Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys Part 45

No sparkle now.

But still a striking enough hazel.

She felt a pang of remorse, for until this moment she'd never realized how pretty her old eyes had been.

"G.o.d, I'm gonna miss you," she whispered.

Then looked up into the night sky, into the depths of a cold, unanswering, indifferent heaven, where no angel of the plain-faced looked back down.

4. Discards One afternoon, shortly after moving back home, she had wandered down to a local flea market and found a table covered with dolls. Among them was a set of mismatched nesting dolls ("Matryoshka dolls," said the old woman sitting behind the table. "You must always call them by their proper name."); the largest was the size and shape of a gourd, the second largest was almost pyramid-shaped, the next was an oval, the fourth like a pear, and the last resembled an egg. What surprised her was that each of them, despite their disparate shapes, was able to fit neatly inside the next, and the next, and so on, until there was only the original matryoshka holding all the rest inside.

She carefully examined the largest doll, somewhat shaken that its face bore a certain resemblance to her own. The artist had captured not only the basics of her face but its subtleties, as well: the way the corners of her eyes scrinched up when she was smiling but didn't want anyone to know what she was smiling about, the mischievous pout of her mouth when she had good news to tell and was bursting for someone to ask the right question so she could blurt it out, the curve of her cheekbones that looked almost regal when she chose to accent them with just the right amount of rouge-all these details leapt out at her, impressive and enigmatic, their craftsmanship nothing short of exquisite, as if the hand which painted them had been blessed by G.o.d.

She looked away for a moment, then looked back; no, she hadn't imagined it. The thing did look a little like her.

As she was paying for the set, the old woman behind the table told her, "The old Russian mystics claimed that the matryoshka had certain powers, that if a person believed strongly enough in the scene the dolls portrayed when taken apart and set side-by-side-by-side, then it would come true. A lot of old-country matchmakers used to fashion matryoshkas for the women of their village who were trying to find a husband and start their own families. It's said that someone created a set for Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt that showed her marrying Nicholas II and having several children."

"Wouldn't it be nice if that were true?" said Amanda.

"But this set here, I have no idea what someone would want with it. Especially a young girl like you. None of the dolls resemble one another. It's like a bunch of riffraff, discards. Though it's odd, isn't it, how all of them fit together so well?"

"I like discards," Amanda replied. "It's nice to think that even the unwanted can find others like themselves and become a family."

"But these're all women."

"Then they're sisters. A family of nothing but sisters."

The old woman nodded her head. "I like that. I like that right down to the ground."

Amanda smiled. "Me too."

5. Galatea and Pygmalion Once back inside her house after fleeing the church, Amanda quickly put the eyes in a large-mouthed mason jar containing a mixture of water and alcohol, then set the jar on the top shelf of the upstairs linen closet. She stood for a moment, watching them bob around, turning this way, then that, one eye looking toward the front while the other glanced behind it; finally they looked at her, then slowly, almost deliberately, turned toward each other.

Hey, babe, haven't I seen you somewhere before?

Why, yes, s.e.xy, you do look sort of familiar.

Amanda closed the door, leaning her head against the frame. She gave up trying to invent a rational explanation because there wasn't one.

She went into the bathroom and washed her face. Looking up into the mirror, she stared at her new eyes. They were so perfect, so sparkling and bright, eyes that would cause anyone to stop and take notice, eyes that gave her face a l.u.s.ter it had never possessed before, eyes that would make people realize that maybe this particular package wasn't so plain, after all.

Then she remembered the woman's b.l.o.o.d.y face as it came through the window of the pub and at once cursed herself for being so narcissistic. She blinked, then took one last glance at herself- -her nose.

OhG.o.d, her nose.

It was different.

Not so wide, so pug anymore; it was slender and perfectly angled, not rounded on the end but sharp like- -like- -like Sandy Wilson's nose. Sandy, who was the receptionist at the office, who'd gone out with half the men working there, men who smiled at her every morning as they pa.s.sed by her desk, and Amanda began to shake as she remembered this afternoon when she was leaving she'd looked at Sandy and thought: The reason her face looks so good, so delicate and chiseled and playful, is because of her nose, it's a really s.e.xy nose, it accents her features without drawing attention to itself and makes her face seem all the more friendly and G.o.d, what I wouldn't give to have- -she covered it with her hands, hands that seemed to be folded in prayer, or were clamping down to rip this thing off her face so she could stand here and watch her old one grow back, and for a moment the image struck her as funny but she didn't laugh- -she whirled around and went out into the hall and yanked open the door of the linen closet, looking up at the jar- -her old eyes had company.

