When I stare hard, I glimpse the green through the crack.
“Not the inauguration, per se. To the party, I mean. You used to be the queen of dressing up.”
“Yeah, that was before,” I reply. “I grew up. Crap, Mack. What do we do? This thing is beautiful. Just…” I lower my voice. “There’s a rift. Old-Man’s going to be in a funk. I don’t want him in a funk on a Friday night and leave him to stew in it all weekend.”
“Where? Show me.”
Mack and I swap positions. I hold onto the top of the mirror while he sidles in front of it. My finger taps right above the imperfection that will be too much for Old-Man to digest.
“Shit, you’re right.” At thirty-five, Mack has been with Old-Man for eighteen years. He knows him better than anyone. We’re quiet for a moment as he deliberates. Then, his gaze slides up to meet mine over the mirror.
“If we’re lucky, most of it goes under the frame.”
“It won’t,” I shoot him down instantly, because I know.
“Right, but it’ll touch it. And Old-Man’s eyes are getting worse.” He sinks his teeth into his lip as he considers his own suggestion, to not be honest with our employer for the sake of our employer. “Fuck, I hate this. But yeah. I think we can pull it off. He can’t be stewing all weekend over the last piece we made this week.”
I reach out and touch the indentation Mack’s teeth leave behind on his lip, and he looks up from the mirror, meeting my eyes. “Frisky?” he asks.
I shrug and smile. “What’s it to you?”
After we dry the mirror and secure it in its frame, we say goodbye to Old-Man. Then Mack takes me upstairs and shows me what it is to him that I am frisky. Because that’s what friends are for.
Keyon. Eyes of whiskey-gold staring into mine on the back doorstep of our house. Mom isn’t home. She never is nowadays. It’s always work, work, work, and I miss Cugs and Dad so hard it hurts. But Keyon is here, and his fingers are entwined with mine. He’s holding them up between us as if we’re touching each other through a mirror. The air has frozen, like the dirt under our feet, but my hands are warm because of a grasp that feels safer than any fifteen-year-old can back up.
“I like you,” he says to me. I want to conceal my face, but he has me open with my hands in the air. My heart hammers. I have nowhere to hide.
“Can I kiss you?”
“I wish you didn’t say that out loud,” I blurt out.
“What, that I like you?”
“No, the… asking.”
“You’d rather I just kiss you without asking first?”
“I—” I’m nervous and flustered. I tug on my hands to be free so I can turn away from him. I know I’m not doing this moment right, and I’ll be running the film clip of it in my head for days once I’m done butchering it. “I don’t know.”
He lets go of my hands.
He cups my face and pulls me closer.
I gasp.
Boy lips are as soft as girl lips. They’re dry at first, but once they start kissing, they moisten. I’m stunned at how his mouth gives against mine when we press them together. A shameful slurping sound erupts as our mouths separate again. “Hey,” he murmurs. “Look at me?”
I bite my lip and lift my eyes from an indistinct place somewhere between us.
“Are you shy, Paislee?”
“Pfff, thanks. Now I definitely am.” I grumble-speak the words, which makes Keyon snicker. I push him a little in the chest. It doesn’t mean that I want him to leave me alone.
“Because we kissed, right? That’s why you’re shy. Did you like it? I did.”
I scrunch my eyes shut against all the questions and words and step out of his arms. How am I supposed to know what I feel when I haven’t had a moment to think?
“I’m gonna go inside, all right?” I force myself to meet his stare. He’s still waiting, a smile on his beautiful face. He’s so full of himself, thinking he knows my answer.
“All right then,” I repeat, nodding. “See you later. Mañana.” That’s me being cool, changing up the language. It’s his mother tongue—his mother’s tongue, actually, which I suddenly realize makes it less cool.
Keyon grabs my arm before I can climb the second step. He doesn’t pull me down to him but holds me still instead. “Did your lips tingle?”
Christ!
“Keyon,” I growl. “Okay, fine. I liked it. You have pillow lips,” I tell him, rip my arm free, and dive into my house.
I hear him laugh through the front door. “No, you’re the one with pillow lips, and I can’t wait to kiss the heck out of you. Mañana, chicken shit.”
PAISLEE
Have you ever swayed your hips to the music like nothing matters, like no on
e watches, with abandon, in oblivion, in bliss, and with everything good swirling inside?
I sway them in wide ribbons, knowing I’m alone. People have judged me. I’ve done what I’ve done. But here with my music, this song—these dreams—I’m me, all they don’t know and what I’ll never reveal.
