Rouge: A Novel by Mona Awad

Author:Mona Awad [Awad, Mona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

When I open my eyes, I’m no longer by the ocean, on the dark shore. No longer wet, though still cold. I’m dry and in a bed. A hotel room with pink walls. Is it morning or afternoon? Can’t tell by the light from the half-drawn curtains. THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING says a little sign on the cherrywood nightstand. Someone’s watching me lie here. I feel it in the prickling of my skin. The hairs on my neck are standing on end. I see a silhouette in the dark. Who are you? What am I doing here?

The silhouette turns on a soft light. The man in the hat from the beach. Sitting and watching me from the desk with his feet up, wearing a white shirt that opens to a white undershirt. Red suspenders. A silk tie around his neck in a loose noose. His hat’s not on his head, it’s on the desk. His hair is wet, slicked back into a dark wave.

“Good afternoon,” he says. So it’s afternoon, then.

“You caught me.”

He smiles. “And you wet my hat,” he says. “It may never dry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I have other hats.”

I see he’s got a glass of Scotch in his hand. Looks luminous, like liquid gold. If I drank that, maybe I’d be warm again. Maybe I’d fill with light. As if he can read my mind, he walks to the edge of the bed and hands me the glass. As I sip, a fire sparks. All the way down to my toes. He stays on the bed’s edge, watching me. Face half in shadow. Quite pretty, really. If pretty had a shadow side, it would be this man’s sharply cut face. Telling me he can order room service if I’m hungry. I should probably eat something, he says. Fine for now, I tell him. Thank you, sir. Sir, I call him, which seems to amuse and disturb him. It amuses me, too, sort of. Because I know him, of course. I saw him at a bar once. I saw him once too through a red fish. And of course, I met him on a bridge only yesterday, though his name’s slipped my mind just now. What’s your name, sir? What am I doing in your bed, wearing a man’s silk robe the color of midnight?

“That’s mine, by the way,” he says of the robe. “You were drenched.”

Now I see Mother’s red dress hanging over the mirror on the bureau by the open window. Oh god, did we—?

“We didn’t,” he says. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Didn’t what?”

“I would never take advantage like that. I’m not a monster. Well, not that kind of monster, anyway. We’re all some kind of monster, aren’t we, Belle?”

I look at the mirror covered by Mother’s red dress, the only mirror in the room. The skirt obscures my reflection, the entire glass covered in a bell of red silk. There’s a vase full of red roses on the bureau. Some red jars and vials.

When I look back at the man, he’s smiling at me.

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