School of Fortune

by Amanda Brown

  “You should be happy there’s an ice machine.”

  Pippa slumped against her headboard. Without Ginny’s SUV she was stuck. And what was she supposed to do about dinner? The nearest food was three miles up the highway.

  Aha! Maserati! She called the security gate at Wellington on the Creek. “Stanley? This is Ginny’s friend. How are you doing?”

  “People have been looking for Miss Ortlip. Looking for her car, I should say.”

  Pippa shuddered. “What did you tell them?”

  “I said she was out of the country. I hope that was all right.”

  “Perfect. Could you do me a huge favor? Remember that blue car someone dropped off for me yesterday? You’ve got the keys, right? I’d like you to drive it to the Days Inn on Harry Hines Boulevard. If you could swing by a Chinese takeout on the way, that would be fantastic.”

  He thought about refusing but Ginny was his biggest holiday tipper. “My shift is over at ten.”

  “Thanks.” Pippa resumed studying the manual. She wanted to delight Officer Pierce with a perfect score on tomorrow’s quiz. Every few paragraphs, however, the facts and figures put her to sleep: this had been a long, perilous day. She wandered to the bathroom and splashed her face with water. There, under the fluorescent lights, Pippa noticed that her skin looked very uneven. She hadn’t been paying much attention to it lately, but that was no reason to go around looking like a sea sponge.

  Near the phone was a flyer for Nori Nuki, a spa in Las Colinas. It was open 24/7 and offered a full array of esthetic services. Patrons of the Days Inn would receive a ten percent discount. Even better, she didn’t know a soul in Las Colinas, a neighborhood near the airport.

  “I’d like a body scrub and a facial tomorrow morning,” she told the woman who answered the phone. “And my makeup done. I have to leave at eight-thirty.”

  “Then you get here seven. What facial you like? Cucumber and rice vinegar? Sea salt? Clay and seaweed? How about chocolate facial? That very popular now.”

  “Yes! I’ll have that one.”

  “For body scrub, facial, and makeup you pay two hundred bucks include tip. You be here seven sharp.” “Do you have a dress shop close by?” “Forty bucks I get you good dress. What size?” “Six. Thank you.”

  Pippa went downstairs to wait for Stanley. Her pulse faltered when a blue Maserati appeared without Lance Henderson behind the wheel. Get over it, she told herself as Stanley pulled up to the entrance. This is your car now. As soon as possible she’d change the license plate: HUDDLE had nothing to do with football. Another signpost she had missed along the speedway to matrimony.

  The car’s interior reeked of fried noodles. Stanley parked in a corner of the lot. Pippa gobbled four egg rolls as he told her about the men who had come looking for Ginny. To her immense relief they had been journalists, not policemen. “Were you in some kind of chase?” he asked.

  “They were harassing me. Don’t worry, Ginny’s car survived. I left it somewhere else for a while.”

  Ginny’s friends were scary. Stanley was embarrassed to look at the body art on this one. “Good idea. People at Wellington Creek aren’t used to riots.”

  Pippa gave him three hundred bucks. She went back to her room and polished off the Chinese dinner. For the first time since the wedding she felt hopeful about her future. Tomorrow, sporting a new dress and a fresh face, she’d ace another test. The day after that she’d graduate from driving school. The vaults of Fort Knox would open. She’d kick off her new life by taking Officer Pierce out to dinner. Introduce him to Sheldon. Clear the air over a few bottles of Champagne. It would be a grand occasion except Thayne wouldn’t be there.

  Pippa shed a few tears onto her chopsticks. Not hearing her mother’s voice was a deprivation that made each day fall short of complete. She missed her terribly; the feeling had to be mutual. Don’t count on it, an inner voice said. Thayne was not known for her reverse gear. “Just give me a chance,” Pippa prayed, spraying her neck with a tiny sneeze of Thayne perfume. “Two little minutes.”

  The front desk awoke her at six the next morning. Pippa wasted a good bit of time searching for the terry robe she assumed came with every hotel room. After giving up on that, she had to call downstairs for a razor. Maybe Thayne had a point: sometimes it was worth paying an extra thousand a night for the bare necessities. Pippa wriggled into her dress and the damp underwear hanging on the towel bar. She drove the Maserati out of the parking lot. At the first red light, noticing the guy in the next car motioning to her, she rolled down her window.

