The Blackthorn Mirror
by GC Dillon

Amanda Jasmine Ashbourne entered the dark confines of the Juno & the Paycock after work.

The Juno & the Paycock was a pub both suitably literary and suitably Irish for her taste. Jasmine took a seat at the bar. Her image came back to her from a large mirror. It was trimmed with an ornate frame carved with varied curlicue decorations. She was dressed in a sienna suit dress with a Texas string tie around her neck. Her work shoes - matching sienna pumps -- were already in the knapsack at her sneakered feet. She'd gotten the knapsack at a conference in Washington. It had the name of a financial software vendor displayed conspicuously upon it. She could almost count her years at the bank by the number of tee shirts and promotional knickknacks she has gotten. She was now a Cashier Team Leader, a fancy name to give you the work of a low-level manager, but not the pay of one.

It wasn't getting older Jasmine minded; it was getting settled.

Brushing back her long, blonde hair, she mused lazily over the taps. Long Trail, Sierra Nevada, Bass. Maybe she would have a Black and Tan, no -- "Guinness, please," she told the bartender when she came over for her order. Wasn't a real Irish bartender, just a local college student who needed a job. Jasmine could tell the difference. Or so she felt. It seemed only a few heartbeats since she was exactly that type of employee.

While the Guinness settled in her glass like rain into a Galway bog, Jasmine went over to the happy hour buffet. Is it called happy hour because people are happy they are out of work, not yet stuck in traffic? She grabbed a paper plate and began dishing macaroni salad onto it. Oooh, mini hot dogs and baked beans. Not too heavy on the beans, though. She was meeting Kiernan here. Kiernan was an Oracle programmer at the bank's corporate data center. She'd only heard him swear at computers and traffic. Can't say that about her, she thought. She has cussed her own litany at the bank's computer system. Even a few words her father hadn't taught her.

User friendly! It's more like friendly fire. She smiled wickedly at the thought - that included some of Kiernan's applications.

She was going home this weekend, home for a dual celebration at her parent's house. Her father's retirement party and her parents' forty-fifth wedding anniversary. It was to be a big family event. There would even be cousins there she was not related to. This would be her first time home in a while. She hadn't gone to her high school reunion. Even though her high school hadn't been named after Gog or Magog, what was really the point? That part of her life has passed resolutely away. She was a different person, literally. She'd just retch if anyone called her Mandy. She had decided at fifteen to be called by her middle name. Didn't even need a court to change it. It had taken going off to college, BC of all places, to get people to acquiesce to her desire and call her Jasmine.

She did have one question. Would Kiernan go back home with her for the party? Maybe she should ask him. Oh god, no, she thought. How could she inflict her family upon him? But how would he feel if she didn't? Would he or would he not be upset really depended upon the one question she hadn't asked. Was Kiernan really her boyfriend? She pondered between wondrous sips of the stout. That was the real question. Christ, she was even wearing his clothes. Just his concert tee shirts, but still...

It's not getting older she minded; it's getting settled.

What was it about boyfriends? Why couldn't she just go out with her friends on a Friday night? Why did she need to go out with him? Well, she did like him.

Jasmine paused to glance about the establishment. It was a self-consciously Irish pub with black and white photos from the old country peppering the walls and a soccer (football) team sign-up sheet posted on a corkboard. Then she noted the two guys sitting near her at the bar. One was about three years younger than she was. And she remembered when she was the youngest in a pub. The fellow he was with was a large man in a grey suit with a mane of brown, curly hair. It had just begun to be salted with white. He had a large mug of the pale yellow, domestic draft before him.

"I just don't get it," the younger one said.

"It's beer. Ya pour it in your mouth and ya swallow happily."

"Not the beer. It's my girlfriend. Or I should say my non-girlfriend."

"Kinda rough, is it?"

"Yeah, I saw her last night over a friend's place. We ended up in the corner talking. But all she talked about was how the guy she was with now was treating her like crap. I mean it's like my life has become a cliche. Classic story of the girl telling the guy who wants her, who treated her well, how bad her boyfriend is. I just don't get it."

"How's her father treat her?"

"Badly."

Yeah, easy answer, she thought. Electra complex. Girlie who'd do anything to win daddy's approval. Or was it love? What he didn't get - besides laid- was that there was more to it than just being nice, more to it than buying a girl a beer every once in a while. He could think he treated her the way she wanted to be all because he was better to her than some jerk had been, but that didn't mean he treated her the way she needed.

Jasmine felt too much like an eavesdropper so she sipped a taste of her brew and turned her attention to the paperback book she'd stashed in her knapsack. She had planned to read Candide during her lunch break, but instead only had time to grab a take-out Greek salad at her desk.

"Okay, see you at work tomorrow, kid." Jasmine looked up from her book to see the younger man leave. The older man passed her on the way to grab a second helping of the pub grub.

"So, you've seen the Blackthorn mirror?"

"Pardon?" Jasmine glanced toward the speaker. The man stood there, a small plate of vegetarian lasagna in his hand.

