The Mirror (35 page)

"Morning . . . Jerry, the wedding."

Brandy choked on Shay's coffee and looked again at the gleaming diamond on the long slender finger. So Shay was to have a wedding in the morning also.

"Oh, Jesus, I'll have to call Marek. Where's that party of his?"

"At the Dark Horse. It's a singles bar. They won't page him there. I'll be all right now. You better drive out."

Two older couples arrived to take charge. The men were twins and apparently the dead woman's sons and Rachael's brothers. One stouter than the other. They were both bald except for gray fringes.

But their wives . . . gray-haired ladies wearing men's pants!

Others arrived to carry the dead grandmother out the front door.

Someone pressed a sandwich into her hand. It was made of nearly raw beef and pasty-textured bread that glued itself to Shay's teeth.

Rachael sighed and gave way to tears again.

"Now, Rachael, it was a blessing and you know it," one of the aunts said. "Be happy your mother's released from that zombie state."

"You're right, Ruth, I know. It's just the shock. We'll have to postpone
the wedding now." And Rachael added as an audible whisper, "That's one good thing that came of tonight."

This dream is lasting too long. It's all very interesting but I must wake in time to ride to Denver tonight.
What if she wakened too late to avoid the marriage to Mr. Strock?

Jerry returned with Shay's bridegroom, Marek. His clothing fit even tighter than that of the older men. He slid into the booth and kissed the end of Shay's nose in front of a room full of people before Brandy could jerk it out of the way.

Black hair fluffed at an angle toward a sun-brown face and completely covered his ears. He smelled of spice and alcohol. Violet eyes probed hers.

"You all right, Shay?" he whispered.

Brandy couldn't keep Shay's mouth from falling open when, under cover of the table, he slipped a warm hand through a space between the robe's buttons and then between Shay's legs, pressing her thigh snugly against his own.

3

Brandy McCabe stood before the wedding mirror in Shay's room and in Shay's body.

She'd closed the door, pulled the shades and undressed. Curiosity had overcome embarrassment.

When the mirror's hands felt warm to the touch and it had shown her the image of this body before, Brandy assumed the shape to be distorted by the age of the glass and the mysterious nature of the mirror.

But it was the same now. Tall, with straight, slender angles. Willowy, shapeless, underfed. The tiny breasts high and pointing. The teeth straight too, perfect, every one in place and evenly spaced. The armpits as hairless as a child's.

In a thin band across the nipples and another across Shay's lower private parts the skin was white, more in keeping with the fair hair.

Brandy stared back at the widening gold-flecked eyes in the mirror. Sun?
Dear heaven, she didn't go out into the broad daylight wearing no more than what would cover those light hands?

She pinched the body's forearm and felt the pain, watched gooseflesh rise on naked skin and felt the chill.

Blushing and feeling rather wicked, Brandy redressed in the two-piece garment of yellow fluff and slipped into the robe.

Marek had jolted her conviction that this was a fantastic dream devised -by the wedding mirror. There could be nothing more real than the feel of his hand between her legs. Even if they weren't her legs.

She was torn between wanting to investigate some of the objects in this room and her haste to be back in her own world and off to Aunt Harriet Euler's.

I
mustn't succumb to panic but must find a logical solution.
How did one apply logic to the impossible?

If she fell asleep in this body, would she wake in her own and just in time for the wedding she'd planned to avoid? Or would she wake still in this time and therefore avoid it anyway?

I don't have the knowledge to exist in this world long. Or the immodesty, I'm afraid.
She'd be found out soon enough. And then what?

A crackling noise startled her, like fire eating away at small sticks. She traced it to the metal baseboard stretching along the wall under the window. Heat emanated from a crack in the . . .
not a baseboard but some version of a radiator.
Why would anyone stoke a furnace in the summer?

Or was it summer in this time? Brandy raised the shade and the window. The screening had been pushed out at the bottom on metal poles.

The smell of recent rain. Had there been a thunderstorm in this world that caused the wedding mirror to work and bring her here? Another odor, acrid and disagreeable, reminding her faintly of pitch. Giant trees dressed in summer leaves.

Where she'd known a pasture, a large building loomed, blocking all trace of the mountains. Atop the building an enormous orange word in lights. The letters spelled
LETOM
but the L and the E were backward.

No carriage horse to take her to Aunt Harriet. There'd be no Aunt Harriet in this world.

She placed a hand on each side of the mirror's cold frame. All traces of the enamel chips had been polished from the bronze. "You've enticed and toyed with me enough. Whatever you've done, you must undo."

But the wedding mirror stood hard against her, the glass clear of all but the body of a woman called Shay and the frightening distortion caused by the crack that separated her eyes from her nose.

Was this a punishment from heaven because she d planned to run away rather than marry Mr. Strock?

Brandy knelt at the side of Shay's bed and prayed for forgiveness and aid.

Knowing that a watched pot never boils and having used up her meager store of ideas, she sat on the bed to wait for God or the mirror to do something useful and tried to think of other things.

A white box sat next to the telephone. Everything in the room was either white, pink or red. There were numbers on a disk on the box's side and below that a button. Brandy pushed the button but it didn't move, nor would it pull out. It did turn however, and she moved it around until it would go no farther . . .

"Rattle, rattle, rattle!" the box screamed and Brandy jumped up to hit Shay's head on the sloping ceiling above the bed.

"Rattle, rattle, rattle, Rattle your boodeez." It sounded like several young men whining in unison above a cacophony of musical instruments tuning up to play.

Brandy was still staring at the screaming box when Rachael burst into the room and turned the button until it clicked and the box stilled. She held her hand over her heart.

