as you see the ashtray, it’s fine,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now place the other mirror behind it.”
Mona does so, sliding the second mirror behind the one reflecting the ashtray. They seem to click into place, as if magnetized.
“Now… concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly. “You must look at the reflection of the ashtray in the mirror, and do not look away. Stare at it, and concentrate on it. Remember what it looks like, and hold that image in your mind.” She is grim and serious again, but now Mona thinks it is not part of the act. The sickly-sweet smell of potpourri becomes intense and heady, and Mona feels a little ill. “Are you concentrating?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.
“Yeah,” says Mona. She is staring very hard at the mirror. It has no frame, she notices, nor is there any flaw or scratch on its surface. It gets hard to remember she is looking at a reflection. The mirror is so smooth that it is like a window, or perhaps a little bubble of light floating in her lap, and inside the bubble is a picture of an ashtray…
“Good,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Now, just keep staring at the reflection on the top mirror. Keep concentrating on it. And as you do, I want you to slowly, slowly pull the other mirror out from underneath it. Don’t just yank it. Do you understand?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t guess. Do you understand or not?”
“I do.”
“Then do it, please.”
This is the weirdest magic trick Mona’s ever taken part in, but she decides to keep indulging the old lady. She keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray, and begins to pull the mirrors apart. There is a click, like she’s just severed the magnetic attraction between them, and everything… changes.
It is impossible to say how things change. It is as if every object in the room is now a false version of itself, a cheap, manufactured copy of the real thing. The stink of potpourri gets so strong that the air seems to shimmer with it. But out of the corner of her eye Mona thinks she can see light seeping through objects she knows to be opaque: she can see the sunlight through the roof, through the chandelier, and even through the floor, as if it is all made of ice. And underneath that light are a thousand shadows…
“Concentrate,” says Mrs. Benjamin softly.
Mona remembers the task at hand, and she keeps staring at the reflection of the ashtray in the top mirror.
And as the second mirror slowly emerges from underneath the first, she sees that the ashtray is there, too: the exact same ashtray is reflected in that second mirror. Even though she’s moved the second mirror enough that it’s not pointing toward the ashtray, or even toward the coffee table, but toward the dining room.
It’s not a reflection, she thinks, irrationally. The ashtray is trapped in the mirrors…
Mona tries to keep concentrating. And it is then that she begins to see that something very strange is happening.
For starters, the tchotchke ashtray is still sitting on the coffee table. She can see that. It’s also being reflected in the first mirror, which is totally fine, as the first mirror is pointing at it. But the ashtray is also being reflected in the second mirror, which makes no sense, as the second mirror is not facing toward the ashtray at all. And while this is troubling in its own right, what really gets to Mona is that the second mirror is showing the ashtray above the dining room table, ten feet away to her right, yet she can see the ashtray itself sitting on the coffee table right in front of her.
But is it her imagination, or can she see something floating in the dining room out of the corner of her eye, just above the table, perhaps right where the second mirror is suggesting the ashtray should be?
That’s not possible, she thinks, because a) How can an object defy gravity? and b) How can an object occupy two different spaces at the same time? For she can see the ashtray sitting on the coffee table just before her, yet it is also in both of the mirrors, and unless she’s gone mad it’s also floating very slowly out of the dining room at the same rate at which she’s moving the second mirror. It’s as if since the ashtray is reflected in both mirrors, the world is working to accommodate them and ensure that what is being reflected