Geoff was always a bit of a prankster, but he was my only buddy back in those days, so I gave him lots of leeway. Like on my twenty-fifth birthday, for example. I was waiting for the punchline after tearing the wrapping paper off what appeared to be a large pane of framed glass.
Geoff clapped me on the shoulder. “Happy birthday, man,” he said with an inscrutable look on his face.
I turned my attention back to the gift. The perimeter of the glass was an ornate frame of some sort of dark wood, with intricate hand-carved characters. There were angels and demons, warriors and wizards, kings and commoners, each depicted in the throes of dramatic purpose of one kind or another. It looked old, but well-maintained. It looked expensive. “Uh, thanks,” I said, running my fingers over the fine details of a sorceress, her raised hands engaged in spellcasting.
“You don’t know what it is, do you?”
I looked at Geoff and shrugged. “Should I?”
“We need to find a place to put it,” he said, lifting it from my grasp. He made a circuit of the studio apartment, holding it against the wall in various places. A part of me still believed this would end in a gag, but I couldn’t imagine what. So I remained on the sofa and observed the ritual, on high alert.
“Ah!” he said. “Here.” He rested the frame on top of a low chest of drawers beside the closet door. Then he took a step back and crossed his arms. “Come take a look.”
I rose and made my way on wary toes to Geoff’s side. A band of suspicion tightened in my chest as I approached. But after seeing Geoff’s engrossed reflection in the glass, my curiosity pulled me inexorably closer.
“Look!” Geoff’s eyes were saucers as he gazed. “This is perfect.” In the glass, our mirror images faded as another image coalesced in the frame. It was a room—a bedroom—perfectly rendered in three dimensions. The tidy bed was adorned with lacy pillows and pastel bedding. At the base of the image was the top of a vanity, on which sat a collection of lotions, perfumes, and hair accessories. From all appearances, this was a woman’s bedroom.
“So, what is this—a hologram?” I asked, craning my neck to see into the closer corners of the space. If it was a hologram, it was the largest and most detailed one I’d ever seen.
“Nope—that’s actually someone’s bedroom,” said Geoff.
I turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow.
“I got it from an antique shop in Harriston. I’ve had it at my place for a couple weeks now. Man, you would not believe the things I’ve seen.”
“Wait. Whose bedroom is this?”
“No idea. It’s different every time. Yesterday it was a hospital bathroom, actually.” Geoff winced. “Not really something I wanted to see. But once it was some lady’s sun room, overlooking a vineyard. Oh man, she was beyond gorgeous. I sat and watched her reading a book for hours. I think it was in Italian.”
“So, like, there are wide-angle cameras in these places or something?” I got up right next to the glass. I could actually see a tangle of long, dark hair in the teeth of the hairbrush. It was as if it was right in front of me. But as I reached toward it, my fingers came up against the smooth, cool surface. “This is like a flat screen monitor or something?”
“Not cameras,” said Geoff. “Mirrors.”
And that must be the gag. I was pretty sure I knew what he was suggesting, but that was impossible. Wasn’t it? “Come on, you’re pulling my leg.”
Geoff laughed, but it lacked any mirth. It was a nervous sound. Unsettling, given the source. “I know I’m a bit of a joker, but this is no joke.”
“You’re telling me that at some point, whoever’s bedroom this is will come in, and I’ll be watching them from the other side of their mirror?”
“Exactly.”
I was awestruck. The armchair scientist inside me started working out all the possible explanations for how something like this was possible. There had to be some explanation. My worldview was being called into question. Be it supernatural, or be it magic—either way, the universe was about to lose its comfortable objectivity.
My pulse was thumping cool blood, as gooseflesh rolled up and down my arms. “Why are you giving this to me? This is incredible.”
Geoff smirked. “Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought you could use a bit more excitement in your life.”
He had a salient point. In the dictionary one might find my photo next to the definition for introvert (noun: a person who prefers calm environments, limits social engagement, or embraces a greater than average preference for solitude). There was a reason Geoff was my only buddy—one was about my limit.
“Plus …” He looked away, perhaps searching for the right way to phrase something.
“What?”
“Well, frankly, I saw some things I wish I hadn’t.”
I searched his face for any humor behind that sentence, but he was dead serious. “Like what?”
“I … I’d rather not get into it, OK?”
“Oh, so you’d rather I be the one who gets scarred?” I was only being a little facetious. There were any number of atrocities people might commit before the anonymity of their mirrors. And by extension, it called into question all the things I’d done myself, within the vantage of a mirror. And if this glass portal could let me watch someone else, it begged the question: could someone, somewhere, have ever secretly watched me? My face flushed with embarrassment over the thought.
