The factory was in front of me, and I tipped my head back. Suspended in the air, I wasn’t thinking of drugs in the soap, or my impending divorce, or the way I’d spent most of my life pleasing other people. I wasn’t thinking of the Jane Does or Bertie, despite the giant statue of her that gave off smoke because the crowd was still trying to light it on fire. I was thinking of how light my own body felt being carried by those women.
The sky was vast above me, far away and close at once. I reached out my forefinger and thumb to measure the distance between the sun and the moon. Humans are always trying to contain the things they can’t. The news had said you’d able to see the comet with your naked eye if conditions were right. But that’s the problem with life—the conditions.
I moved shoulder to shoulder, through the heavy crowd, passed from one stranger to the next, until I was set down before the security booth that stood between me and the studio doors. The guard recognized me immediately.
“Well, if it isn’t Stella,” he said.
“Mr. Security Guard,” I said to Mike.
On his hip was a gun, and a walkie-talkie, too, from which I could hear another staticky voice. “You’re not on the list,” he said, flipping through pages. “At least, I don’t think. Didn’t you die again?”
“I’m not on the list,” I said. “Surprise appearance. Elliot doesn’teven know. They wanted Celeste and Vincent to be truly surprised. Something about the Stanislavski Method. Live television, am I right?” I became conscious of my body, the way I held my frame. I grazed his arm. I leaned in close and squeezed my boobs together.
He peeked at my cleavage, then his walkie-talkie buzzed again, just empty static noises, and he turned it down. “Had to call half the police precinct in for backup, just in case.”
Someone from the crowd threw something against the building—a glass bottle from the sound of it. A woman’s voice rose above the crowd: “Burn it all down!”
He looked past me, and I watched his hand tickle his walkie-talkie.
“All for soap!” I said.
“Next thing you know, they’ll be blaming shaving cream,” he said, his voice warming. “Or toilet paper!”
“Rubs them the wrong way,” I said. “Everyone looking for a cause.” I leaned in until I could feel his beard against my cheek. “And those stupid visors,” I whispered. “They look like deranged tennis moms.”
He laughed. Then, he lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips and said something to the man on the other end. I walked right past him.
“Hey,” he called out. I turned. I was prepared for him to stop me, to tackle me, or worse. “Break a leg!”
I hopped one-legged, holding a knee. Then, I opened another set of interior doors, and immediately I could smell it: paint, electricity, hairspray. The set ofStars and Shadows.
I was home.
1910
The photo reprinted in theInquisitorwas the one Arnold Jenkins had taken in her parlor a month ago. A whole lifetime ago, it seemed. The exposure was all wrong. The high collar of her dress faded into the background, so her body appeared detached from her head completely. Her eyes looked wild, wide, unhinged from their sockets.
Madame de Fleur had told her about scientists who’d studied the mediums of Europe, like Eusapia Palladino and Eva C. The way Madame de Fleur had described it, these women were examined as one might weigh a molting butterfly, not with fear but with wonder at the corporeal transition. Opal remembered the leather straps with nodes and wires she’d seen lying about the Colonel’s house. Dixie had called for a public test of Opal’s spiritualist abilities, and now she imagined herself lashed to a chair again, an electrified Medusa, wires for snakes.
Tonight, Opal couldn’t see a single speck of light in the sky. It was brisk for a spring evening. She wore black to cloak herself in the dark, and she walked twelve city blocks in boots that now felt too small. Only a certain kind of woman travels alone at night. The rest are home, protected in their houses, like delicate eggs that might crack if exposed to darkness.
She paced the entrance of the beer caves until Bertie arrived. There, in the lamplight, Bertie looked different, less herself and yet more so.Her eyes held the edges of shadow. They didn’t speak until they began walking, the movement of their bodies a necessary distraction.
“It’s beyond even Charles now,” Bertie said.
“Then you’ll help me get away? We could go to your country house. Your house girl can help. You said so yourself.”
“For two months? Charles would find out.”
They made their way through the tunnel and up the stairs through the memorabilia room. It was late, and the strikers had gone home. Through the large windows, the city looked ablaze with light and framed, like a living photograph made just for them. Bertie found a crate of soap, and she unwrapped a bar and held it to her nose.
“The smell—it makes me feel nostalgic.”
“For your childhood?”
“I don’t know. For the opposite, I suppose. Is there a word for that? Missing what you never had in the first place?”
“I think it’s called being a woman,” Opal said.