I’d be free in Murano, I think as I sway. No one has heard of Paislee Marie Cain there. I’d stride into that ancient factory, let my gaze caress artisan glass and inhale air I wouldn’t be able to let out.
I’d be in Heaven and searching for more, begging to enter those remote rooms, the holies of holies where golden mirrors flutter fragile fantasies your way, treating your image with unheard-of forgiveness.
I’d swell with it. My ribcage would become too narrow for it. I’ve seen the beauty of Murano mirrors in pictures, but in person, in person, how could they not be too much for a girl to absorb?
I wear forest-green tights. A matching jacket that hugs my torso and ends in a short-short skirt that swishes over my hips. A frilly shirt peeks out in the front, but it’s wide open and my boobs look pregnant in the décolletage.
My wig is short and blonde as opposed to my usual mahogany locks. On my head, an old-fashioned hunter’s hat tips toward my Murano, and even in the gilded veil of my reflection, I catch its original color, chocolate and with a feather pointing proudly at the ceiling.
Never do I sway in public. Already I miss this abandon. So I purse my mouth and sway again, a last liberty before I leave for the party. I raise a hand and touch the fragile skin below a brow as I do. My eyes are wide, expressive, fringed in black and as green as my jacket in the mirror. I plump my lips. They’re cherry-red even before I put on lipstick.
The definition of beauty changes according to culture and time. I’ve read this. What people look like means nothing in the big scheme, and with my bony hips and sunken cheeks beneath visible cheekbones, most cultures would have deemed me ugly a thousand years ago.
Tied to a moment and place, beauty is subjective, and at present, America’s standards shine favorably on me. I’m the ideal, some beauty incarnate, a curse and a blessing that sustains my lifestyle.
Don’t listen when the world implies that beauty breeds happy; it doesn’t. It does not. See, with beauty comes prejudice, and me—I know this all too well.
But tonight I don’t hate myself. Tonight, I’m a scientist analyzing what guys lose their heads over, accepting that my face and body are why men crave me and women abhor me.
“Centuries ago, you’d have been burned as a witch.” My eyes widen, round and catlike at the memory of cruelties flung after me by heartbroken girlfriends. “I’d have lit that fire myself.”
I crush my eyes closed. Those girls don’t know. If they were in my shoes, they’d do the same thing. They’re lucky. All they have to worry about is a mate cheating on them a time or two. No one ever locked them up in a stall before they were old enough to feel.
I could say that I would swap my beauty for a life like theirs. But whom would I swap with? Not even the awful women of Rigita deserve to live through what it has cost me.
Suddenly, I’m in a mood. It’s dark in my apartment. I need to get my shit together. I stalk to the TV and turn on our local station, allowing Keyon’s father’s big moment to flood my den with superficial fun.
I inhale. Exhale. I’m a pro at reeling myself in when I start down this track. There’s music at the Civic Center, some quartet of violins playing in long dresses. I grab a bottle from the table–an old Spanish liqueur I’ve liked for a while—and pour another glass over ice while I apply war paint.
War paint, indeed.
Mack will pick me up. He’s the best. He’ll be a cowboy, he said, and he’ll escort me to the mayoral mansion. I’m not allowed to wear a mask there. It’s out of security concerns for the mayor, because what if some loony decided to go rogue in his house?
But I’m Robin Hood, and I need to hide. Black. Is black the color of Robin Hood’s mask? It’s the only color I have. I search the Internet and find out he wears no mask. I don’t care. I paint it on thickly.
“A quickie before we leave,” Mack pleads when he picks me up. “You’re so fucking hot right now.”
I don’t feel it. I rarely say no to anyone, especially not to a friend, but I’m nervous, and all I can think about is getting a real-life glimpse of my childhood crush. “Not tonight, Mack—we’re late. I’d rather get going.”
“Really?” Mack’s brows bunch together. “You’re not putting out? What did I do? Come on, you know I’ll take two minutes flat if I have to.”
We make it halfway down the staircase before I relent. I roll my Robin Hood tights down enough for him to get in while I lean over the banister. It’s worth it when I hear his happy groans. “I’ll be fast,” he pants behind me. “Can I take your boobs out?”
“No, this cleavage took some work,” I say, “with the ruffles and all.”
He squeezes them from the outside, which I don’t mind.
“Coming,” Mack announces his moment. I jut my butt out to make it better for him, and his hands dig into my hips, holding me there. “Damn, hottest Robin Hood ever,” he groans. Then he draws out of me and tries to pull my undies back up in place. The man is not good at dressing others—good thing he doesn’t have children, I think as I straighten myself out.
