The clinic lay at the end of a long road out of town, its Coyote Colonial splendor visible behind wrought iron gates. There were pots and pots of exuberant hot weather flowers—petunias, geraniums, bougainvillea—without a single dead bloom in sight. Maybe the plants had gotten the message too.
I approached my destination with a mixture of curiosity and dread. Maybe I was a little—okay, a lot—excited too. Spa weekends had been pretty thin on the ground the last few years, but that wasn’t it. The entire weekend had the air of some kind of adventure, and adventures had been hard to come by lately. Despite the fact that I was there to make my stand as Bobbie’s attorney of record, her legal right-hand woman, I was still arriving with an envelope full of Carole’s latest venom, not to mention a domestic house of cards that could tumble at any second. I could use a break. If only there didn’t turn out to be something not right about Bobbie Crystol, something more to the spa than aromatherapy and lectures on senile fruit flies.
If only Bobbie’s cure for aging didn’t turn out to be some kind of ghastly cosmic joke.
And if there was something, what would I do then? Don’t ask a question if you don’t know what answer you’re likely to get, Lauren had said. If I asked and I didn’t like the answers, I’d probably find myself out of a client, not to mention a job.
Mark said…
I stopped, realizing how often he had found his way into my thoughts lately.
You’ve got it worse than I thought. When Isabel had said that, I felt as if I’d been caught penning love notes to the most popular boy in the class. I hadn’t felt that way in so long I didn’t recognize the feeling until it had sneaked up on me. One minute the pilot light was barely lit, and the next minute, whoosh, a full-fledged flame.
The second you have something to lose emotionally, all the worst-case possibilities leap vividly into your mind. Mark was seriously interested in Maria (call me Pathology) Oblomova or the woman (Marky!) from Jonathan’s. He was still grieving for his dead wife and had vowed never to marry again. He—and this was the worst of all—felt sorry for me because he knew, well, everything, and he thought I needed a friend.
These unsatisfying scenarios came as naturally to me as breathing, but I decided it was time to let go of bad habits. I hadn’t done so well playing shrinking violet on the one hand and trying to keep everything under control on the other. I might as well try something else. I remembered one of the mantras of self-help I’d read in a magazine article: There is no room I fear to enter.
I might as well start with that.
I drove through the gates and onto the circular drive that led to the front door of the reception area (marked by a tasteful sign bordered in talavera tile). A Jimmy Smits look-alike—a hard body in a guayabera, the dress shirt of the tropics—leaped for my car door. I handed him the keys while a bellman removed my suitcase. He smiled with just the right degree of familiarity when I tipped him. His youth was the real thing, and his manner managed to convey that it was the merest accident that he was parking the cars instead of arriving in one. So far, Casa Alegría was more luxury hotel than clinic.
My room was very beautiful, with Mexican paver tile floors and a decorated tile bathroom with twin hand-painted sinks. There was a sitting area with two overstuffed chairs, and a mini dining area with a huge bowl of fruit. The refrigerator was stocked with bottled water. Just in case, I took out two bottles and put them in the bathroom, for brushing my teeth. In Mexico, even in upscale surroundings, what comes out of the tap is iffy, to say the least.
The afternoon sun came through the window, giving a soft glow to the room. I took off my shoes and walked around barefoot; the tile floor felt incredibly soothing to my feet. It was so perfectly restful and lovely that I considered stretching out on one of the beds for just a moment and…
“Hi,” Melissa Peters said, dragging her suitcase across the threshold—my threshold. “Hope you don’t mind. They didn’t have enough rooms for everyone. I said we’d double up.”
Missy was clearly outfitted for getting the drop on longevity. She had on skintight pants, an abbreviated T-shirt in a leopard print, and strappy sandals that showed off gold-painted toenails. She looked fully capable of biting the heads off of small animals.
“No, no, of course I don’t mind,” I told her insincerely. Her manner to me had been much less condescending since I’d snared Crystol Enterprises, but she was far from my ideal roommate.
She smiled with equal duplicity. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to be around much,” she said. “After all, this is a working weekend.” She picked up the schedule and menu of offerings from the table. “Opening reception, five o’clock,” she read. “And look at all the different kinds of massages they have, and two pools, and yoga classes, and that doesn’t even count the medical treatments and the mind-body lectures.” She looked around. “Bobbie’s done an excellent job here,” she said. “You’d never believe this place used to be a shark cartilage clinic.”
“This was the house of the guy who ran the clinic,” I reminded her. “The clinic itself was just part of the entire complex. It shows you what kind of money you can make on bogus cures,” I added.
“True.” She bent over her suitcase and removed one…two…three pairs of running shoes, which she set side by side in the closet.
“Why so many?” I couldn’t help asking.
She looked at me. “I take my running very seriously. It’s important to me.”
I vowed right then and there to get undressed in the bathroom. With the door closed. “I guess so,” I said.
“Weren’t you ever athletic?” she asked me.
I noticed that past tense, but the answer was still the same in any case. “No,” I told her.
“Pity,” she said. “You might like running. It keeps you younger than any of Bobbie Crystol’s wacko theories.”
