Chapter Fifty-Four
Dancy examined her face very closely in the cruel, queasy light shimmering around the mirror in the cramped airliner powder room. No new wrinkles or gray hairs from her latest shenanigans, nice touch of tan. The cheekbones were holding up pretty well, but her skin was drawing a little tighter over them every day. You’ve been cruising on your flesh, girlfriend. From now on it’s all up to the old bone structure.
Which is what aging is really all about, isn’t it? A skeleton doing a striptease? Until you’re nothing but a loose tent slumping around your frame, barely concealing it. Old Mr. Bones just sitting there waiting for us to get down to it. What’s your life but birth pangs for Señor Muerte hisself?
She remembered the mask at Armando’s castle and took a sharper look at herself. So is there anything inside the empty skull, anything behind the naked truth? Or am I a really just a shell, a mask being worn out from the inside? One more empty Southern blonde having cheap epiphanies at 30,000 feet?
She made a mouth, checked herself, then leaned in eyeball to eyeball, taking a determined line with herself. “No way, Barbie babes. Flesh and blood or just dust and a hank o’ hair, you’re in charge of this bag of bones and you can run it however you damned well please. Jump what other bones come your way. Ya old whore.”
She blew herself a kiss and turned to open the door. But she paused to lock eyes with the mirror once more, smiling conspiratorially. “And hey. Screw their damn masks. You’ve still got way more face than they can handle.”