In the Details

by H. Claire Taylor

  Somehow she doubted that, but she did as Danielle said, and that seemed to please the woman. “Whenever you’ve changed out of the clothes you have on, you can bring them back up to the table and I’ll store them with the rest. Dinner and the opening ceremony start at five thirty in the sanctuary—that’s the large dome. Rest up and settle in.” Her smile spread around her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here, Jessica. I can tell you’re nervous, but don’t worry; we’ll take great care of you.” She reached forward, pressing her palm to Jessica’s heart as she spoke the last word.

  When the door shut behind Danielle, Jessica didn’t immediately change. Instead, she kicked off her shoes and fell back onto the bed to stare up at the tiled ceiling. She knew without a doubt that coming here had been the best choice she’d made in a while.

  MOST CULTS ARE VERY ALLURING AT FIRST.

  Dammit! Can’t you take a vacation?

  Not even a lack of cell service could afford her a week without worrying about His surprise appearances.

  AND MISS THIS? HEAVENS NO.

  It’s not a cult.

  YOU’RE RIGHT. IT’S JUST BUILT IN ONE OF THE FEW SPOTS IN THE COUNTRY WHERE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT JURISDICTION IS INCREDIBLY UNCLEAR, TAKES PLACE IN A SERIES OF HUTS, EXPECTS YOU TO PAY TO GET IN, AND MAKES EVERYONE DRESS THE SAME. SOUNDS LIKE NO CULT EVER.

  Admittedly, I wasn’t aware of the iffy jurisdiction part, but that doesn’t mean it’s a cult.

  THEN WHAT DOES?

  I don’t know. Maybe they get us to eat or drink something dangerous. Or they make it seem like it’s us versus the rest of the world, or they … Like I said. I don’t really know.

  AT LEAST YOU’RE APPROACHING IT WITH COMPLETE IGNORANCE. THIS CAN ONLY WORK OUT WELL.

  I think you’re bitter because it’s an all-women’s retreat and you weren’t invited.

  THE LORD NEEDS NOT AN INVITATION TO ENTER WHATEVER PROPERTY HE WISHES. THE LORD IS NOT A VAMPIRE.

  What about all that “inviting God into your heart” stuff?

  THAT ONLY APPLIES TO YOUR BROTHER. HE REQUIRES AN INVITATION. TOO POLITE FOR HIS OWN GOOD.

  Fair enough.

  IF YOU WOULD LIKE THE LORD TO ABANDON YOU IN THIS DESERT FOR THE WEEK, IT SHALL BE DONE.

  Great. Do that.

  UM.

  What?

  THAT WAS NOT THE RESPONSE I’D EXPECTED.

  But will you do it anyway?

  NO, I DON’T THINK SO. I ALREADY CLEARED MY CALENDAR FOR THIS.

  She rolled her eyes. Don’t offer if you’re not going to follow it up. Now can you disappear for a minute? I need to change clothes.

  She waited until she could feel Him leave then continued to lay right where she was on the bed, reveling in the complete and utter silence.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Rows of long tables filled two-thirds of the sanctuary when Jessica entered for dinner. Decorated similarly to the reception table earlier, with soft, vivid cloths of varying colors slung over the wood, the center of these tables held elaborate centerpieces of burning incense, lit candles, and small brass statues of trees and cacti and other natural elements. The whole thing was incredibly flammable. Maybe the iffy jurisdiction was what allowed them to get away with the obvious fire hazard.

  Jessica had lost track of time in her suite and arrived when nearly all the spaces along the benches were taken, but she settled in at a space in front of which a brass coiled rattlesnake reflected the dancing flame of a nearby candle. There were perhaps forty women in total, each dressed remarkably like Jessica, though the colors of their robes varied.

  Jessica had gone with a matching cerulean blue top and pants. It hadn’t even occurred to her not to match the color of the top and bottom of the outfit, but that idea had occurred to many of the other women. Jessica spied a combo of a purple top and brown bottoms and took note to try that one out tomorrow.

  “It’s a little like fancy hospital scrubs,” said the woman on Jessica’s left. She turned toward the speaker, a woman in perhaps her mid-forties with dark hair cropped into a structured bob.

