Shangri-la
Shangri-la
Beauty's closet is full of designer clothing: Prada, Yves St. Laurent, Versace and Roberto Cavalli. Beauty's favourite shoes are Manolo Blahniks, and the small drawers beneath her Gucci and Burberry jackets are lined with cushioned velvet and have "Neil Lane" etched on the bottom. On the top shelf are braided strips of lambskin leather with tags of "Bottega Venetta" beside brown and gold Louis Vuitton bags and Hermes' signature Birkin.
Beauty's closet remains untouched. Every night, a girl goes into Beauty's bathroom, inlaid with marble and white ceramic with a stainless steel tub, and slips on a shift of white samite, tying it with a white sash. Her padded slippers make no noise on hardwood and granite floors and she eats supper with downcast eyes, trying very hard to ignore the sightless glares of the animal busts on the walls.
Sometimes, she adjourns to the living room and kneels in front of the false fire. She looks like a virgin sacrifice, fabric pooling around her like a lake of milk. She clasps her hands in her lap and tells stories. Sometimes, she talks about far away lands and princesses. Other times, she tells stories about ordinary people living in suburbia, trying to eke out a living while juggling mortgage and Honda Civics and children at the same time. Usually, she recites his favourite story.
"Hong Kong is quiet, a ghost city of flickering lights and dead people. It is quietest around the IFC two. Rose trellises crawl up the sides of the high rise and edge into a sky murky with fog and lingering pollution. On the top floor, a girl sleeps in a canopy bed. Most of her hair looks and feels like straw and fills the eighty-eighth storey, sandwiched between floors and walls, filling rooms and halls. Bleached strands fall out of the open window and catch on thorns.
"Her hands are folded over her Hello Kitty duvet and her false tan is almost as dark as the inches of hair against her scalp and cheeks. On the other eighty-seven floors, people droop over desks, floors and against elevator walls, mouths open and drool staining the collars of dusty business suits. A particularly industrious janitor slumps against obnoxiously wide windows. His cheek is pressed against glass and the reflection of Victoria Harbour, where young girls walk on the water's sandy floor and cry in pain when bits of glass and metal dig into their feet. They exclaim, 'It feels like we're walking on knives.' When a girl dies, her maiden blood drifts and melts into white foam, and her nails, bladder, liver, spleen and the fleshy muscles of their heart, stomach and arms metamorphose into dusty blue water and their bones transmute into the same glass on the sandy floor.
"The girls that are still alive despise the children that skip stones and throw aluminum cans and glass bottles of pop and juice in their waters. They clap and sing siren songs when they hear how a serial killer stole a little girl from her Kowloon neighbourhood while his Rotweiler hamstrung her grandma. He took her to California and abandoned her on Rodeo Drive when she got too old, her eyes gouged and intestines hanging from her dessicated abdomen and with so little meat on her it was as if he had consumed her slowly over the years."
The fire sparks and ashes drift through the grate and on her white robes. She brushes them off in the epicurean silence.
"Will you marry me?" her listener asks. His voice throbs and she looks at him for the first time that night. The loup garou, whose muzzle was worn with grey and magic, and eyes of amber-resin. He holds a paw out.
"I'm sorry," she says, and flees to Beauty's room and into Beauty's closet, where she curls into a small ball on fox fur and mink, covering herself in layers of scarves and shawls. She shivers as she tries to sleep and not think of her sister in St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, comatose under sanitized sheets and heart monitors for what feels like a hundred years. The needle that she had used to inject heroin had been thrown into the sea and drifted through the Pacific into Victoria Harbour, settling onto shallow sand among pieces of bone glass, just beneath the white foam.
So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favour the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with.
-Margaret Atwood, "Happy Endings"
Beauty's closet is full of designer clothing: Prada, Yves St. Laurent, Versace and Roberto Cavalli. Beauty's favourite shoes are Manolo Blahniks, and the small drawers beneath her Gucci and Burberry jackets are lined with cushioned velvet and have "Neil Lane" etched on the bottom. On the top shelf are braided strips of lambskin leather with tags of "Bottega Venetta" beside brown and gold Louis Vuitton bags and Hermes' signature Birkin.
Beauty's closet remains untouched. Every night, a girl goes into Beauty's bathroom, inlaid with marble and white ceramic with a stainless steel tub, and slips on a shift of white samite, tying it with a white sash. Her padded slippers make no noise on hardwood and granite floors and she eats supper with downcast eyes, trying very hard to ignore the sightless glares of the animal busts on the walls.
Sometimes, she adjourns to the living room and kneels in front of the false fire. She looks like a virgin sacrifice, fabric pooling around her like a lake of milk. She clasps her hands in her lap and tells stories. Sometimes, she talks about far away lands and princesses. Other times, she tells stories about ordinary people living in suburbia, trying to eke out a living while juggling mortgage and Honda Civics and children at the same time. Usually, she recites his favourite story.
"Hong Kong is quiet, a ghost city of flickering lights and dead people. It is quietest around the IFC two. Rose trellises crawl up the sides of the high rise and edge into a sky murky with fog and lingering pollution. On the top floor, a girl sleeps in a canopy bed. Most of her hair looks and feels like straw and fills the eighty-eighth storey, sandwiched between floors and walls, filling rooms and halls. Bleached strands fall out of the open window and catch on thorns.
"Her hands are folded over her Hello Kitty duvet and her false tan is almost as dark as the inches of hair against her scalp and cheeks. On the other eighty-seven floors, people droop over desks, floors and against elevator walls, mouths open and drool staining the collars of dusty business suits. A particularly industrious janitor slumps against obnoxiously wide windows. His cheek is pressed against glass and the reflection of Victoria Harbour, where young girls walk on the water's sandy floor and cry in pain when bits of glass and metal dig into their feet. They exclaim, 'It feels like we're walking on knives.' When a girl dies, her maiden blood drifts and melts into white foam, and her nails, bladder, liver, spleen and the fleshy muscles of their heart, stomach and arms metamorphose into dusty blue water and their bones transmute into the same glass on the sandy floor.
"The girls that are still alive despise the children that skip stones and throw aluminum cans and glass bottles of pop and juice in their waters. They clap and sing siren songs when they hear how a serial killer stole a little girl from her Kowloon neighbourhood while his Rotweiler hamstrung her grandma. He took her to California and abandoned her on Rodeo Drive when she got too old, her eyes gouged and intestines hanging from her dessicated abdomen and with so little meat on her it was as if he had consumed her slowly over the years."
The fire sparks and ashes drift through the grate and on her white robes. She brushes them off in the epicurean silence.
"Will you marry me?" her listener asks. His voice throbs and she looks at him for the first time that night. The loup garou, whose muzzle was worn with grey and magic, and eyes of amber-resin. He holds a paw out.
"I'm sorry," she says, and flees to Beauty's room and into Beauty's closet, where she curls into a small ball on fox fur and mink, covering herself in layers of scarves and shawls. She shivers as she tries to sleep and not think of her sister in St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, comatose under sanitized sheets and heart monitors for what feels like a hundred years. The needle that she had used to inject heroin had been thrown into the sea and drifted through the Pacific into Victoria Harbour, settling onto shallow sand among pieces of bone glass, just beneath the white foam.
So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favour the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with.
-Margaret Atwood, "Happy Endings"