  “Wanna drag?”

  “No thanks.” The slightest moving violation would kill her chances of a diploma.

  Almost every time she stopped at a light, the guy in the next car would look over and rev his engine. Other guys drove in parallel with her for blocks at a time. Finally a woman with big blond hair pulled up alongside. “Excuse me, but is that Lance Henderson’s car?”

  Pippa nearly stalled the engine. “Who?”

  “KYQX is giving a thousand bucks reward to the first guy to find him. He’s supposed to drive a blue Maserati with the license HUDDLE.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My daddy gave me this car for not piercing my nose.”

  Pippa shut her window and stared straight ahead. She felt conspicuous as a boiled lobster on a white tablecloth. Damn! Why couldn’t Lance drive a black Mercedes instead of this flaming homobile? She pulled over and, with a Magic Marker, changed the H on the license plate to a P.

  Nori Nuki Day Spa occupied a humble storefront close to the airport. Pippa hid the car beneath an acacia and went inside. Despite the early hour, the place bustled with women. “You Padita for body scrub and chocolate facial,” said the cheerful Korean behind the cash register. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous blared from the television at her side. “I am Nori. Where your car?” “Parked out back.”

  “You need sticker or they tow.” Nori uncapped a felt-tip pen. “License number?” “P-U-D-D-L-E.”

  Nori gave her the permit. “Put on dashboard please.” When Pippa returned, Nori was holding a red silk sheath with mandarin collar, its side slit to the pelvis. “Much better than cheap dress you wear now. How about shoes? I get nice pair. Much better than what you wear now. Twenty bucks.”

  “Fine.”

  “How about hair? You need clip. Five bucks. How about wash off tattoo? Fifteen bucks. Lot of work but they not nice for young lady.” “I know that but you’ll have to leave them on.” “Forget money. I do for free.” “NO! Thank you!”

  Without skipping a beat Nori said, “Total two hundred eighty bucks now.” She counted Pippa’s cash. “Thank you very much, Padita. You go with Jung-Bo.”

  Nori spoke a few sentences to a white-smocked Korean with a face lively as a hassock. Jung-Bo gave Pippa a smock and key and pointed her at the locker room. “Remove jerly please. I keep for you.”

  Pippa changed into a towel. She gave Jung-Bo her Wal-Mart watch, her diamond rings, and ankle bracelet. “Don’t lose this. It belongs to my mother.”

  Jung-Bo dropped everything into her pocket and led Pippa to a heavy door. “You stay twelve minute. I wait for you.”

  Pippa went inside. A sign said the temperature was 140 degrees. She sat on the floor with several Korean women who didn’t seem to be sweating at all. Twelve minutes felt like twelve hundred. Next Jung-Bo pushed her into a dim inferno. The sand covering the floor burned Pippa’s feet. Timperture 160F. Within seconds Pippa’s heart began pounding fearfully. Sweat cataracted from every pore. Her head hurt; maybe her brain was swelling like a hot air balloon. She lasted two minutes.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped, bursting into the hallway. “That room is very hot.”

  “Twelve minute.” Jung-Bo tried to push her back in.

  “No! I have an important test at nine o’clock! I need a brain, not scrambled eggs!”

  Jung-Bo took Pippa to the next door. “Three minute in here.”

  Pippa stuck her head
inside long enough to locate the sign on the wall. She managed to read “180F” before her eyeballs began pulling away from their sockets. One lone female lay motionless, perhaps mummified, in a dim corner. “Whew! That’s enough of that!”

  Displeased, Jung-Bo took Pippa to a whirlpool with steam rising from the surface. “Go in.”

  What the heck, the worst it could be was 212 degrees. Pippa dropped her towel and slid into the roiling waters. Jung-Bo stood guard at the ladder, making escape impossible. Finally she said, “We scrub now.”

  Pippa was taken to a white-tiled room containing six tables. Korean attendants wearing rough mitts scrubbed naked women lying atop four of the tables. As they worked, the attendants chatted and laughed, no doubt making fun of the bodies they were vigorously abrading. Every so often an old woman came along and sloshed a bucket of warm water over a reclining nude. After getting Pippa up on a table, Jung-Bo beckoned to a girl waiting by the sink. She began wringing Pippa’s feet like damp washcloths. The pain was excruciating. “Could you go a little easy?” Pippa cried. “I’d like to walk out of here.”

