Later, she would remember feeling frightened yet oddly detached from herself-much like the state she'd been in after fleeing the church earlier.

She knew this wasn't the safest area of the city, even during the day, but she nonetheless watched from a place outside her body as Sparkle Eyes pulled into a parking s.p.a.ce beside the museum, got out of the car, and walked toward the small plat at the back of the museum that served as an ersatz-park where artists whose work was too big for indoor exhibition often displayed their pieces.

Sparkle Eyes walked up to a bench that sat near the park's entrance.

Sparkled Eyes looked down at the thick sketch pad that was lying face-down in the gra.s.s.

Sparkle Eyes kicked the pad over with her foot to see what the artist had been sketching- -and that's when Amanda found herself firmly reunited with her new body, because the pages facing her were covered not with drawings but with wide slashes of blood-as if whoever had been sketching had suddenly had their throat cut- -or lost their hands, she thought.

She looked around, nervous, and only then realized that the sculpture of the grieving women that had been such a crowd-drawing showpiece for the Altman was gone.

In its place, a new bas-relief piece had been incorporated into the museum's outside back wall.

Looking once more at the blood-drenched sketch pad lying at her feet, Amanda approached this new piece.

For a moment she forgot to breathe, she was so stunned by what she saw.

A ma.s.sive curtain of bluish-gray flowstone hung before her, its surface shimmering and shifting like sand beneath incoming waves at high tide. She had no choice but to think of it in terms of liquid, for everything about the image embedded in the curtain seemed to ripple.

The piece was of a woman, lying on her back, naked from the center of her chest upward, her hair cascading to the left as if draped over a pillow. Her arms were crossed over her center, the right slightly higher than the left, and her hands, their fingers slightly bent as if about to clutch at something unseen, unknown, were pressing down against the rest of her body, which was hidden underneath a wide sheet.

She stepped forward, peering, and saw that the sheet was composed of smaller stones and slates and sculpted shapes of uncountable fossils: toads, lizards, prehistoric arachnid crustaceans the likes of which she'd never seen, praying mantises, eels and serpents slithering over faded, ancient symbols and primeval drawings.

Even the skin of the woman in its center was not as she first perceived it to be: thin and transparent, misted with a fine scintillance like lavender spiderwebs, it allowed the viewer to see through the woman's surface to the millions of swarming, teeming, multiplying cells and legions of bacteria-like clumps within. There was an odd, damaged beauty to the sight, a vague impression of transcendence, of the human becoming the elemental, then the infinitesimal, and Amanda found herself drawn toward it but, at the moment of communion, something in the image seemed to pull back and become cold, alien, unreachable, leaving her to stare into exhausted eyes too much like her own, eyes that were balanced atop dark crescents. They were lifeless eyes, lightless and unfocused, beyond caring. They were her own eyes. The woman, she realized then, was herself as she used to be, Old Amanda, not Sparkle Eyes, and her mouth was curved downward, trapped somewhere between a pout and a groan, but as she moved a little to the side a parallax effect-aided in part by the small spotlights the museum had installed to help night viewing-took place; viewed from the right, this image of her was a sad, dark, twisted thing, but viewed from the left, she appeared to be beckoning a lover to her bed, her mouth teasing, her eyes filled with promise.

She reached out to touch her flowstone face and suddenly the upper portion of the curtain erupted with other faces, some angry, some gloomy, others insane-looking or hideously deformed, and a few that were not even close to being human; with mandibles clacking or antennae twisting in the air, these last faces, the inhuman ones, were in too-close proximity to that of her own image, threatening to fall on it and chew away her features. Far above them, their not-quite-formed eyes looking down, more faces moved in the deepening shadows, their fossilized skin covered in cracks and swarming with tiny things she couldn't bring herself to look at too closely.

She stumbled backward, the curtain of liquid stone rising higher, revealing more sick-making details: One of the faces near her own-this one little more than a skull with an impossibly large cranium encircled by two serpents-had a carving of a rose on its side, a most delicate rose, and its ghostly beauty rather than being out of place seemed right and proper, buried as it is in the terrible image, soft hints of red trickling outward into her hair, tingeing it in blood.

She touched the rose, then pulled her hand away and saw that it was, indeed, blood.

She looked back to the bench where the sketch pad lay on the ground.

She looked at her new hands, and knew who'd been screaming, and why.

She looked back; all of the faces-her own included-opened their mouths and began to speak, words that she herself had said before, or thought, or heard others speak, others that she has thought of as her sisters, the plain-faced who are simply left alone: "...he calls me out of the kitchen to admire a lovely actress on the television, then points to a Miss America-type and says she's a little too fat, you know, and her face isn't as pretty as it ought to be, and he never once thinks about how that makes me feel..."

