by Ada Scott
“Um… Jace, this is my boss. Mr. Kinsley. Mr. Kinsley, Jace Barlow.”
Mr. Kinsley held out his hand again.
“Really,” said Jace, dubiously, still ignoring the handshake. “Well, I was just coming in here to apologize for having to leave the interview early due to some unexpected business coming up. I was hoping to reschedule so we could finish.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Kinsley. “I can have Lucile Norris reschedule to suit any time you’d-”
“I’m not talking to anybody but Kendall.”
Mr. Kinsley faltered for a second. “Are you sure? I mean-”
“What did I say?” asked Jace.
“OK, sure, of course. Kendall is free any time. Right, Kendall?” urged Mr. Kinsley.
I looked from one man to the other and back again. “Yes.”
“Good. I’m free on Saturday. I’ll have a car pick you up at nine a.m. to make up for the... inconvenience last night. Nine o’clock, sharp. The driver will be in touch to get your address for the pick-up.”
“OK. Thank you, Jace!”
“I’ll look forward to it, Kendall. Goodbye.”
For a split second he fixed me with a look that made me blush and pulled at those invisible ropes around my knees again, but then he turned to leave.
“Thank you for giving The Weekly Enquirer this opportunity, Jace,” said Mr. Kinsley.
“That’s Mr. Barlow to you,” said Jace, not even looking at him as he began to walk away.
Halfway to the front desk I saw Lucile waiting for him to pass with the hugest flirty smile on her face. Even from this distance I could see her top button was undone, revealing the stuff of wet dreams for a lot of the men who worked here.
“Hi,” she said, twirling her hair around one finger.
I could have sworn he muttered something along the lines of “get the fuck out of my face” without slowing down and I sighed dreamily like a schoolgirl staring at a boy band poster. If I had a set of pompoms I would have cheered.
Kendall
On the night I spent with him at Luc Monette’s, Jace had arranged a car to take me home. It was nice, some black Town Car with a driver who said not the slightest word about the way I looked and kept his eyes on the road as if his life depended on it.
On Saturday morning, when the driver called to say he was downstairs, I was expecting something like that again. Instead, when I walked out the front door, I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a full stretch limo parked at the curb, behind the old rust bucket up on concrete blocks that belonged to my noisy upstairs neighbor.
The driver, definitely a different one than the one who’d picked me up previously, looked up from something on his phone and quickly put it away.
“Ms. Brooks?” he asked.
“Yes?” My disbelief drew the word out to an absurd length.
“Good morning, Ma’am! I’m Thomas, I’ll be your driver today.” He opened the rear door and gestured inside with a gloved hand and a smile.
I stepped towards him as if he might squirt me in the face with water from a fake flower in his breast pocket at any moment. This had to be a trick.
“Good morning,” I replied on auto-pilot, stooping down to look inside the luxury car.
Inside was like Jace’s office in vehicle form. It oozed class and anybody could tell that no expense had been spared in even the most minor of details. I briefly owned a car back in Woodville before I sold it to help fund my move to Port Magnus, and it was probably worth less than one of the armrests in here.
There was a bottle of Champagne sitting in a bucket of ice, but no Jace sitting in any of the seats. I stood up straight again.
“Where’s Jace?” I asked.
“Right now your guess is as good as mine, Ma’am. That’s above my paygrade. All I know is that I’ve been instructed to pick up a VIP, take them to the AquaVell Spa, be at their service for the rest of the day when they’re finished there and to take them downtown at seven sharp.”
“Oh. That’s like ten hours from now. What am I supposed to do all day?”
“There’s plenty to do at AquaVell, I’m told, so that will eat up a big portion of time, I’m sure. I’ve heard people say they could spend a lifetime there. Other than that, your wish is my command and you’ll have to use your imagination, I suppose.” Thomas’ professional smile was unwavering.
“I… see.”
I’d been up late the last few nights, working hard to make sure that the next time I saw Jace I was prepared to get the story I so desperately needed, and at the top of my game. This was throwing me off what little game I had. I felt like a sprinter poised at the starting line, only instead of hearing the starting gun, I was hearing that I was going to a health spa and being driven around in a limo with a bottle of Champagne for ten hours.
Unlike the hypothetical sprinter, I didn’t have any athletics commission to appeal to for unfairness. If I wanted to be in this race, I had to play by the ever-changing rules of the host nation.
Plus, at the end of the day, there were worse ways to spend ten hours. I stepped inside the lap of luxury and Thomas closed the door behind me.
We drove to the edge of town smoothly, the only hiccup being when the cork from the Champagne smashed one of the lights and spilled on the floor. Thomas consoled me through the intercom and said it happened all the time. I didn’t believe him, but I did down that first glass faster than I normally would have and felt a bit better.
I was only a sip into my second glass when we arrived at AquaVell. I remembered reading an article about it once, but there hadn’t been any pictures. Even if there had, I didn’t think pictures would have done it justice.
Set well back from the road with strategically placed water features, trees and other greenery, it was easy to forget just how close to the city we were. The facility had the outward impression of some southern mansion with a vast swathe of land around it, and I stared out of the window in awe.
As the limo circled to the front entrance around the most elaborate fountain of them all, avoiding the relatively small parking lot, I saw a red carpet laid out like I was arriving at a movie premier. Standing there waiting were a man and a woman wearing loose light-colored clothing and smiles bigger and more relaxed than Thomas’.
Thomas opened the door and I stepped out like Alice through the looking glass.
“Ms. Brookes, welcome to AquaVell. My name is Sonia, this is Sven, I’ll be your primary relaxation coordinator today,” said the woman.
“Hi. Where is everybody else? I read this was the most sought-after health spa in the state.”