  The girl began buffing Pippa’s face with what felt like a petrified starfish. She applied an astringent to the raw flesh before coating Pippa’s face with melted chocolate. “Close eye,” she commanded, covering Pippa’s eyes with rank, dripping cotton balls.

  “What is that?”

  “Tea from strong root. Good for you.”

  The chocolate quickly hardened to a bulletproof mask. Pippa surrendered to the scrubbing mitts as random paragraphs from the Texas Drivers Handbook floated through her mind. She dreamt she heard Thayne’s voice, clear as a bell, say, Don’t come near me with those filthy mitts, before a bucket of warm water sloshed the hallucination away. Pippa slid into a relaxing coma illustrated with hundreds of road signs. Soft Shoulder. Grooved Pavement Ahead.

  “What do you mean you don’t have a kimchee and volcanic mud facial? I didn’t drive all the way over here to take a steam bath.”

  Pippa’s eyes snapped open so quickly that both cotton balls fell to the floor. She turned her head very slowly. Thayne was lying on the next table. Unlike everyone else in the room, she wore an orange silk robe, pale orange mules, and her usual half pound of diamonds. Her hair was wrapped in a turban from Thibiant, her favorite Beverly Hills spa. She clutched a large Fendi handbag, obviously not impressed with security in the locker room.

  “What are you looking at?” Thayne snapped, failing to identify the naked female with black hair, tattoos, and chocolate-shellacked face as her daughter. She turned to her attendant. “Don’t tell me you don’t have any volcanic mud on the premises. Every reputable spa in Dallas has volcanic mud.”

  “Why you not go to republe spa then? Why you come here and make me trouble?”

  “I thought I’d give you a try,” Thayne said, albeit with a little less wind in her sails. “All right, forget the mud. Surely you have kimchee.”

  “Kimchee to eat. Not good for face. It burn face.”

  “That’s why you mix it with the volcanic mud, you stupid twit.” Thayne looked over at Pippa. “You there! What’s that on your face?”

  Pippa didn’t dare respond in recognizable English. She raised her voice a few notches. “Sho. Clate.”

  “Chocolate? How disgusting. Miss! Did you say something about clay and seaweed?”

  “That for body wrap,” came the sullen reply.

  “You don’t consider the face part of the body?”

  “It expensive.”

  “Just do it,” Thayne said with a dismissive flick of the wrist. As her attendant went off to mix the clay and seaweed, Thayne looked around the room with a shudder. “Doesn’t all that scrubbing hurt? I’ve never seen such rough handling. Or such a shocking lack of privacy.”

  “Is Korean style.” What was Thayne doing here? Same thing she was, Pippa realized: avoiding recognition, poor thing.

  The attendant returned with a ceramic pot. Thayne took one whiff and said, “I hope you don’t intend to put that on my face.”

  “Excellent fo’ you!” Pippa cried, terrified that: her mother would get up and leave. “Must try!”

  The desperation in her voice somehow got Thayne to relent. “Since I’m already here, you may as well go ahead,” she told the girl. “Just try not to get any of that muck on my robe.”

  Pippa caught Thayne looking oddly at her as the clay was slathered on her face. She desperately wanted to reach across to her mother’s table and hold her hand.

  “Would you mind telling me what those tattoos are all about?”

  “Ancient Korean symbols.”

  “They look like sexual organs to me. I’m surprised you haven’t been taken for a prostitute. Forgive me if you are, of course.”

  All those stares Pippa had been getting for the last few days now made perfect sense. She blushed almost hot enough to melt her chocolate mask. “Fertility signs. For good luck.”

  “Fertility is luck? I have news for you. Children are a curse,” Thayne whispered as the attendant mounded two wads of seaweed over her eyes.

  While the girl scrubbed her breasts as if they were stains in the carpet, Pippa racked her brain for a way to proceed. She had pretty well painted herself into a corner by pretending to be a Korean. When Thayne discovered who was hiding beneath all that chocolate, her outrage would be heard in Kilgore. For the umpteenth time Pippa cursed herself for pretending to be someone she was not.

  A young Korean woman in jeans entered the room with Nori Nuki. She had a camera. To Pippa’s horror she pointed it at her. Pippa’s first impulse was to play possum. Maybe it was a publicity shot; she happened to have the best-looking body in the room. Then it occurred to her that the woman could be pointing the camera at Thayne, who was lying on the next table.