She was aware of shadows moving from the darkness toward her.

"...I can't stand to look at my whole face, so if I'm combing my hair, it's only my hair that I see; if I use a mirror to put on lipstick, I hold it so close that I don't have to see my cheeks..."

The voices were coming from both the sculpture and from those shadowy figures slowly surrounding her.

"...never look at my naked body, and I'd rather walk out of the house without checking my clothes than look at myself in a full-length mirror because there's always that face on top, making a mockery out of the pretty clothes below it..."

Her sisters, nameless and lonely.

"...my face embarra.s.ses me, it's so flat and dull; I can't even make it better with makeup..."

Each one clutching a jar to her chest.

"...and I never, NEVER let anyone take my picture because when I look at myself in a photograph I cringe inside...."

"Stop it," she whispered, then shouted, "STOP IT!"

The voices ceased, the faces faded back to their still, sculpted shapes, and her image suddenly, violently, rolled up out of sight, a window shade snapping closed.

Silence and murkiness.

Then a pair of glowing eyes, somewhere back in the shadows embedded in the piece.

"Who are you?" asked Amanda.

"I am what you once were. You are what became of me."

"Are you...me?"

"No. And yes. I am the First Woman-not Eve or Lilith -though some have called me by those names. I have also been called Shekinah, Metrona, Shine, Isolde, Old Roses, Bright Hands, and a million other names. I am the only woman, and all women. Even the last.

"You know me."

"No, no I-"

"You've seen me before, in certain faces you glimpse in restaurants, in the lobbies of movie theaters, standing in the checkout line at the grocery or wandering the aisles of video stores, waiting alone for something that will never come along, looking toward a place not imagined by the so-called beautiful or ugly, though I am in those faces, too. You know me. You came from me. I know you hurt. So ask me one question and I will answer you with the only truth there is; perhaps it will help your sadness."

Amanda did not hesitate: "Why are some of us plain and others so beautiful?"

A picture appeared in the wall, a framed print of M.C. Escher's The Waterfall. Amanda stared at it, then shook her head. "I don't understand."

Silence.

She stepped closer to the picture.

The water in the picture began to move.

The voice of Metrona, who was also Shine and Bright Hands, joined now by the Jar Sisters standing behind Amanda, sang: "'Mirror, mirror, tell me true/Am I pretty or am I plain?/Or am I downright ugly?/And ugly to remain?'"

Amanda watched closely, her eyes following the path of the water around the loop again and again and again, quite fast at first, then much slower. The path of the water seemed perfectly normal and natural to her-until she found herself right back where she started from. She blinked, sighed, took a deep breath, and followed the water's path once again, realizing at the halfway point that the entire loop, when taken as a whole, is manifestly an impossibility, yet at no point on the path going around the loop did anything go 'wrong'; she was able to go from point A to B to C and so on, all the way back around to A but she shouldn't have been able to! She decided to break the path up into sections and, taken by themselves, they were fine, but holistically they remained an absolute impossibility.

"What's wrong with this picture? It makes no sense."

The water turned silver and bright, then Shekinah, who was Isolde and Old Roses as well, said: "'Mirror, mirror, tell me please/Is this my face I see?/So plain and ugly and pretty/One face made from three.'

"The water doesn't know it's following an impossible path, Amanda; it's just water, flowing along. It doesn't care about what goes 'right' or 'wrong' in the loop, so long as it goes. There is no manifest beauty, no ugliness, no plainness or any kind of imperfection which lessens; there is only One, who once was Me, and now is Many, including You. There is only Woman; anything else is a lie.

"And Woman shouldn't care about lies like Beauty and Ugliness and Plainness. Just remember: As forgettable as you think your face is, there is someone out there who envies what you have; to whom you, as you are, are the ideal."

And with those words, the sculpture froze again, just a haunting bas-relief in flowstone at the back of a museum late, late at night.

She turned to confront the women with their jars but found she was alone.

She looked at the blood on her fingertips, then wiped them against the surface of the sculpture and half-walked, half-ran back to her car.

7. Craterface and Absences She went back to her usual pub-which was still quite crowded, surprisingly. The bartender and several of the servers were buzzing about the terrible thing that had happened earlier. There was a strong smell of disinfectant in the air but it didn't bother Sparkle Eyes, who noticed the empty booth near the back-the one next to the window covered by a sheet of particle board.