Slamming the door, her heart triphammering against her ribs, she ran downstairs and grabbed her purse and dumped its contents onto the kitchen table, frantically sifting through the debris until she found her small phone number/address book, then quickly looked up Sandy's home phone number, grabbed the receiver off the wall, and dialed the number.

A voice-not Sandy's-answered on the third ring.

"H-h.e.l.lO?" Whoever it was sounded nervous and panicked, d.a.m.n near hysterical.

"Is...May I speak with Sandy, please?"

Amanda heard two other voices in the background, one of them Sandy's, the other an older man's, probably Sandy's father because she still lived with her parents, didn't she, she was only twenty and why in G.o.d's name was she wailing like that?

"There's b-b-been an accident," said Sandy's mother, her voice breaking. "Please call back tomorrow."

Click.

Amanda pulled the receiver away from her ear, stared at it for a moment, then slowly started to hang up- -and saw her hands.

Slender, with long, loving fingers; artist's fingers.

She remembered the woman who'd been sitting on a bench in the small park behind the Altman museum downtown a few days ago, sketching that incredible sculpture of those grieving women that was attracting so much attention lately. Several people had gathered to watch what this artist was doing. She'd been in her early thirties, with strawberry-blonde hair, lovely in a hardened, earthy way. Amanda had stood unnoticed among the admirers-mostly men-staring at first the woman s face, then her thick but not unattractive neck, and, finally, her hands.

Her strong yet supple, smooth hands....

Amanda fell against the kitchen table shuddering, the contents of her stomach churning, and tried very, very hard not to imagine what was-or rather, wasn't-dangling from the ends of that woman's arms right this second.

Back in the bathroom, she looked at her face again.

The lips this time, full and moist and red and alluring as h.e.l.l.

Jesus Christ, whose lips are they?

Numbed, she checked the jar.

Getting pretty crowded in there.

She filled a portable cooler with ice and water and rubbing alcohol, pried the hands out of the jar and tossed them into the cooler; they hit the ice with a sickening, dead plop! and lay there like desiccated starfish.

She slammed closed the lid, then vomited.

Over the next two hours, it only got worse.

Her legs were next, model's legs, long and slender and shiny, with extraordinarily subtle muscle tone. Amanda wondered who she'd seen them on, and where, and what the woman must look like now.

Wondered, then wept.

As she did with everything else: b.r.e.a.s.t.s, full and firm, even perky, with tan aureoles so precisely rounded they seemed painted on, nipples so pink and pointy, and nowhere were there any blue veins visible on their surface, only a few cl.u.s.ters of strategically placed freckles that fanned outward from the center of her chest, creating teasing shadows of cleavage; then her hips were next, not the too-wide, too-sharp hips she'd been born with, not the hips that made it almost impossible for her to find blue jeans that fit comfortably, but hard, rounded hips, not wide at all but not too small, either, lovely hips, girlish hips, G.o.d-you-don't-look-your-age hips and a now-size-8 waist- -the cooler filled up quickly and she had to go to the bathtub, adding water, ice, and alcohol to keep everything moist and sanitary- -next was the stomach, not the slightly sagging thing she'd been carrying around for the last ten years but a deliciously flattened tummy, its taut, aerobicized, Twenty-Minute-Workout muscles forming a dramatically t.i.tillating diamond that actually undulated when she moved, a bikini stomach if ever there was one, abs of steel; then came her jaw, elegant and chiseled, the jaw of a princess, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday; her neck became slightly longer, thinner, sculpted, losing the threat of a double chin that had been hovering for the last couple of years, the muscles flowing down toward the sharp, perfect "V" in the center of her collarbone, something she'd always thought was unbearably s.e.xy- -the bathtub was quickly filling but that was all right, there couldn't be too much left at this point- -then, after a while, her bone structure began to change: ribs not so thick, shoulders not so wide or bony, knees not so awkward and k.n.o.bby- -the rest of her body began altering itself with each new addition, her features and limbs molding themselves to each other like sculptor's clay, an organic symbiosis, her forced evolution, heading toward physical perfection until, at last, her skin itself blossomed unwrinkled and creamy, sealing around everything like a sheet of cellophane.

Amanda was sitting on her bed when she felt the last of it take place, then rose very slowly-the pain of each change had grown more and more intense, the last few minutes becoming almost unbearable-and looked at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of her closet door, not sure whether to smile or simply die.

She had become both her own Galatea and Pygmalion.

No other woman she'd ever met or seen could compare with what stared back at her from the mirror.

She was completed, breathtaking, beautiful.

More than beautiful; she was Beauty.

And Beauty always has her way.

She told herself not to think about it, then went into the bathroom and pulled a bottle of prescription painkillers from the medicine chest, downing two of them before turning to face everything.

The remnants of Old Amanda.

There was arranging to be done.