“Look,” said Geoff, “maybe this was a bad idea. I mean, I really did think you might get some kicks from it, but I confess part of it was that I just wanted the damned thing out of my place. If you really don’t want it, I can take it back.”
I was dying to know what he’d seen that had spooked him so much, but could I handle it? This would be no Hollywood production—the things I might see through this frame would be happening in real life. And then there was the invasiveness of it all. What would it say about me if I watched the inhabitant of this woman’s bedroom, going about all the things one typically does in such a private place?
I took a blanket from the sofa and draped it over the frame. “Why don’t we go get some noodles, and we can decide what to do with it later, OK?”
Geoff led the way to Phuket Palace.
When I returned home, I stashed the leftovers from my birthday meal in the fridge, cracked open a stout beer, and plopped onto the sofa. From across the room, the blanketed frame intruded on my thoughts like a bleeding wound. And the first aid my mind demanded was the very thing I’d sworn to myself I wouldn’t do.
Geoff had downed one too many daiquiries over dinner, so I’d told him we could store it here until we came up with a plan for what to do with it. But as I sat stewing in my preoccupation, I rather wished I’d sent it home with him as he’d offered.
The same questions echoed in my head on repeat. What was happening beneath that blanket right now? Do I dare I lift it and see?
Do I dare not?
As I polished off the first beer and popped the cap on a second, my curiosity became almost unbearable. It was clear to me now why Geoff had wanted to get rid of it. I’d never been particularly voyeuristic, but I’d be lying if I said I had no interest in knowing who might be in that bedroom right now—and what they might be doing.
Though it was wrong in a hundred different ways, I could no longer suppress my intrigue. I set the beer on the coffee table, and strode toward the object of my obsession.
I reached out with trembling fingers and lifted the corner of the blanket. Behind it, the familiar vanity artifacts were right where they’d been earlier, but now were illuminated in soft lamplight. Someone was home. I dropped the corner of the blanket and turned away, ashamed of myself.
Pacing, my heartrate accelerated as I contemplated how I might get through the night without caving into my darkest impulses. This was followed by pondering how I might get through the guilt-ridden days ahead if I did cave. Yet once again, I found myself before the frame, with a hand on the blanket. I’d made my choice.
I closed my eyes tight, ripped off the shroud like a Band-Aid, and flung the blanket to the ground.
Seated at the vanity was a young woman, brushing her long brunette waves. Though I was aware she could not see me, the effect of her eyes watching her own reflection gave the illusion that she was looking directly into mine. I gazed into her hazel irises, mesmerized. I couldn’t think of the last time someone stole my heart at first glance, such as it was.
Her gauzy nightclothes suggested she would retire to her bed before long. I stood motionless, afraid on some level that if I moved, she might see me. She’d recognize the intruder into her private moment and recoil in fear. Would she think she’d gone mad, hallucinating a wide-eyed, perverted man in her looking glass?
This is wrong.
I dove for the blanket, intent on restoring the woman’s privacy, but something caught my eye.
Behind her, in the window on the far side of her room, was the shadowy outline of a man, also watching her. When the window began to ascend, the blanket fell from my limp fingers as my veins chilled. The woman still hadn’t noticed the intruder. There was nothing I could do but watch. Unable to sound an alarm as the man’s leg came down onto her carpeted floor, I found myself shouting at her, “Turn around! Look! Run!” The man, dressed in black from his balaclava to his sneakers, stepped toward her in silence while she continued brushing her hair, oblivious.
I cursed the magic window that first allowed me, and now compelled me, to invade what should have been this woman’s sanctuary. The man was an arm’s length behind her, hand reaching for her throat, when the frame suddenly teetered off my chest of drawers and slid down behind it to the floor with a thump. In all my shouting and commotion, I’d jostled the furniture, causing the window to fall from its perch.
Frantic, I pulled it back up and positioned it where it had been, but the image was gone. Within the frame, the sheet of glass was once again clear. All I could see was the gossamer reflection of my horror-stricken face. I waited, willing the woman’s bedroom to reappear, as it had done when Geoff had initially placed it here, but nothing else happened. I slumped to the floor in front of it, waiting all night in vain, but the vague reflection of my own walls and ceiling were all it ever revealed.
“Calm down,” Geoff said.
“Calm down?” My spittle flew against the phone receiver. “How can you expect me to be calm right now? I may have witnessed a crime! There must be some way I can report this.”
“Dude, you’d better think this over. What would you even say to the police?”