Everyone looked at her when she glided through the doors. Men glanced into mirrors, straightening their ties and patting down their hair. Women greedily took hold of their dates and shot her a look that said, Don't try it, b.i.t.c.h.

As she walked down the aisle, not having to look to see if anyone was watching her because she knew everyone was, her attention was caught by a song from the jukebox, an old Motown hit: "Always Something There To Remind Me." She stared at the back of the man who was leaning over the machine, punching in his next song choice.

Any guy who was a Motown fan got high marks in her book.

Ready or not, here I come, she thought.

Then he turned around.

Amanda's breath caught in her throat.

Dear G.o.d.

The acne scars on his cheeks were so deep she could see them even from where she was standing, some twelve feet away, and you could tell from the way he moved, from the way he looked down at the floor and would not make eye contact with anyone who pa.s.sed, from the way his hands immediately-snap!-went into his pockets, you could tell that this was not a confident man, not a popular man, not a man who'd come here easily; it had probably taken all the nerve he could summon just to leave the house, let alone actually walk into this place. It wouldn't have surprised her to know that he was terrified, and it did not surprise her that he was sitting alone at a small two-person table near the jukebox and loud pinball machines and entrance to the billiards room; it did not surprise her that he gripped his half-empty gla.s.s a bit too tightly, or that his head came up a little too hard and a little too quickly whenever some woman nearby laughed; it came as no surprise that his waitress would not look at him, even though he smiled and tried to be friendly when she came to his table; it came as no surprise that he stared at his folded hands, that he rubbed his eyes a lot, that he smoked and blinked too much, and that he looked like he couldn't decide whether to cry, scream, leave, or just drop dead on the spot. Every move he made, every gesture, every awkward smile and self-conscious glance-around betrayed his true feelings, if only to Amanda: I know I'm not much to look at, but I'm a nice guy, really I am, and I wish you'd sit down and talk with me, that's all I want, really, just to talk and nothing more, I'm not trying to get into your pants, promise, just let me buy you a c.o.ke or something because I've been sitting here for most of the evening and I gotta tell you, I feel stupid and ugly and lonely and I don't know if I can handle it anymore so, please, if you wouldn't mind- -he froze, blanching, when he saw that she was staring at him, and for a moment, one slow, frightened, awkward and G.o.d-almighty-agonized moment, he stared back at her, just long enough for a gleam of hope to flash across the surface of his eyes-Is she really looking at ME? Is that smile of hers meant for ME?-then die a fast, sputtering, miserable death as reality kicked in-h.e.l.l no, what would a woman like that want with YOU? How could a woman that d.a.m.ned beautiful be attracted to YOU, CRATERFACE?

-and before she could lift her hand to give him a little wave, a little gesture to tell him she was on her way and it was not, repeat not out of pity that she wanted to be with him but because she could tell he was a nice-h.e.l.l!-a terrific guy, and she would settle for nothing less than a terrific guy-before she could do this, something inside of him, something weak and frightened and conditioned since childhood to kick in on those rare occasions when he felt like a fine, normal, and at least partially attractive man-this awful something reached up and jammed an iron butcher's hook into his heart and he...

crumpled, simply crumpled. He looked away, ashamed, then turned toward the jukebox, downed what was left in his gla.s.s, then tossed a too-generous tip onto the table and jumped to his feet and made his way toward the rear exit door, head down, hands in pockets, shoulders slumped and trying hard not to shudder too much. Disgraced, defeated, diminished.

And alone; alone, alone, alone.

The song finished playing, then started again. Sparkle Eyes Amanda wondered if he sat in a favorite chair at home listening to this song over and over, sipping at his beer or whatever poison he picked until he got a dreamy look on his face and could pretend he was someone else.

Her heart broke for him a thousand times, then a thousand more.

By the time she got to the door and ran out into the parking lot, he was nowhere to be seen.

So Sparkle Eyes went back inside.

She took a seat at the far end of the bar and soon found herself laughing just a bit too loudly at some joke told by a man sitting two stools over. He smiled at her. She smiled in return. He moved closer, bought her a drink, and stumbled over his tongue several times, not able to look away from her face.

She laughed a soft laugh that ended in something like a low, promising purr, then touched a fingertip to his lips.

The rest was easy.

Because Beauty always has her way.

He was very skillful with her.