By the time she finished there were four full Mason jars, as well as a full bathtub, sink, cooler, and toilet tank. The bones went into the laundry hamper along with several wet towels, and the skin, well-soaked, was draped over the shower curtain rod. She nodded, thinking to herself that it all looked very tidy, indeed.

She suspected that her mind would crumble soon-how could it not, after all this?-but hopefully the painkillers would kick in and she'd be nicely loopy before it got too bad.

She looked once more at her reflection in the mirror and thought, Why not enjoy it while you can?

Then it hit her: How in h.e.l.l was she going to explain this at work on Monday?

Like my new clothes? I think they make me look like a new person, don't you?

She rubbed her temples, realizing that she had chosen to keep her own hair.

She liked that very much; liked it right down to the ground.

The pleasant, seductive numbness of the painkillers began to pour over her body, and she decided to go lie down for a little while.

She was just putting her head onto the pillow when she noticed that all six matryoshkas were displayed across the top of her dresser. She tried to remember when she'd taken them apart and arranged them this way.

She stared at them, noting after a few seconds that their shapes were now oddly uniform, all like gourds growing progressively smaller, right down to the baby who was no longer a baby but Amanda as she'd been at four years old; the next showed her as she'd been this morning; the next, as she'd been a few hours ago; the others, so silent and still, ill.u.s.trated the rest of the stages of her transformation, the last and largest of them a sublime reflection of the woman who now lay across the room staring at it.

She felt so soft...

...In the room the women come and go...

...and it was so good to feel this soft, and s.e.xy...

...Talking of Michelangelo...

...no guard now, no hardness, my sisters, I understand how you feel...

...a breath, a sigh, then-drained and exhausted-she felt herself falling asleep- -in the room the women come and go- -and was startled back to wakefulness by sounds in the upstairs hallway; slow, soft, almost imperceptible sounds; tiptoeing sounds.

She breathed slowly, watching her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rise and fall in the shadows, imagining some lover pa.s.sionately kissing them, tonguing the nipples- -the front door opened, then closed.

She sat up, holding her breath.

Looking around the room, she saw that her closet door was now closed; it had been open when she'd fallen asleep, and her bedroom door, closed before, was now standing wide open.

Jesus Christ, she hadn't been out for very long, just a few seconds, wasn't it? Just a moment or two but the time didn't really matter a d.a.m.n, ten minutes or ten seconds because someone had been in here while she was asleep!

She jumped off the bed and ran into the hall, saw that the bathroom light was on, and kicked open the door.

No one was inside- -but the sink was empty.

Just like the bathtub.

And the laundry hamper.

And the toilet tank and the portable cooler and all of the mason jars.

She stormed back into her bedroom and snapped on the overhead light, then flung open her closet door.

She stared at her wardrobe and knew instinctively that something was missing; she couldn't say what, specifically, had been taken, but she knew that the whole didn't match up quite right.

She sat down on the bed and stared at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door.

d.a.m.n if she wasn't still a stunner.

Then she saw the matryoshka dolls behind her. No longer uniform in shape, they had returned to their original, disparate forms-a gourd, a pyramid, an oval, a pear, an egg, a seash.e.l.l-but each of them now had one thing in common, one characteristic they hadn't shared before: None of them had a face.

Amanda took a deep breath, then checked the clock.

It was only twelve-thirty. The clubs didn't close for another two hours and she wanted to be seen, to be admired, to feel pretty and wanted on this night.

It was nice to actually have the option for once.

She thought she knew what was happening, maybe. Maybe it would only be a matter of time, less than a few hours, and maybe she had all the time in the world and would be this gorgeous for the rest of her life, but either way she was going to make this evening count, G.o.ddammit!

She dressed quickly, purposefully choosing a pair of old jeans and a blouse that she knew she'd outgrown over a year ago.

Both fit wonderfully, hugging her form tightly, accentuating every wonderful curve. She threw an old vest on as well-which did wonders for emphasizing her bust-then unb.u.t.toned not one, not two, but (for the first time in her life) three top b.u.t.tons of her blouse, showing just enough of her freckles and cleavage and the slope of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to make anyone want to see more.

She checked her face in the bathroom mirror, under the harsh, unforgiving glow of the fluorescent light.

No wrinkles, no bags, no blemishes; she needed no makeup.

She looked...delicious.

That made her smile, and brought a sparkle to her eyes.

"What say we go out there and win one for the Gipper, eh?"

She giggled, then Sparkle Eyes Amanda flowed out into the night.

6. The Water Doesn't Know Taking a shortcut through town in order to get to her pub before it closed, Amanda was driving down the side street which served as the location of the Altman Museum when she thought she heard someone scream- -and knew she saw a figure running from behind the museum.