He was right, of course. Aside from the fact that they would think I was insane, I had no idea where the woman even lived. She could be anywhere in the world—her mirror any one of billions. “So, what, I’m just supposed to do nothing? Just go on like nothing happened?”
“Well, you don’t really know what happened, do you? Maybe she fought back. Maybe she’s OK and her attacker is in jail right now. Maybe it was her boyfriend and that was some kind of kinky foreplay.”
“Yeah, and maybe she’s dead.” I sighed. “Look, can you just please come and take this thing out of here?”
Geoff said he would be by later that morning to pick it up and gave his sincere apologies. I got a pot of coffee brewing, and jumped in the shower.
With a towel around my waist, I stopped by the cursed frame on my way for coffee. Unsure of what compelled me, I picked it up and set it on the carpet, leaning it against the closet door. Then, with a steaming mug of black coffee in hand, I returned moments later to find that there was once again an image in the frame.
The same bedroom!
The bottles and vials that had been on the vanity were strewn about the floor. The wooden chair on which the woman had sat was in splinters. The bedding had been pulled halfway off the bed, the mattress askew. And, most horribly, what appeared to be blood speckled the white sheets and walls. The room told a tale of a violent struggle. But how had it ended?
Where once I had been adamant about getting rid of this infernal appliance, I now concluded that I could not bear to part with it under any circumstances, until I knew the fate of that poor woman. But all of my clean clothes were in the closet, blocked by the very frame I dared not move. I reluctantly pulled on yesterday’s rumpled clothes and pulled up a chair to begin my vigil.
Geoff arrived at lunchtime with a peace offering of burgers and fries and found me at my staring post.
“So, you’ve decided to keep it, then?”
“It’s her bedroom,” I whispered. “It came back.”
“Really? It’s never shown me the same place twice before.” He leaned close to the frame for a better look.
“Careful!” I tugged his shoulder. “Don’t touch it. If it moves, it may not bring her back a third time.”
“Bring … her back?” Geoff backed away, one eyebrow raised. “What exactly are you planning to do here?”
“I’m going to wait for her.”
In the days that followed, I turned my attention alternately between the magic window and the other, less mystical plasma screen in my living room—scouring news stations for any mention of the attack that I knew had occurred. I called in sick day after day, unable to bear the thought of missing out on the answer of the woman’s fate. I would have been unable to contribute any value in my current condition, anyway. I was so intent on knowing, I had fashioned a series of my own mirrors, propped at precise angles to allow me to keep an eye on the frame even while using the bathroom or preparing food in the kitchen.
The room remained abandoned until a week later. After one of the short catnaps I allowed myself each day, I awoke to the first activity I’d seen in the room since the night it happened. Two men were milling about, picking up the pieces from that bloody struggle. The lettering on their uniforms read Carroll’s Cleaners. I Googled the name, and my heart sank. Specialists in crime scene cleanups. I feared for the worst. By the time they were done, the room was nearly empty, and at last they approached the vanity. The world spun ninety degrees and rocked violently as they carried the mirror out of the apartment and into a waiting truck, where the entire frame fell pitch black.
“Dude, that’s it. It’s over now. You need to let this go,” said Geoff, who had come by to check on me. “You’re going to lose your job if you keep calling in sick. And, well … you really need to put on some different clothes.” He headed for the closet.
“Wait!” I shouted. “If you move it, I may never see her again.”
“Do you hear yourself right now? It’s over, man. You’re losing your mind over this.”
“But I still don’t know what happened to her,” I said.
“That’s life, man. There aren’t always going to be answers. You gotta move on.”
“But …”
Geoff then turned and gently tipped the frame onto the ground, and I watched as the black glass faded once again to clear. “There. Now get in the shower. You stink.”
The frame is in the attic of my house now, where it will likely be until I die, and the remnants of my estate get picked apart by whomever has any interest. I sometimes wonder if anyone will notice the total absence of mirrors among my possessions.
While I had been able to resume some semblance of a life, a piece of me remained locked up in that glass. I took being introverted to a whole new level. Even Geoff, dedicated as he once had been, eventually gave up on my social rehabilitation. Last I heard, he’d gotten married and moved into the ‘burbs, two-and-a-half kids, a dog, the whole shpiel.
Through the years, there has been many a temptation to pull out the frame and try again to reconnect to that woman’s vanity. But each time I’ve felt equally thrilled and terrified at what I might see. God forbid I’d have the misfortune of watching another crime unfold. But I also feared what might transpire if I did find that woman alive and well, with no hope of finding her, possibly even watching her with another man.
With each passing year, as much as I hoped my mirror friend was OK, the ambiguity of her fate became more and more a part of my identity.
And that is the very definition of vanity.