  The woman wasn’t addressing Jessica, though. She was speaking to the woman across the table. That woman had long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and didn’t look too unlike Miranda—skinny, lanky, and with a smooth, round face, though perhaps a few years older. “I was thinking more like a prison uniform if, you know, the prison was in Sedona or an American commune in Ubud.” The blonde caught sight of Jessica eavesdropping, but didn’t seem bothered by it. Instead, she made to offer her hand but jerked it back quickly when her eyes landed on her dangling sleeve so close to one of the candles. The woman blew it out then reached toward Jessica again. “Evan.”

  “Jessica.”

  “Nice handshake.”

  “Thanks for not letting me crush your hand.”

  Evan laughed and nodded across the table at the dark-haired woman. “This is Meghan.”

  “Meg,” the woman said, shaking Jessica’s hand. “Wait. Your last name wouldn’t happen to be McCloud, would it?”

  Jessica inhaled. “Yes. Yes, it would.”

  Meg smiled. “I knew it. I thought I saw you walking past my dome earlier.”

  “You swinging loose under there?” Evan nodded to Meg’s chest.

  Meg rolled her eyes. “Yes. At least my navel’s nice and cozy. That rule had to have been instituted by someone under the age of thirty with a B-cup at most.”

  Evan nodded at Jessica. “Was it you? You can’t be over twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-two, and no, I would never outlaw bras.”

  Meg’s dark eyebrows lifted. “Twenty-two? Wow. You’re really getting a jumpstart on this leadership bullshit.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Evan said, leaning forward conspiratorially and inviting Jessica into the secret with a quick glance, “but I packed some pasties for one of the shirts I brought, and I didn’t hand them over.” She pointed down at her breasts. “No matter how cold it gets, I’m bringing these nipples to heel.”

  Meg sniggered.

  A line of women entered the sanctuary from a room at the side of the space carrying trays of food. Jessica recognized a few of them from the check-in table. When they made their way around to Jessica and she saw the plate set in front of her, she sighed. The salad looked divine. She loved a good salad to start her meal, but she never spared the time to make one at home, so her encounters with something like this had been mostly limited to dinner dates with Jameson. Pears and strawberries and soft goat cheese crumbles and chopped walnuts were sprinkled over a bed of spinach and kale. The leaves glimmered with a light dressing that she suspected to be vinegar and olive oil, or something healthy like that. When the smell of the cheese hit her nostrils, her mouth began to water. She looked around. Some of the women were already eating, including Meg and Evan, so she dove in, finishing it off in a matter of a few minutes. She sat up straight to avoid indigestion and wondered wistfully what the entree would be.

  She was left wondering when Caren Powers climbed a small stage in front of the tables and asked for everyone’s attention. A clatter of forks followed, then silence. “I hope you enjoyed the meal. All those ingredients were either grown in the greenhouse out back or bought from local farmers within the New Mexican state lines.”

  Wait. Had she somehow missed the entree? Surely they weren’t expected to make it through the night on just that salad.

  Jessica missed the first part of Caren’s welcome as she mentally searched her car, trying to remember if she’d eaten the entire bag of Cheetos on the drive over or if she’d stopped halfway through like she’d intended.

  “… Sisterhood that bonds us starts in our hearts. It is often our only freedom from patriarchal oppression, and I hope that you can use this week to wrest yourself from toxic masculinity, purge it and all its insidious beliefs from your system so you can discover the shining beauty of your nature within.”

  Sure, that sounded good. Caren could count Jessica in. But couldn’t that sti
ll be achieved with a local, grass-fed, free-range steak? Or maybe some biscuits from a local who-gave-a-shit-where? Bakery? Diner? Gas station?

  God dammit, she’d finished the last cream cheese danish from her own bakery just as she’d crossed the state line.

  “… And if you have any questions for me as you take this journey, you can drop by my domicile just next door to here any hour of the day or night or find me around the land. I’m happy to help guide your quest as needed.”

  “Is it a journey or a quest?” Evan whispered.