  “Be right back,” Pippa said as the attendant began scrubbing her tattoos.

  She marched over to the photographer. “Excuse me. What are you doing?”

  “You be daughter of Thayne Wokker.” Nori proudly exhibited Thayne’s ankle bracelet as proof. She pointed to the mudpacked figure in the orange robe. “We believe that woman Thayne Wokker. You drive car own by Lance Handrison with license PUDDLE. We earn thousand bucks reward to find you.”

  “May I have my jewelry? Thank you.” Pippa slipped her ring, watch, and ankle bracelet on then tossed the woman’s Rolleiflex into the pot of melted chocolate. “Go fish.”

  “Bad lady! You destroy camera!”

  Pippa ran to the locker room and zipped herself into her new red dress. She grabbed the little shoulder bag containing all her valuables. She was one step out the front door when a green VW skidded into the lot. Its driver was the jackal Officer Pierce had spun off the road yesterday. Pippa jerked back inside, locked the door, and ran to the body scrub room. Nori, the photographer, and Jung-Bo were yammering over the pot of chocolate, trying to fish the camera out with tongue depressors.

  Pippa darted to Thayne’s table. “Sorry to disturb you, Mama,” she whispered, removing the seaweed from Thayne’s eyes. “The paparazzi have found us.”

  Thayne stared at the chocolate-covered face bending over her. “Are you that Korean?”

  “It’s me. Pippa. Really. We have to go.”

  “Are you crazy? I can’t go outside with my face under an inch of mud.”

  “Leave it on. For your own protection.”

  As Pippa dragged her mother past Nori and Co., Thayne regained sufficient presence of mind to shout, “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer, you worthless lychee nuts!”

  Pippa dragged Thayne out an emergency exit to the parking lot. “Is Lance here?” Thayne cried, seeing his car. Her hands flew to her face.

  “Leave the mud on! And the turban. He gave me the car.” Pippa shoved her mother inside and fired the Maserati into reverse. They shot out of the parking lot, but not before the little bald guy banging on the front door saw them. He rushed to his VW.

  Pippa hit the gas. “How have you been, Mama?”


  “Let me out of this car immediately!”

  “You prefer to be picked up in Las Colinas in a bathrobe? They’ll have a field day with that.” “How dare you stalk me.”

  “Wrong. I got there first.” Pippa zipped around a corner. “Listen,

  I know this isn’t the ideal time or place, but I’d like to talk.”

  “If you’re trying to get yourself undisinherited, don’t waste your breath.”

  “There’s a rational explanation. I was trying to protect Lance.” “How asinine! Rosimund can protect him far better than you ever will.”

  “Ah! Then you know?” “Know what?”

  What if she told her mother Lance was gay? Thayne would broadcast that throughout the solar system. Any mother would. Though sorely tempted to spill the beans, Pippa tried to open a back door to the truth. “I think Lance is sterile.”

  “So what?”

  “I mean impotent.” Pippa thought of Officer Pierce as she ran her second red light.

  “Count your blessings. You would have had carte blanche with the chauffeur.”

  This conversation was not going the way Pippa intended. “Maybe he’s neuter.”

  “Haven’t you left out castrated and a transvestite? How about gay as a pink flamingo?”

  “He might be that, too. Lance definitely might be that.”

  “Let’s not forget serial killer and pedophile.”

  Pippa realized she may have overplayed her hand. “Do you think I’m making all this up, Mama?”

  “Do not call me mother! Of course you’re making it up. Let me scrape a little more mud off my face for you to fling at that poor boy.”

  “Leave it on!” Pippa shrieked. “I don’t want anyone recognizing you.

  “It’s extremely uncomfortable.” “Believe me, chocolate feels worse.”

  Thayne sat in morbid disapproval as Pippa made an illegal left turn. “That awful Volkswagen is right behind us,” she said, finally appreciating the gravity of the situation.

  “Thanks. That’s very helpful.” The floor was beginning to burn Pippa’s bare feet. Roughly shifting into fifth gear, she tried to think of a way to ditch her pursuer, drop Thayne off, and get herself to class in the next ten minutes. Just maybe, if she could whip into the Happy Hour parking lot before the VW made that last corner, she might get away with it. They were only a few miles away.