I resolved to be nice. “But you don’t even have to worry about aging yet,” I said. “You still are young.”
She looked at me with a kind of pity. “It gives you an edge,” she said, as if speaking to a slow-witted five-year-old. “Your thirties is when you start to lose it.” She consulted her watch. “I wonder if I have time for a run before the reception…”
The central reception area of the spa/clinic opened into two wings, one for men and one for women. Each wing had lockers and treatment areas and its own indoor pool and hot tub, where—the ubiquitous staff members told us—it was equally appropriate to appear with or without “swimming attire.”
In your dreams, I thought. Still, the idea seemed to appeal to Melissa. The relaxed attitude toward clothing apparently extended to the grounds as well, where we were encouraged to wander around in the thick white cotton robes and slippers with the Crystol emblem (the infinity sign enclosed in a crystal) embroidered on the pockets and toes.
For the opening night reception, however, dress was definitely casual chic. Bobbie herself was wearing a shimmering Grecian shift that bared one shoulder and strongly suggested she might be auditioning for the part of Aphrodite. She made her way toward us, rustling softly, arms extended. “Ah, my lawyers are here,” she said dramatically, swooping in to kiss my cheek and bestow a slightly less exuberant peck on Melissa. I spotted Taylor across the room balancing a tray. “Circulate, try the food,” she said. “I want to know what you think of all this.”
All this was pretty impressive, I had to hand her that. The tables were piled high with foodstuffs stamped with the Crystol seal of approval: lobster salad with daikon sprouts and fruit salsa, asparagus spears with morels and currant tomatoes, wild raspberries in balsamic vinegar. One table, about which a number of people seemed to be clustered, appeared to offer nothing more than various kinds of salad greens.
I wandered closer to see if it was true, while Melissa went off in search of…whatever it was Melissa was looking for. Four middle-aged women, possibly the product of a multiple birth, turned around to greet me. They all had almond-shaped eyes, aquiline noses, and lips so full
they seemed to be inflated. I asked if they were sisters.
“Oh, no,” one of them said to me in tones of displeasure. “Of course not.” They all turned back to the produce, leaving me to wonder what I had said wrong.
Someone tapped my sleeve. “They were all ‘touched up’ by Dr. Greene,” my informant whispered. “He has a signature line. You can always tell.”
“Remarkable,” I gasped, wondering how many other Greene clones were walking the earth at this moment. Did he have some Platonic ideal of beauty in mind that he tried to create over and over? It boggled the mind. “Thank you for telling me.”
My informant extended her hand. “Clarissa Harlowe,” she said. She herself was rather unusual looking. She was quite beautiful, but her mouth and eyes stayed almost motionless as she spoke. It made her seem grave and impassive, like a buddha.
“You’re probably wondering about my face,” she said.
I made a noncommittal noise and hoped I hadn’t been staring.
“Botox,” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“Botox injections,” she said, barely moving her lips. “The botulism toxin. It smoothes out wrinkles.” She made a broad, resigned gesture with her hands. “They screwed it up. Put the needle in too close to the mouth. Now the muscles are paralyzed.”
“My God,” I said. “Is it permanent?”
She laughed, or I thought she did. “Nah. It wears off in a couple of months. But I can’t work till it does.”
“What do you do?” I asked politely.
“I’m an actress.”
I told her I could see how facial immobility might have its disadvantages, unless you were Gary Cooper. She didn’t get it, naturally.
“Anyway,” she said, “I’m really excited about the Crystol program. I tried sheep parts, and I liked them, but this is better. It’s spiritual, you know?”
“Sheep parts?” was all I could think of to say.
“Sure, you know, adrenal glands, veins…I felt really invigorated. I can’t wait to try Dr. Crystol’s supplements.”
“What kind of supplements does she have?”
She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I don’t know, but I’ve heard they’re great. Like speed or something. Unbelievable bursts of energy. You feel years younger, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“Are you going to take them without knowing what’s in them?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“What if they made you sick?”
She slid her eyes back and forth in their motionless sockets. “They couldn’t. I think Dr. Crystol would say that it’s your mind that’s sick, not your body. It’s ayurvedic. You harness your consciousness as a healing force, and then you’re not sick anymore. Or old either.”
“What if you took poison? Could you heal yourself then?” I asked her.
She gave me an assessing look. “You don’t take any anti-aging treatments, do you?”
I summoned the quelling demeanor I had often seen my mother use in response to questions she felt were impudent. “What do you mean?” I asked her, drawing myself up. “I’m seventy-five years old.”
Her jaw dropped, or it would have if the muscles had been working. “Really?” she asked me. “You’re kidding, right? What do you take? What?”
After a couple of hours of this it became apparent that most of the invitees were wrestling with aging mano a mano and weren’t about to give in without one hell of a fight. There were a handful of celebrities and one famous romance author whose picture I had seen on book jackets. It was a photographic triumph; in person she looked something like a mummy, with shiny skin stretched over her cheeks and forehead like very expensive leather.
Clearly, there weren’t too many skeptics in attendance.