  “Is there a difference?” Meg asked.

  Evan shrugged. “Quests have a clear sense of purpose, I think.”

  “Then it’s probably a journey,” Meg replied.

  Caren raised up her arms, lifting her face toward the skylight at the top of the dome and inhaling through her nostrils so loudly Jessica could hear it all the way toward the back of the room. On the exhale, she said, “Danielle will lead a silent walk around the property while we get set up in here for digestive yoga.” She beamed. “I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

  The next morning, as Jessica stared down at her smoothie, a thick wooden straw sticking straight from the middle of the green slush, she wondered if she’d accidentally signed up for fat camp. She couldn’t even remember what she’d put in the damn thing as she’d gone down the line at the smoothie bar, pointing at different ingredients for the servers to throw into the glass blending cup. Some of the things she knew the name of—strawberries and pineapple—but most she didn’t. Like when she’d pointed to the apples and the woman had repeated something that sounded only vaguely correct before throwing a handful of what looked like juicy red worms into the mix. And that was before they even got to the chakra power ups. She hadn’t heard of any of the ingredients, but apparently all of them fought cancer and a few cleansed auras. She couldn’t confirm either of those things, seeing as how she couldn’t spot cancer or an aura just by looking at a person.

  It wasn’t the taste of the smoothie that left her feeling forlorn so much as the fact that her cruel brain had been delivering whiffs of fresh-baked croissants via memory at irregular intervals since she’d woken up with the morning gong at five-thirty.

  “How’s it hanging?”

  Meg scooted in on the bench beside Jessica, setting her smoothie down next to her.

  “Wait, how come yours isn’t green?” Jessica asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you if you put a gun to my head. I think I blacked out in that line. You run a bakery, right?”

  “Yeah, but I already ate what I brought with me.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Jessica looked around. “Where’s Evan?”

  “Psh. Probably still asleep. She’s never been an early bird.”

  “I take it you two knew each other before you came here?”

  Meghan sipped her smoothie and her right eye twitched. “Damn, that could use some Sweet & Low. Yeah, we both just got promoted to partner at a law firm up in Seattle. The boss assumed we needed leadership training. One other person was promoted along with us, but for some strange reason he didn’t need leadership training?” She feigned confusion. “I guess ol’ Whittaker didn’t want to seem as sexist as he is, so he said that being a female boss is a special challenge and he wanted to prepare us as best he could. I told him it’s not that much of a challenge as long as we get to say and do the exact same things a male boss would without being disciplined for being ‘rude’ or ‘abrupt,’ but that went in one ear and out the other, and here we are.” She took another sip of her smoothie and flinched, jerking her head back to glare at it.

  Blinking off the taste, she returned her attention to Jessica. “Is it too much to hope that you’re here to learn how to be a better leader so you can lead the estrogen revolution against men like Whittaker?”

  “Uh … yeah. I’m just here to figure out how to run my bakery.”

  “Hmph,” said Meg, eyeing Jessica thoroughly, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, disapprovingly, but she didn’t elaborate.

  For the duration of the morning’s digestive yoga, Jessica held out hope that there was something she was missing about the food options. Perhaps any minute now, the smoothie would kick in and she’d feel more full, content, and, hell, enlightened than she ever had. But when the group om-ed their last om and she was still jonesing for the next simple carb fix, she began to seriously consider the possibility that it was an intentionally cruel move, a break-them-down-to-build-them-up kind of strategy.

  It was about halfway through the toxin release massage, where she lay facedown and naked on the table—less a product of being comfortable with the setup and more a result of being too weak to fight—when the masseuse, who insisted on being called a body guide or something along the lines of that, informed her that this could very well be the most painful detoxification process she ever went through. Jess wondered if the woman told that to everyone or just the ones that showed no clear signs of ever having struggled with a heroin addiction.

  The massage was easily the most intimate encounter she’d ever had with anyone. Were all detoxes this sensual? She could see why so many people were in and out of rehab, if they were.

