He handed me the print after he pulled it out of the processor. He’d taken the picture in the giant mirror that spanned an entire wall of the salon, its edges out of frame, so it didn’t seem like a mirror at first, except the back of my head was visible and out of focus on the bottom left edge of the vertical image. At the center was just half my face, and I was confused at first, until I realized I was looking at a second mirror in rapt concentration, and the border of that mirror covered the rest of my head, except outside the mirror frame were the top and side of my face, just the very edge, and my grand pile of blond curls. As if the intentional accident that brought these visual elements together wasn’t enough, there in the far background, in the upper-left corner, was a famous makeup book called Making Faces, its cover a gorgeous woman’s made-up features—her red lips, blue eyes, arched eyebrows, and rouged cheeks—the rest of her face entirely white, its edges out of the frame. It was as if the picture was inviting me to compare my features to that ideal woman on the cover.

“You can keep it,” Max said as he walked away.

I went back to my private darkroom, closed the door, put away my photo paper, and turned on the overhead light so I could examine the photograph alone. That image felt like a Magritte painting, its surreal elements designed to reveal the viewer’s unconscious. I remembered the moment the picture was taken, as I sat on a soft cushion in front of that mirror examining the details of my face and marveling how a professional had made it even more beautiful. But what my memory hadn’t captured in living that moment, rather than looking at that single frame, was precisely how beautiful I was.

Because I was looking at one of the most beautiful faces I’d ever seen, even if I could only see half of her. That face belonged to me. From deep inside, her voice emerged again, to ask whether I was really willing to smother her, that beautiful woman, and let her die. She might be in pieces now, parts of her still unknown, the world she inhabited a confusing hall of mirrors. But it was up to me to cross that bridge of light and make her whole, with whatever I had, to endure any sacrifice so that her spirit could finally live in this world without condition.