Kissing her everywhere and endlessly, licking her, a bite here, a nibble there, probing her with his fingers, cupping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands and tonguing her nipples in slow, wet, maddening circular patterns; she pulled back and said, "There's a halo around you," and he stopped for a moment, looking down at himself. There was a thin beam of moonlight slipping in under the window blinds; each hair on his body was isolated by that light like a bluish gossamer, a wrapping. "It's just a trick of the light," he replied to her, his hand resting for a moment on hers. His fingers were long and bony but soft, soft as her own supple neck. He ran those fingers up her arms and the little hairs there sprang to attention, then he touched her eyes with his fingertips; they were like pads, responsive to her every pore. Her eyelids fluttered beneath his touch and she drew her own fingers down his cheeks to the bone of his jaw, then down his neck, leaning forward and kissing his lips. Her mouth felt larger than human, able to protect his in its clasp. She felt his tongue beating against her lips and opened them and soon felt his saliva in her own, then his mouth was crawling down her body and she lay back, opening her v.a.g.i.n.a for him. Soon, her murmurs seemed to fill the room. She arched her back slightly as her knees bent around the small curve at the back of his head, pressing it slowly downward. They twined around each other as if their limbs had lost their natural form. A moment later he lifted his head from between her wet heat and moved up her belly to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s again, at first teasing her nipples, then sucking them deep into his hungry mouth, trailing his lips across her shoulders, his breath moist and warm against the side of her neck, his c.o.c.k rigid and hot, his entry smooth and painless, the two of them rocking together, pumping slick and steady, and it was good, it was great, it was heaven, and Sparkle Eyes grabbed hold of his shoulders and rolled him onto his back, straddling his hips, locking her ankles under the backs of his knees as her own pushed out and down, her a.s.s rolling back and forth across his groin, pushing him deeper inside of her as his hand grabbed one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and his mouth encircled the aureole, slurping and sucking and biting as he thrust himself upward with more force, ramming his erection deeper, deeper, and deeper still, and she threw back her head and arched her back, her nails digging into his well-toned pectorals, and she caught sight of their bodies reflected in the closet-door mirror; sweating, glistening, heaving bodies attacking one another, devouring one another, then came the sounds, low, throaty growls, grunts and sighs and strangled screams as their rhythm grew faster, harder, frenzied, bedsprings squeaking, almost causing her to laugh but she didn't, she wouldn't, she groaned instead, driving herself down, pushing his c.o.c.k in so much deeper it was starting to hurt but she didn't care, she wanted him to bury it in her up to her throat so she dug her fingers into his chest, tangling them in his sweat-matted hair, G.o.d he felt so good, so thick and solid, pulsing, throbbing, sliding wet and steamy into her slick s.e.x as she doubled her efforts, grinding down with all her strength; he arched his back and groaned, she threw back her head once again and squealed, then moaned, then screamed, her juice-soaked thighs sliding against his own, then he was sitting up again, burying his face between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his tongue lapping at her nipples, then he was biting them, hard, harder, and she loved it, it was incredible, and now they were moving side to side as well as up and down, the chaotic motion setting fire to her body as she pulled up and slammed back down on him, tossing her head to the side- -she glimpsed the shadow-shape reflections in the mirror, dozens of them that were standing in the inverted doorway of her bedroom, moving as one toward her bed, surrounding it, their eyes glistening as they watched in silence, their breathing getting heavier and more ragged along with her own, their sighs soft and excited, rising into moans, then squeals, then near-deafening screams of ecstasy- -their faces were plain and forgettable but Sparkle Eyes knew what they wanted, and what she wanted-to be desired as they'd never been desired before, to be wanted in that private, heated way, to be l.u.s.ted after, just once, that's what they wanted-and she was giving it to them, just this once, just for tonight, just so they'd know what it was like instead of having to imagine it, and she could feel some part of them inside of her as well, some small part from each of them, and now the man below her was really going at it because he wasn't in control now and never had been, it was all her, and it was good, so good as she reached over his shoulders and dug her fingernails into his back, drawing them straight up, turning them into claws as she bucked and thrashed and wiggled, driving herself down one last time squealing and howling and screaming.

"G.o.d, yes, do it...do it...shoot it in me, in me, in me NOW! YES! G.o.d, YES!"- -one of the shadow-shapes moved forward and touched the largest matryoshka doll- -In the room the women come and go- -Sparkle Eyes felt the pressure building up inside of her, roiling around, looking for release, and thought the veins in her neck might burst from the strain, then she felt him explode inside of her, his o.r.g.a.s.m blinding, overpowering as he groaned, then grunted, then moaned loudly, ramming his hips upward, burying his c.o.c.k even deeper, shooting his seed all the way up to the back of her teeth, and she wanted to come with him, wanted their climaxes to be one and the same, but that wasn't going to happen, his o.r.g.a.s.m was the point, coming like he'd never came before because he'd never, ever, ever been with a woman as stunning as her, and G.o.d did he come, hard and strong and endlessly, with such intensity she actually thought he was going to pa.s.s out before it was over, but he didn't, he stayed with her, groaning and crying out until he was spent, then, smiling, suppressing a giggle, she leaned down and kissed the side of his face, lifting herself slowly off of him, his still-throbbing erection sliding out of her, the head giving one last spurt before the whole thing flopped to the side, something that made them both laugh, then he rolled her onto her back and took his hand and began ma.s.saging her v.a.g.i.n.a- "-you don't have to do that," she said. "It doesn't matter if-"

