The Glittering World

Stay Forever

        After a few busy minutes of chopping tomatoes and mincing garlic for the sauce, he could no longer take the solitude and headed upstairs to check on Elisa. “Knock knock,” he said, a drumbeat knuckled against the bathroom door. “How are we in there?”

        “Come on in,” she called, faux seductive. “The water’s fine.

        Suspended in bubbles up to her neck, she appeared dismantled, her hair a fan of eels in the cast-iron claw-foot bathtub, face adrift on a sea of pinkish foam. The head of Orpheus, Blue thought, recalling a painting he’d once seen. He flashed back to his grandmother and the disembodied, Hummel-esque children on her wallpaper, her gnarled fingers on the handle of the slop bucket. And her voice, her baleful, murderous voice...

        “Feeling better?” He moved a towel from the chair beside the tub so he could sit.

        “Better, yes. A little regretful is all.” Elisa blew a spray of bubbles from the back of her hand. “Non, rien de rien,” she sang to the heavens, her voice old-vinyl scratchy. “Non, je ne regrette rien...” She coughed and stared at the ceiling. “Would you do me a favor?”

        “What’s that?”

        “Could you grab my camera? It’s on the bed.”

        He brought her the old Konica. She dried her hands and began to take pictures from the bathtub of the room’s corners, its slanted ceiling, the patchy topography of the worn terry-cloth bath mat, and the chipped toilet seat; she tried to shoot Blue as well but he pulled the towel over his face.

        “Show yourself,” she implored, and he did, mugging gamely for her as she snapped away. “You have such a pretty face. Don’t hide it.”

        “You’re the one hiding.”

      Elisa peered at him over the top of the camera, and he slowly reached out and took it. She disappeared below the water, only a dark corona of hair visible before she surfaced, the bridge of her nose snaked with foam. Through the camera’s viewfinder, her face looked bisected and veiled, half masked. He shot her face, her breasts, her hand on the lip of the tub. A parting of the bathwater revealed the dark thatch of her pubic hair, and, barely, the small mound of her belly.

        “You’re lingering,” she said.

        “Sorry.” He tried to chuckle. “It’s been a long day.”

        A popping noise downstairs: the crackle of the fire, or the sauce as it ran over the side of the pan. Could he trust her with his secrets, after all this time?

        “Listen,” he said. “We’re still best friends, right?”

        “Sure.” She waited, then said, “Of course we are. Why? Is there something going on?”

        “I don’t even know where to start.” He hung the camera off the back of the chair by its strap. “I’ve been feeling strange, ever since we got here. Like I’m being watched. Or more like I’m being... manipulated.” He was holding back from her, something once upon a time they’d both sworn they would never do. “I’ve been getting a feeling like vertigo, or at least what I imagine vertigo must feel like. Except it’s mixed with déjà vu. You know?”

        “Not really.” She eyed him doubtfully, and all of a sudden he was unsure any of it had truly happened. “Are you okay?”

        “I have those nightmares, right? The ones where I’m buried alive? I think they might actually be memories. Maybe I— Maybe I was underground, you know? Or trapped somewhere, or something. But I don’t just feel it when I’m sleeping. Not up here. I mean...” He decided to start over. “That day we were in the woods and ran into Donald? I had this feeling. That first night too, at the ceilidh—I was outside and I kind of spaced out, but there was this sense that...”