Relieved, he chatters about the party and ties the condom on our way to the car. He tosses it in the big trash bin on the corner while I check my wig in the rearview mirror. It’s all in place. It’s like no one just gave me a ninety-second fuck. Good.
The Coral Mansion occupies an entire square downtown. People stream up the cobblestoned driveway to the oversized entrance. The front doors are wide open, and even from where we park I glimpse silver trays with flutes held high over waiters dressed like penguins.
Flickering lanterns and string lights lead the way to the Greek columns that frame the entrance. There seems to be a fire roaring in the lobby. I guess it isn’t every day Keyon’s dad becomes the mayor of Rigita.
Greeters smile and nod us up the granite steps. My heart’s skipping beats as Mack’s hand finds my spine and guides me up.
I feel like Cinderella about to get an eyeful of the prince. I’m scared he’ll see me—and somehow hope for it too. Keyon might not even be here. Maybe he went to the Civic Center for the ceremony, and then he got right back on a plane to Florida?
Paislee. Stop. Fretting.
“Ma’am, I need you to take your mask off. No masks allowed,” someone stern and customs-officer-like says.
“It’s not a mask. It’s makeup,” I say.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s a security issue. There are porta-potties in the front.” The guard jerks his head in the direction of the mobile bathrooms on the sidewalk. “You’re welcome to clean it off there and come back afterward.”
“I can’t.” I shake my head. “I need this makeup. If I don’t wear it, I can’t go in.” I’m not making my case, but no points, not even remotely valid points, occur to me. Even my voice sounds childish and petulant.
“Sir,” Mack says in his grown-up pitch. “With all due respect, you should be able to see the difference between a young woman wanting to experience a wonderful party and a terrorist. Don’t ask her to ruin her perfect costume because you’re interpreting your rules in a square way.”
Customs Guy puffs his chest out, rightfully offended. Thanks for helping, Mack. Yay. “Sir. I have my orders, and I’m here to make sure the mayor remains safe. Now, please, step out of the line until you have decided what you want to do. You have two choices: leave or get rid of the mask.”
“It’s makeup. Touch her if you don’t believe me.” Mack enunciates clearly, raising his voice. We’re earning looks from people around us. I want less, not more attention than usual, and the last thing I need is for anyone to recognize me thinking that the town slut’s making a scene.
It’s futile at this point, but I try again in a hushed tone, compensa
ting for Mack’s vehemence. “Please, sir. I promise. All I want is to be a part of this, dance a little, maybe have a drink.”
“What’s going on, Eric?” someone says. I’ve never heard that voice before, but when I glance up, the first thing I see is the mouth talking. His lips are plump, soft in the middle with a double arc at the top and a small scar at the right corner.
There’s no air left in my lungs. For a few seconds, I struggle until I pull in a harsh breath.
“Keyon,” Customs Guy replies, sounding servile. “Sorry about that. I was just instructing these guests, here, as to the policy on masks.”
“I’m not wearing a mask,” I whisper. It’s the best I can do. Makes sense too, because Keyon, up front, center, in my face, is so much more than on TV. He used to be this little boy. Now, he’s a big, tall man with meaty shoulders and thick arms straining against a white dress shirt, and his eyes—
His eyes, they turn to me, bore into me. He’s holding my gaze, honey-whiskey irises simmering and moving, and I can’t look away.
He sees me. I know he’ll recognize me, and then the awkward dance will begin: him, wanting to polite-chat about our lives. Me, having nothing to tell him besides how I barely finished high school and now work in a mirror factory.
That’s it. That’s it. And then, if he stays in Rigita for a few days, he’ll find out who I am to this town. He’ll learn of my notoriety, learn how everyone looks down on me. How they hate me or take me, or both.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“I think this one will be fine,” Keyon murmurs. “It is makeup, and I think I can take her if she acts up,” he jokes. Keyon must be six-foot-four, at least, and I’m—a foot shorter. “But Eric, make sure she goes through the metal detector, all right? Gotta strip her of all the guns and knives.”
“All right, sir. Makes sense,” Customs Eric says, not catching Keyon’s joke. He swings to me and changes his pitch into drill-sergeant mode. “Get movin’. Up the stairs and to the left until you hit the Old West station. They’ll tell you what to do next. I’ll be giving them a buzz, so don’t try anything stupid or there’ll be no partying tonight.”