"-it matters to me," he said, but not angrily, not with the ridiculous macho-man determination that dictated a man wasn't a man unless he could make a woman come; no, this was said with concern, and surprising tenderness, as one who wished to return pleasure in equal measure, so Sparkle Eyes stretched back and parted her legs a bit wider and whispered, "Okay, then, just...touch me here-gently, gently...there you go..." and he worked his fingers until she came, grabbing the sheets in her hands and arching her back, his fingertips moist and warm with her juices, then they were lying beside each other, faces almost touching, and he couldn't seem to keep his hands off of her.

"I'm sorry you couldn't come with me inside of you," he said.

"Shhh, don't apologize, it was just as good this way."

"The halo's around you now, around your whole body."

She looked toward the mirror and saw that the moonlight had moved to her side of the bed, its light glinting off her sweat, making her glow, and she felt as if she were glowing from somewhere deep within, from a place only another woman might understand.

"I wish moments like this would never end," she said, not only to the man next to her but to the shadow-shape sisters filling the room. "Right now I don't want any of this to go away, not the sweat, not the stains, not your fingers touching me, not this...this pounding in my chest."

"I know how you feel," he said, his fingertips tracing subtle patterns on her bare, slick belly.

"Do you? Do you really? I wonder. I-no, please, don't...mmm, don't stop doing that, okay, it's just...it's just that right now I wish there was something more powerful, more ethereal to help me express this feeling. There should be a new language, you know? One that can only be spoken between two people who've just made love, only then, and only until the sun comes up or they have to get out of bed and go their separate ways. I know that must seem kind of silly to you-"

"-no, not at all."

She smiled at him, then placed a finger against his lips.

For a while, neither of them spoke; she wouldn't allow it.

Laying her head against his solid, washboard-sculpted stomach, she closed her eyes and for a few minutes became lost in a pleasant limbo, neither awake nor dreaming, just lost in contented stillness of her body, heart, and mind, turning her face toward his flesh and kissing his chest, feeling his body tense ever so slightly, and soon they were making love again, less frenzied this time, more patiently, taking the time to enjoy each other's bodies in ways they hadn't bothered with before, and this time she came with him inside of her (though he did have to reach down and use his hand again as well, but that was all right), then they both fell asleep for a few minutes; when they awoke she could sense his trying to think of a tactful way to broach the subject of leaving. She decided to save him the trouble and, lifting her head, swallowed once and said, in a hoa.r.s.e, throaty, deeply satisfied voice, "Uh, listen, I've got a long day tomorrow and I've never been much of a morning person, so if you wouldn't mind-"

She watched as he dressed himself in silence, then leaned over, kissed her bare back, and left.

She waited until she heard the front door close behind him, then kneaded her v.a.g.i.n.a, soaking her palms and fingers in his juices as well as her own, then pulled her hands up and pressed them against her face, inhaling the rich, wet scent of their s.e.x.

With her hands still pressed firmly against her face, she began to cry.

There are lonely ones who by nature cannot hold on to their joy, no matter how hard they try. Like the acne-scarred man in the pub, something in Amanda had been trained since childhood never to trust happiness.

She'd learned her lesson well, and felt d.a.m.ned because of it.

And empty, so empty, empty, empty...

"Do you remember?" asked one of the shadow-shape sisters. "Do you remember that time in the sixth grade when Tommy Smeltzer ran over and kissed you right on the mouth? You were surprised because you'd had a crush on him for so long but didn't think he even knew you were alive."

"I remember," said Amanda.

"Do you remember," asked another sister, "how you tried to put your arms around him but he grabbed your wrists all of a sudden? He twisted your arms behind your back while a couple of his friends threw mud in your hair, then left you in the middle of the playground?"

"...yes..."

Another shadow-sister moved closer. "Remember the way all of the girls stopped jumping rope and made a big circle around you and pointed and laughed? You never forgot that sound, did you? You closed your eyes and asked G.o.d to let you die right there and then because you didn't think anyone would want to be friends with you after that."

"...they never did."