Chapter Three
Isabel stepped into the bathroom closest to her desk at the office, feeling a strange skin-crawling sensation all over. Mondays suck but this is ridiculous, she thought, hurrying over to one of the stalls.
As she stepped out of the stall, Isabel glanced at herself in the mirror, and froze where she stood, not even hearing the noise as the door to the cubicle slammed shut. She stared at her own reflection, frowning, trying to figure out what was so shocking about it, why it had stopped her dead in her tracks.
After a few seconds of staring, Isabel shook her head in disbelief. She had seen herself in the mirror so many times in the course of her life that unless she was checking her hair or makeup, she barely even looked. But the woman she saw in the mirror in front of her was both the same one she always saw and somehow, indefinably, different at the same time. She continued staring, trying to understand what it was she was seeing.
She reached around to the back of her head, and almost thoughtlessly, Isabel’s fingers found the elastic band she had used that morning for twisting and tucking her dark hair into a bun. Isabel felt a sharp tug at some of her hairs, stuck in the elastic, and then the bun unwound, and her hair fell around her face. She gasped at the sight of it; just that morning, or so she had thought, she’d had dark brown hair, stick-straight and healthy, if not particularly glamorous. But the woman in the mirror bore a hood, a cascade made of flowing, crackling, dark wavy hair, that seemed to have a life of its own; shot through with glimmering highlights in warmer coppery and cinnamon colors. It was as if she had spent the morning being pampered at a salon – a high-priced salon – and not at her desk, reviewing a client brief trying to sort out the conflicting instructions.
She hadn’t put on makeup that morning, because she had barely managed to get out of bed by the third snooze cycle on her alarm. But the woman in the mirror had artist-worthy makeup, a gleam in her gray eyes that was hot and cold all at once, full lips that promised everything a man could want. “Is my face ... thinner?” Isabel hesitantly stepped closer to the mirror, peering into the image. Her cheekbones looked as if she had gotten them filled in, her chin had somehow become sharper, and the expanse under her cheekbones was firmer. “What the hell is going on?” Isabel lightly slapped at her face, unable to quite fully believe it as the woman in the mirror did the same. Even the clothes she was wearing – a comfortable ensemble made up of a cardigan and shell, and a pencil skirt seemed to look more glamorous on her, somehow.
Isabel shook her head and turned away from the mirror. She remembered that in her distraction she hadn’t washed her hands, and turned back, keeping her eyes averted from the hypnotizing woman in the glass as she bent to clean up. “Don’t think about it,” she told herself quietly, thankful for the fact that she was alone in the restroom. “If you suddenly look like a model, just ... just don’t think about it. It’s not important.”
She dried her hands and left the bathroom, moving quickly towards her desk. Try as she might, Isabel couldn’t put the arresting image of herself out of her mind, even as she worked on the copy she had been assigned. Her stomach felt strange; both tight and loose, and she hadn’t been able to make herself finish her breakfast. Her options for lunch didn’t sound at all appealing to her, though she thought that if she waited too long she would end up making a bad decision in the midafternoon. Isabel sat back in her chair, frowning to herself, remembering the sight of her own reflection. It had to have been a fluke, some kind of weird hallucination, didn’t it?
Isabel glanced at her purse, set aside on her desk out of the way of her computer and keyboard. Her fingers itched as she tried to type a few more sentences, but the temptation was irresistible. She grabbed her purse quickly, convinced – or at least hoping – that the compact mirror inside would reveal the woman she had woken up as that morning. She fumbled amongst the detritus in her bag until her fingers closed around the smooth compact. Taking a quick, deep breath, Isabel looked around; everyone in the office was busy at their own tasks, completely absorbed in their computers, paying no attention to her. At least that much is normal, she thought.
She opened the compact and steeled herself, not certain whether she wanted the sight she had seen in the restroom to be the truth or a hallucination. If it was a hallucination, you have bigger things to worry about than just suddenly being weirdly gorgeous, she thought. But then again, if it wasn’t a hallucination, you’re going to have to figure out how to explain to everyone – including yourself – how you suddenly turned into a glamazon. She closed her eyes and held the mirror part of the compact up to her face, a few inches away from her.
Isabel opened her eyes, and for just an instant, she felt disappointment that the image she saw was exactly what she had seen before leaving for work that morning. But the next instant, her eyes focused, and she saw that if she had been hallucinating before, she still was; she was utterly stunning. Okay, so this doesn’t answer that question…. not exactly, anyway. Isabel closed the compact and put it aside. She could still be hallucinating; it could still be fake.
“How do you figure out if something is a hallucination?” Isabel glanced around her again, making sure that nobody had overheard her quiet musing. She could take a picture of herself, but somehow it didn’t seem like that would be adequate proof; she could hallucinate an image on a screen just as easily as she could the image of herself in a mirror. The only way to prove that something isn’t a hallucination is to confirm that other people see it, too. She would have to see if someone else thought she looked amazing, but she would have to do it in such a way that she could confirm at least a few specifics of what her eyes were telling her.