  Things were going surprisingly well for how anxious Jessica had been about this part of the week. She felt herself begin to relax and think such obviously insane thoughts as, Who cares if she sees a nipple? and My body is natural, not something to be embarrassed about. So, it came as a complete surprise to her when the body guide began jabbing at her calf, and without thinking about it, Jessica blurted, “I miss muffins.”

  “Mm-hmm,” crooned the masseuse. “We store our addictions in our bodies. Working out certain parts can trigger past patterns.”

  “My calf triggers muffins?”

  “So it seems.”

  From then on, Jessica remained vigilant about what thoughts popped into her head and when. As far as she could tell, the arch on her left foot triggered butter cream, her right hamstring triggered kosher pigs-in-a-blanket, and a tiny, sinewy muscle in her right glute, unfortunately, triggered Jimmy Dean.

  “Whoa,” said the body toucher when she found the Jimmy Dean spot. “There it is.”

  “There what is?”

  “The source of the toxins.”

  “My ass is the source of the toxins?”

  “Yes. You store so much tension here. Tell me, what do you think about when I press … here.”

  Jessica’s eyes crossed as the thumb dug into her ass cheek. “Fighting you.”

  “Yes! I knew it would be aggression. Who do you want to fight?”

  “You!”

  The woman ground her thumb in farther. “No, not me. Who else?”

  Jessica was pretty sure it was the body punisher she wanted to fight, but before she could reiterate, she spat, “Jimmy! I want to punch him in the fucking throat!” She slapped the bed, cringing through gritted teeth, on the verge of asking her Father for a little heavenly intervention.

  Then the woman released the pressure and sighed. “Yes, there you go. Did you feel that release?”

  Jessica did not. But she also didn’t want to bring round two on herself if she could help it. “Yes.”

  “I don’t know who that Jimmy is, but it sounds like he represents the patriarchy to you. Like I said, this will be a painful detoxification, but we’ve just dislodged the source, and it will start to move through your body over the next couple days. Don’t be surprised if you end up thinking about Jimmy more than usual.”

  Jess lifted her head from the bed just so she could slam it down again. Great. Just what she needed. A whole glob of Jimmy plaque moving through her system. How that would help her run a bakery, she didn’t know.

  As the woman continued to activate Jessica’s chocolate chip cookie muscle and her croissant flexors, she decided she could really use some comfort food.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Her fork skewered the strawberry so hard, it chopped it clear in two. Jessica grunted and grabbed
one half with her fingers, popping it into her mouth.

  Someone slammed their plate down next to her, and a moment later, Evan sat and began stabbing at her fruit and pepitas salad. “Not even a real fucking meal.”

  “If I didn’t want to starve to death, I’d throw this whole stupid bowl across the room,” Jessica replied. “I’ve never hated fruit before, but now it just seems complicit.”

  “Thank you!” Evan said, slamming her fork down on the elaborate cloth.

  Meg took her place across from them at the table. “You two look like your detoxification massage went about as peacefully as mine.”

  Jessica grunted.

  “I swear to God, Meg,” said Evan, “when we get back to work, it’ll be a miracle if I don’t kick Whittaker right in his saggy old grandpa pants.”

  “Preaching to the choir.”

  Evan scoffed. “Idiot wouldn’t have made us come here if he knew it’d only make us want to murder him.” She turned to Jessica. “What’d you think about through the massage?”

  “Mostly muffins.”

  “No people?”

  “No,” she said, mashing a piece of honeydew melon between her fingers, “one person.” She considered throwing the squished honeydew back onto her plate, but she was too hungry. She tossed it into her mouth instead.

  Meg nodded approval. “At least when you get out of here you can just go smite him, right?”

  The melon fell out of her mouth, and she caught it just before it hit her brown linen pants. “What?”

  “Sorry,” said Meg quickly as Evan smacked her on the arm. “I’ve read about how you can smite things. It’s true, right?”

  But now Evan listened intently, and Jessica was just belligerent enough to be honest. “Yeah. But I don’t do people.”

  “Shame,” said Meg. “You would make an awesome assassin. Everyone would assume it was a just killing. You know, Jessica, I’ve been thinking about this since we met. I really don’t understand why you refuse to … oh for Christ’s sake.”