"The mirror. It's magic. Ask the bartender. Not her. Ask the old guy. He's out back having a smoke. It's called the Blackthorn mirror. It belonged to a witch in Kilarney or Sligo or somewhere before being brought to America back in '47."

"Magic?" Jasmine questioned.

"Yeah," he said between forkfuls of the stringy cheese and pasta. "It shows you alternate possibilities. Maybe just shows what you want to see."

"Like in Harry Potter?"

"Uh. I don't have kids. Could be it's scientific, you know. Beyond Newton, beyond Einstein, even beyond Heisenberg. Like something out of String theory, it's a portal into parallel universes with bundled up dimensions exploding through the looking glass."

"Okay."

"Could be it's like looking into God's afterthoughts."

"Assuming we're not the afterthought. Sixth day and all. Maybe it's Lilith's children who should have inherited the earth, the meek not withstanding," Jasmine replied. 'But from much of what I've seen of creation,' she refrained from saying, 'it may be more like unintelligent design, or at least negligent.' "So," she continued, "it is like quantum particles can theoretically inhabit any one of a multitude of possible subatomic locations, and this mirror reflects a different quantum reality. Is that it?"

"You got it. I guess like heavy water slowing down an electron enough to smash atoms, it's a prism to an alternate truth."

"Talk about a mirror darkly," she replied.

"I've seen some weird shit. And it wasn't the booze either." He placed his empty plate on the bar near her Guinness. "I've got to be going. Say weren't you curious about why I started talking to you?"

"Well." Jasmine smiled weakly. "Frankly, yes."

"Saw it in the mirror. Before you got here."

* * *

This was crazy, Jasmine thought. Some poor old woman's mirror has become the source of a barroom superstition. It was sad, truly sad. She bet it got the best play on Halloween night.

So what would she see if she really gazed into the Backthorn mirror? Jasmine mused a moment. Would her hair be dyed red, or twisted into dreadlocks? She smiled a bit at the thought. Or - her heart suddenly beating faster, would her hair be gone, the victim of some needed chemotherapy, or her face disfigured in some horrific accident or mugging. She swallowed these thoughts with a long drink of her Guinness. Maybe if she looked hard enough she would be missing, having never left home and settling for the parochial pleasures her hometown had to offer.

Then Jasmine saw him standing at the free food line. A god-awful mustache marred his lip, and his hair was trimmed too short. Or too short for the brother she remembered.

On her desk at work, she had a picture of him with that damned bike. It wasn't even a powerful American chopper just a rice burner Japanese import. He loved that bike. He looked like such a bad ass in that instant photo with the wide frame and the magic marker date plastered crudely upon it. He wore sunglasses and had arms akimbo as he leaned casually against the kickstanded motorcycle. Their grandmother said he looked like he was a member of New York City's Westies gang.

It wasn't getting older Jasmine minded; it was getting settled. Wasn't it? she thought.

There were other pictures too. Neither Polaroid, nor Kodak, these were only developed in the darkroom of her memory. Pictures not so pretty. Scenes of the motorcycle accident, the hospital room, the cold walls and plush chairs in the Critical Care Waiting Area. The out-of-date Newsweek and Redbook. Waiting Area had not been a misnomer. Scenes of the casket, the flowers, the grey stones carved with names. A soundtrack existed as well. Fr. Kawiecki saying, death is not an end, but rather a beginning with God. Where was God in this, she had thought. God ride a Harley or an Indian? Her aunt saying, God loved Joey so much that He brought him to Him. The doctor asking if he would be an organ donor.

But the afternoon quiet that had been worse. She went to his room - stuff already in boxes, posters still on the wall. It was inconceivable that she had to stop and help fix supper, like routine swallowed up his passing too quickly, too easily, too completely, and too finally. Great! To her the mirror shows Family, Death and Loss. Does anyone see anything happy? Joey piled his paper plate high with chicken wings. He placed his thumb in his mouth to taste test the Buffalo sauce. He looked toward her image and winked, then gave a thumbs up. So like him. She scanned the mirror's reflection carefully. Was he alone? Or had he come with wife, possibly mother of his children? Were there friends from work? And what work? She wanted to know what life he would have had.

Jasmine could feel the magic in the images. What had changed? What fateful alignment of quarks, not stars, had given birth to this life her brother did not live. A needed phone call from his girlfriend, one less fight with their Father? Or had it just not rained and the roads were not slick. The what-if images, thoughts, never-had memories were seductive. So inviting to lose oneself in the mirror's reflected reality. So addictive. In her case, long buried grief broke the thin surface it had hidden under, only to be dispelled by that other world. So easy to leave one's real history behind; so easy to wallow in a self-indulgent fantasy; so easy to assuage the pain and ignore all her problems for the mirror's life. Just sit in front of the looking glass and have another Guinness with Joey. So easy...

"Jesse, sorry I'm late. There was an issue with an ACH file, and I had to run some queries on --." Kiernan stood behind her. His reflection broke the other images that had displayed upon the glass.

Jasmine turned. Life outside the mirror returned to her. And she knew what she should do. "Hey, what are you doing this weekend? My family has a big party planned. If - if ya wanna go."

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