Isabel stood up from her desk and stretched against the tightness she could feel in her shoulders and back, looking around the office floor. Who could she ask? How could she do it? Isabel considered…. Alex? That’s who I can ask. Alex, the Project Manager for the copy department, he had never liked her. At least, that was the impression that Isabel had gotten from the man, who was about fifteen years older than she was, and almost as plain as she had been. Alex had dropped hints that she was homely in the past, remarking that it was a good thing that she wasn’t client-facing, and that she was exactly what people thought they would see when they considered a copywriter. “If he notices, then it must be real,” Isabel murmured to herself.
She spotted Alex walking near the conference rooms, headed towards his office. Isabel thought about a pretense to waylay him, as she tried to figure something that would justify being in his presence long enough for him to pay attention to her looks. It couldn’t just be a quick question – it had to be something that prompted a longer conversation. The Peterson brief, she realized quickly.
Isabel grabbed the paperwork from the client file and started across the office, moving to intercept Alex. “Hey! Hey, Al!” Isabel quickened her steps, and Alex barely glanced up from the notepad in front of him.
“What’s up, Izzy?” Isabel rolled her eyes; she had always hated that nickname, but no one in the office seemed to care.
“I need to talk to you about Peterson,” she said. “Do you have a couple of free minutes?”
Alex looked up fully from his notepad, and stopped short, staring at her for a moment. “Yes, of course,” he said, his voice more pleasant than it had been all morning.
“Can we step into your office?” Alex nodded slowly, looking almost as if he were entranced, or maybe drugged.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Come on in.” He gestured for Isabel to precede him into the office, and she did, glancing back in Alex’s direction as he followed her. As if today wasn’t weird enough already, she thought.
“So,” Isabel said, when Alex closed the office door behind them. “I’m having some trouble figuring out what they mean in a few places here.”
“You are?” Alex shook his head. “But you’re always so good at that.” Isabel raised an eyebrow at the compliment and plunged forward, sitting down as Alex somehow managed to get into the chair behind his desk without looking at it. He was staring at her almost without blinking. “What seems to be the problem? And how can I solve it for you?” He smiled, and the sight sent a tingle of both apprehension and pride down Isabel’s spine. She had seen a smile like that before, but never on Alex’s face. It was the smile like the ones on the faces of men at Underground – or at one of the few other bars she went to— – when they were about to make a move on her.
“It’s just that they’re contradicting themselves,” Isabel said, shrugging. “Totally opposite instructions in different places.” She handed the file across the desk, and Alex opened it, glancing at it for just an instant before turning his attention back to her.
“You know,” he said, leaning forward slightly and resting his chin on his hands, “I don’t know what you’ve done to yourself, but I can’t stop staring at you.”
“Thank you … I think,” Isabel said, smiling awkwardly. Well whatever he’s seeing, it certainly can’t be that far off from what was in the mirror, she thought.
“I would give you anything you wanted if you were to come home with me,” Alex blurted. Isabel sat back in the chair, staring at Alex in shock. He had never come onto her before. She had never seen him be anything but appropriate with the women in the office, at least in terms of flirting; his remarks about appearance had been somewhat irritating, but always just on the right side of HR standards. “Or …I mean, we could take a smoke break right now. My car’s on the top floor of the parking garage, and the AC is great in it.”
“That’s inappropriate,” Isabel said sharply.
“Of course!” Alex blinked and the slightly leering look in his eyes cleared, only to be replaced once more with the musing softness she had seen before. “I would hate to make you feel uncomfortable, Izzy.”
“Don’t call me that!” she told him, flustered and irritable in equal measures.
“Never again,” Alex promised. Isabel sat for a moment, staring at him gazing at her, and wondered what was happening to her. Is this just the way guys act around you if you’re gorgeous? Isabel decided to test the idea, weak as it was.
“I think I’d appreciate it even more if you’d call Peterson and tell them to send over new, clearer instructions,” she said; her voice sounded strange to her own ears as she spoke: soft and commanding all at once, sultry and amusing. “Maybe then we could talk about your car.” Alex reached for the handset to his phone. “Wait!” Isabel leaned forward in the chair. “Wait until I get back to my desk,” she suggested.
“Of course, of course,” Alex said, nodding agreeably. “Whatever you want.”
“What I want is to go home early,” Isabel said wryly, thinking out loud more than anything else.
“Then you should do that,” Alex told her. Isabel stared at him.
“But then I won’t get paid,” she pointed out.
“Why not?” Alex looked genuinely confused.
“Because I won’t be working. I need to be here to get paid, don’t I?”
“Don’t you?” Alex looked so genuinely confused, so earnest, that Isabel started to feel afraid again.
“Are you saying I could go home right now and you’d just ... let me get paid for the day?”
“If that was what you wanted, then of course, I would,” Alex replied.
“Then ... I guess that’s what I’ll do,” Isabel said. “Don’t – don’t tell anyone you’re doing this.”
“No, that would be stupid,” Alex agreed. “I’ll just make sure you’re punched out at the right time.”
“Okay,” Isabel said, staring at him in shock. “Let me know what Peterson says.” She rose to her feet, and Alex looked her up and down; for a moment, his gaze almost made Isabel’s stomach turn over, it was so full of straightforward lust. “I’ll just go now. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
“Can’t wait,” Alex said cheerfully. “Maybe you could wear a shorter skirt?”
“I’ll think about it,” Isabel said, shaken. She turned on her heel and left the office.