The Glass Ocean(102)

            Come on!

            He is always finding something for me to see. Last time, a house at the top of the cliff, half burned, outer wall peeled away like the skin from a skull. Remains of a life laid bare: the unmade bed and upturned chairs. Scorched dresser. A painting still hanging from a wire on a blackened wall. This was fascinating, he could not look at it enough, it was like theater, he said. There was a woman’s nightgown tangled around the legs of a chair, and a hairbrush on the dresser. Were there strands of hair in it still, stuck among the bristles?

            A story.

            I wonder what will it be this time.

            We make our way up Church Street in the spitting, sparkling snow. This is where he takes me. Argument’s Glasswares is ablaze with light. But Hip has gone to the other, darker window.

            Look. You mun see!

            It is glass eyes in a wooden case, sizes and colors various, watching us watching them.

            Tonight it is the New Year’s night, tomorrow is the day—

            Look! You mun see this!

            Now he is at the other, Argument’s blazing window.

            Come on!

            We shouldn’—

            Nonetheless, above our heads a bell tinkles with irresistible cheer.

            It is warm, inside.

            Look!

            We are surrounded by mirrors. He stands me in front of one; peering in I see myself: there I am, the ginger giantess, in my too-small winter coat, wrists protruding from sleeves (how long they are, my wrists, such embarrassment), and then there is the hair, the mess of mats and tangles, and the pale skin, flushed red from winter’s cold; and as if this unflattering object in its collective singleness is not bad enough, I see it reflected ten, twenty, a hundred vertiginous times in a hundred scintillating mirrored surfaces. I am made and remade. Hip has positioned me perfectly for this, clearly he has been here before.

            It’s you!

            But which is me? This is unclear. There are so many.

            He does not laugh really, rather bares his teeth in a soundless, mirthful grin.

            It’s you! Now me—

            But he will never take his turn. Suddenly there is a movement. From behind a curtain at the back, a tall, thin man emerges, long of limb, dark of eye, smoldering.

            Run!

            There is a crash, reality splinters, my reflection multiplies, contracts, disintegrates before me in a waterfall of glass; the water rises around me, a deluge of black and cold, bubbles race past white and silver buzzing in my ears like bees, in the distance somewhere there is an incongruous sound, a cheerful, ridiculous tinkling. I am being plucked at: Hip has my sleeve, he is pulling me back to the surface. Reeling me in. Come. Come on. Run! A dash upon the pavements and we are lost then in the roiling crowds. A right, a left, and suddenly we are in the tunnels with all the rest, two among many like ourselves, breathless, singing children. Except I am a giantess, and prone to be noticed.

            We are come here for our right, sing Hagmena-heigh!—

            • • •

            I chide him later for the rock. I think he ought not have thrown it. The rest is lost on me, all his work. He says, laughing, Let’s not have an argument about it—

            • • •

            For days I await the repercussions. But there are none. After all, Thomas Argument won’t come to our house, no matter how many mirrors I break. I have been dropped again, effortlessly, into the invisible space formed by three intersecting and averted glances. I have slipped through again unscathed.