"Listen, honey, baby, sweetheart," she pleaded breathlessly. "I know you're upset, but dammit, so is everybody else."

"What... is a boodeez?"

"Boodeez? I thought they were saying booty, but then I haven't understood the words to a song for so long I'm used to it. I thought you got all that stuff." Rachael had washed the paint from her face and was even lovelier with the tiny lines showing at the outer corners of her eyes. "I know what the problem is, all that coffee your dad poured down our throats tonight. And I have the answer right here." She opened a hand to reveal a small bottle. "Come on."

Honey? Baby? Sweetheart? These parents were certainly fond of their daughter. Brandy wondered what they'd do if they discovered someone else lurking inside that daughter as she followed Shay's mother down the hall and into the linen closet.

But now it was not a linen closet. A shiny water closet sat on a commode and a porcelain sink was enclosed in a cabinet. The sink had one spigot but two handles.

Rachael pulled a small cup from a rack on the wall and filled it with water. She pressed on the bottle cap with the heel of her hand and turned it until the cap came off. Taking out a pill, she shoved it onto Shay's tongue and pushed the edge of the cup after it so quickly that Brandy was forced to swallow.

She coughed. "What. . . was that?"

"A sleeping pill." Rachael swallowed one without water.

"Sleeping . . . oh, no . . ."

"Listen, darling, I know you don't approve of them. But we all need help tonight."

Rachael pulled Brandy back down the hall, removed the robe and tucked her into Shay's bed. "Sit tight. These are powerhouses." She turned out the light with the button beside the door. "You won't even dream, believe me." Shay's mother was gone.

"I mustn't sleep." A sleeping compound was the last thing she needed this night. If it was anything like laudanum . . .

I have to get to Denver.
The body'd already been tired and Brandy already sleepy.

The bed was eiderdown-soft, the sheets like silk. I
must
get
to Aunt Harriet's
. . .

Brandy woke to sunshine and birdsong, a heavy head and a swollen tongue. Shay's tongue.

I'll miss the wedding.

The mirror stood innocently in the center of the room, sunlight streaking mellow sheen along bronze finger ridges and claw like nails. How long did it plan to keep her here? How long could she pretend to be Shay? No matter what happened, she was caught between the horse and the barn door.

She took Shay down the hall to the linen closet and on her return met Jerry with a breakfast tray. "Morning, princess. How do you feel?"

"Strange."

"It's that sleeping pill." He propped her up against the pillows and laid the tray across her lap. "Don't remember ever serving you breakfast in bed before. Must be getting old."

His smile was so pleasant Brandy found Shay returning it.

"That's better. I was beginning to think your face'd gotten stuck." He wore a snug-fitting suit and broad, patterned tie. "We've contacted the guests we didn't get ahold of last night and managed to have the funeral services planned for tomorrow. So you and Marek can work from there about rescheduling the wedding. Well, I'm off to the mortuary and then a few hours at the office."

Brandy held Shay still as he kissed her forehead. He turned in the doorway. "There's no rush, you know . . . about the wedding."

When he'd left she drank the fruit juice and the awful coffee to alleviate the dryness in her mouth, reflecting that her own father and this one certainly had opposing views when it came to marrying off their daughters.

The toast was evenly browned but flavorless. The dry flakes sprinkled with sugar tasted like nothing at all. She added milk from the pitcher on the tray and then had a soggy mess that tasted like nothing at all. No wonder the people in this house were so thin.

The telephone object rang. She stared at it as it rang again and then again. It would look suspicious if she didn't answer.

"Hello?" Nothing. Brandy turned the object end for end and tried again. "Hello?"

"Shay? This is Marek." He sounded sensual even over the telephone. "Did I catch you in the shower?"

"Shower?" It wasn't raining.

"It took you so long to answer. Are you feeling better? You were so cool last night, I--"

"Cool?" Actually she'd been over warm in the stuffy house.

"What are you, a parrot this morning?"

"I'm not. . . fully awake."

"Well, will you tell your mother that I've notified my best man the wedding's off for now? And, Shay, things went to hell with the computer about two o'clock this morning. If you don't need me I think I'll go out to work today. See you tonight?"

"Yes, that will be fine."
Surely I won't still be here tonight.

Rachael appeared in the doorway wearing pants. Brandy delivered Marek's message.

"Your dad says you're still feeling strange this morning." She sat on the bed and took the tray onto her lap. "Honey, Grandma had a full and a good life even before that stroke twenty years ago." But tears came to her eyes. "I realize I must have scared you as much as she did last night and that explosion or earthquake or whatever--there wasn't a thing about it on the news this morning, by the way--but you're twenty years old, about to be married. We just can't protect you from everything anymore. Now, you go take your shower and get your head straight. I need help. People are finding out about Grandma and calling. We'll work through today together and take on tomorrow when it gets here. Okay?"

"That sounds like a wise idea."

"Now, do you want to wear blue jeans or shorts or what? Some of your things are still down in the laundry room."

"Will you choose for me, please?"

"You stopped listening to my advice on what to wear at about the age of two. Oh, all right, I'll bring something into the bathroom. But you can scrub yourself. Are you really feeling strange or just helpless this morning?"

Brandy McCabe looked around the linen closet, at the sink, the commode and a door made of clouded glass in the back wall. Inside, a tiny room with slippery porcelain like floor and walls. If she closed the door, would it be similar to a hip bath? She gave the knob on the wall an experimental turn and screeched as cold water cascaded onto her from a nozzle she hadn't noticed above her head.
Shower .
. .
of course.