The sun shone through the windows of the luxury apartment suite. Marion practiced her poses in front of the mirror, her hair falling perfectly around her face, framing it in a way that accentuated her bright eyes. Her skin was smooth and flawless. She turned to the side and ran her hands down her thigh, admiring its sleek curve and smiling at her own reflection with lips that were not overly full but just right, moist and inviting. Was it vanity to appreciate the worth of one's most valuable assets? She was simply acknowledging the truth. She could credit her father's maneuvering through the rungs of society for opening the doors for her to have acquired the marriage which afforded her all the luxuries her avaricious young heart could desire, but she had done more than merely capitalized on what Mother Nature and the fortune of good breeding had provided. It took the proper application of manufactured persona and cultivated manipulation to bring this union about, and Marion had played her cards exactly as she should have, displaying the perfect mixture of feigned innocence and coy sensuality necessary to wrap the man who generously funded her lifestyle around her little finger.
So secure was she in her position that, after only a few months of marriage, her husband confidently departed the country entirely, leaving her to indulge unsupervised in her passing fancies. She toyed with paramours like a cat with captured mice, batting them between her playful paws and discarding them when they bored her to find someone new to tease while her husband mailed letters telling her everything there was to know — and for which she had the least concern — about his passion for things ancient, dead, and buried beneath the sands of far away Egypt. If he kept half as watchful an eye on Marion as he did on dusty relics, she might have owed him an ounce of respect. A simple claim that the sun would spoil her complexion had been all Marion had needed to gain free license to prowl unencumbered.
Archeology being a seasonal affair, with access to the prized dig sites limited to brief windows out of the year, his letters explained, he simply couldn't spare to be away even for Marion's birthday, but sent along an apology and a package. Unwrapping the heavy bundle, Marion recoiled.
His gift was a stone bust, graphic in its realistic depiction of a woman withered with age. The features were gaunt and sunken, the eyes hollow pits, the nose hooked, and the mouth contorted into a grimace that showed off a row of teeth jagged and decayed. Marion set the grotesque, positively morbid thing aside, wondering what had possessed her husband to send her such a disgusting trinket. She didn't care if it was a priceless artifact. It was revolting.
She thought nothing more of the thing, going on to perform her social obligation as an immaculate hostess to her own birthday soiree, the home filled with chattering conversation and beautiful people, with Marion playing the part of the delicate flower, sweet, vulnerable, and blooming in the center of attention while attracting the right compliments from the right men. When everyone else left, she retired to bed, satisfied by another conquest successfully staged.
In the morning, her maid wished her a happy birthday. It seemed an idle trifle, but the woman was usually so precise about her dates and appointments that Marion found the belated comment odd. She brushed it aside though, more concerned to see the ghastly Egyptian sculpture posed on her vanity, staring at her with its empty pits for eyes from among her perfumes and powders.
"It just arrived, miss," the maid said, which Marion found preposterous. It had come yesterday. She'd thrown it aside. How could it arrive again today? She dismissed the woman and put the thing out of sight once more.
As the morning progressed and Marion met with acquaintances in a fashionable café, her confusion grew as again and again she received birthday wishes. She responded with increasingly flustered insistence that it wasn't her birthday until she was eventually confronted with a calendar which confirmed her date incorrect. How was it possible despite her clear memories of a party just the night before? Tamping down her reaction because she couldn't be seen having an improper fling of hysteria, Marion assured herself that she had simply been confused somehow. She attended and hosted parties regularly and must have merely made a mix up or a dream prompted by the liquor served the evening before. There was no other conceivable explanation.
Just as before, the evening passed pleasurably, filled with flirtation, gossip, and self-serving banter of high society's finest before retiring in good company. She woke to find the foul bust staring at her again from beside her vanity mirror. Scoffing at the sight of it and resolving to fire the maid who must be mocking her by positioning it so, Marion paused. It looked different.
It was still worn and ancient in the same cragged and horrid way, but the age of the decrepit woman seemed less severe somehow, the face sagging less with slightly smoother wrinkles. Marion reasoned it away with excuses such as shadows from the curtains playing tricks on her still-sleepy vision, the bust clearly wasn't what it had been the morning before. As Marion tried to reckon with this, her maid wished her a happy birthday.
The uncanny scene of the day repeated, everyone Marion knew congratulating her on getting another year older as she tried to keep her mask of sociability, all the while increasingly shaken and distraught. She studied her reflection that she knew so well, disturbed to see hints of lines creeping into the corners of her eyes and mouth that shouldn't have been there. She attributed it to the stress and strangeness of this episode of mistaken calendars and what must be tasteless practical jokes.
When the next morning came, it was again her birthday and the statue seemed even younger,