Most of the conversation was shoptalk—head transplants (if only someone would volunteer), healing waves, valerian root, DHEA—in which I had little part. I wondered how Taylor was taking all this. I caught sight of him once or twice engaged in apparent backslapping male bonding rituals with some of the older executive-looking types.
“Having fun?” asked Bobbie, appearing like a magnificent moth at my side.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ve been circulating. It’s very interesting.”
“‘Interesting,’” she mimicked. “Can’t you just let yourself go a little? Try to believe.”
“Believe what?” I asked her. It was decades too late to save Tinkerbell. But I knew what she really meant. Believe in me.
She swept her arm dramatically. Her crystal earrings clinked. “In possibility,” she said. “In transcending the known limitations of the body. In the future.” The speech had a rehearsed quality. I didn’t say anything.
“Look at you,” she said finally, “standing here like a wallflower at the party. Don’t you want to change your life?” She said it with such satisfaction that I knew that lonely, unhappy Barbara Collins was enjoying a bit of revenge.
I smiled. “This is your show, Bobbie. I’m your lawyer, not your client. The clinic is beautiful and your guests are happy. What more do you want from me?”
She studied me. “Enthusiasm,” she said.
She meant she wanted another longevity groupie, but I couldn’t oblige her. I spread my hands placatingly. “I am extremely enthusiastic about your potential. We all think you’ve done a wonderful job with this place.”
She made a face. “That’s lawyer talk. I meant enthusiasm over my program.”
“Your supplements, you mean? I’ve been hearing about them.”
“That’s part of it. I think my longevity supplement therapy could do a lot for you. In addition to giving you more energy and sex drive, it reverses the outward signs of aging. You should notice it in your skin.” She smiled. “And your butt won’t droop so much.”
Not in this lifetime, although the butt thing was the first thing I’d heard that made me consider it even momentarily. This crowd might jump at ingesting mole testicles, or whatever, but Clarissa’s masked features were only one example of the downside of incaution. I figured I was doomed to failure as an anti-aging groupie anyway. Bobbie had my number; I didn’t believe. I’m not saying that if someone invented a magic pill that took away gray hairs, a drooping ass (Bobbie was right about that), arthritis, osteoporosis, presbyopia, et cetera, and guaranteed a hundred and fifty years of healthy, pain-free life, I wouldn’t be first in line to take it. I’m no fonder of age spots than the next person. But it seemed to me that the frantic pursuit of longevity was occurring at the expense of living. I mean, look how much time all these people had spent in the cultivation of the perfect body. The catch was, some Instrument of Fate—a truck, say, or a meteorite, or a misdirected golf ball—could come hurling out of nowhere while you were concentrating on how to keep from getting any older and—kapow—wish granted. And look what you would have missed while you were focused on preserving the unpreservable. What would your tombstone say? I thought I would live forever, but I was wrong…
“I still have to pass. But I would like to know what’s in them,” I told her. Or not. The death knell could be tolling for my professional career at that very moment.
She gave me a toothy grin. “Later,” she said. “I have to get back to my guests.” She floated a few feet away and turned back. “By the way, Taylor has been extremely helpful to me. I just thought you should know.”
“That’s great,” I said, through gritted teeth.
Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke from a troubled sleep. It might have been Bobbie’s comment about Taylor that had disturbed my subconscious, but when I opened my eyes, I saw Melissa standing by the window, facing out. I hadn’t seen her since we’d entered the reception together. When I’d gone to sleep she still hadn’t come in. “What time is it?” I asked in a befuddled voice.
“Sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“That’s okay,” I told her. “Are you just now coming to bed?” I sounded exactly like my mother.
“No
. I couldn’t sleep.”
Something in her tone made me sit up in the bed. “Are you all right?” I asked. I couldn’t see her face. It was too dark.
“No,” she said.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked, as lightly as if she’d been Allie.
“I’m an idiot,” she said.
This was promising. I got up and put on the Crystol robe, tying the sash tightly around my waist.
“It’s got to be a man, then,” I said. “Would you like something to drink? Hot chocolate? Coffee?”
“I brought some scotch,” she said.
“Perfect,” I agreed.
We sat at the table on our enclosed patio in surprisingly companionable silence, sipping scotch. It was warm, and the air was very dry. A nice night for looking at the stars, which was only possible when you left the city.
When I was very young, my parents and I would lie out on blankets on the lawn while my father pointed out the constellations and made up silly stories about each one. Suddenly I had an image of my mother on her blanket, in her dress and high heels, arms spread out at her sides, laughing at his jokes. Why did I always picture their relationship as one-sided? You could never tell about anyone else’s life.
“I’m sorry,” Melissa said at last. “I shouldn’t bother you with this. I hardly even know you.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I assured her.
“I just can’t believe I let him treat me this way. I can’t believe I fell for it!”
Whatever the circumstances were, I couldn’t believe it either. Melissa didn’t seem like the type to be manipulated easily. I made a noncommittal noise of encouragement.
“It’s not as if I didn’t have other offers. Plenty of other firms—top-ranked firms, not third-rate ones—tried to recruit me.”
She’d lost me. “I don’t…”
She shrugged. “He’s the reason I picked RTA. Well, most of the reason anyway.”
Exit Strategies Page 21