“It is, but the venue has been hired out for the day, so there will be nobody here except yourself and the staff. We’ve never been hired out before, it’s not something that’s officially available, but I was told you made an offer we couldn’t refuse. So, it will be my absolute pleasure to get you started!”
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
“Well, somebody likes you! Follow me, please.”
“Can I take your bag?” asked Sven.
“No, I’m OK, thanks.” All I had in there was interview preparation stuff anyway.
Sonia led me through the doors that Sven held open for us, and then gave me a brief overview of the facilities.
“Through those doors are the changing rooms. Once you’ve showered, you can put on one of our bathrobes and exit on the other side, which will take you out into the area just on the other side of those doors. That’s essentially the main hub of AquaVell in there. From there you can choose from over twenty different relaxation rooms and spend as much or as little time as you’d like in any of them. If you come back through these doors, you can have anything you like from our onsite café over there, or down that corridor you can have a private massage. I’ll be at your beck and call if you’ve got any questions or requests, and nothing is too much trouble for you, Ma’am.”
I wasn’t used to anybody, let alone anybody older than me, calling me “Ma’am.” I
t was kind of surreal.
“Thank you. Can I… um… have a towel?”
“There are stacks of them in the changing room.” Sonia beamed.
“Oh, good then. Well, see you on the other side I guess.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
After showering and dressing myself in an AquaVell branded bathrobe, I entered what Sonia had called the hub. She was standing halfway between myself and a table sporting a pile of strawberries, a giant chocolate fountain, an assortment of light snacks and a fresh bottle of Champagne in a fresh bucket of ice, with a man behind it ready to serve it up. Dreamy music played over speakers I couldn’t spot anywhere and Sonia took a couple of steps towards me.
“Help yourself. Normally, food isn’t allowed in this part of the spa, but you can come and go into any of the rooms with anything you like. Personally, I’d recommend just drinking water. Some of the saunas are pretty hot and you’ll be sweating. The last thing you want is a hangover when you’re trying to relax.”
“Thanks, good thinking.”
I approached the table and the man picked up a kind of long fork in his immaculately-white gloved hands, which he offered to me. “Good morning, young lady. Can I recommend a chocolate-dipped strawberry? The chocolate is very fresh this time of year.”
“Oh my gosh! Yes please!”
An unsuspecting strawberry near the top of the pile was mercilessly impaled and drowned in chocolate within a few seconds. I let the excess drip off for a second before bringing it to my mouth and biting down.
“Mmmmm.”
I closed my eyes and savored the taste. The chocolate was rich, the strawberry was the freshest and tastiest I’d ever had, it practically burst with flavor in my mouth. When I opened my eyes, the man was nodding knowingly and was already holding out a new fork.
A second strawberry fell to my onslaught before I thanked him, picked up an ice cold bottle of water and let Sonia take me on a quick tour around the room where she described what I would find behind each door. At her recommendation, I started off in the Balinese Multi-Steam room.
As I breathed in the humid air and smelled the various aromas, I did my best to concentrate on the direction I hoped to take the interview in later on. Despite my best efforts, every breath I took only made me unwind more.
This room, with its randomly glimmering and wavering lights, was like a little world unto itself, where nothing outside even existed, let alone mattered. Eventually, I stopped fighting it and let myself stop worrying for the first time in the few years since I’d first hatched my plan to get out of Woodville.
I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t popular, I was going to fail and end up back with my parents, I’d never escape the small town again. Each one dropped away like a stone rolling off my shoulder and I let myself enjoy the silence in my mind, free from the self-doubt, the internal bickering.
By the time I ventured into the ‘hub’ again, I thought I might have looked halfway stoned, but the table of food didn’t entice me so much as sampling more of what AquaVell had to offer. I made my way to the Finnish Sauna and promptly drank the entire bottle of water, before exiting with sweat pouring off my face and a bright red flush.
Sonia laughed and led me to the ice fountain, where loose ice flakes that smelled faintly of lemons were piled up.
“Grab a handful and rub it all over yourself, there’s nothing like it after the Finn!” she said.
“Serious?”
She nodded sagely.
“OK.”
I scooped some up and took several deep breaths to pump myself up, before rubbing it on my neck and upper chest with a yelp. The contrast was insane, I could feel a bunch of ice flakes leaving cool trails between my breasts and heading lower.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I gasped.
“One more for the back!” said Sonia with another laugh.
I half screamed and half laughed with her when I dumped a load of ice flakes on the back of my neck and did a little holy-crap-now-I’m-freezing dance. My heart was racing when I took her next recommendation of the Turkish Hammam room.
“I’ll leave a fresh bathrobe and bottle of water outside the door if you want to just reach out and grab it,” said Sonia.
“Thank you so much!”
“My pleasure.”
Once I’d had my fill of that room, I reached out and pulled the fresh water and bathrobe in, changing before heading towards a door labelled “Meditation Room.” Sonia took my old bathrobe away before I entered.
Inside was a row of five contoured loungers, their surface made up of tiles less than an inch across. Soft music played over speakers as invisible as the ones in the hub, combined with birdsong. As I listened the track faded out and something that I assumed was whale song gradually faded in seamlessly.
Lights slowly changed colors, illuminating the mosaic art on every wall and breathing a new kind of life into it with every new shade. I couldn’t fathom how much painstaking effort it must have taken to create this room alone.
I had my doubts about how comfortable the loungers would be though, being made of hard tiles and all, but as I gingerly positioned myself, those doubts were dispelled. It was almost as if every contour was made for me, and the tiles were heated too. I was comfort personified.
My thoughts drifted randomly until I heard something in the music that wasn’t so relaxing. After a few moments I realized it was my own light snoring. My eyelids fluttered open and I glanced from side to side, relieved to find that I was still alone.
I slid my feet off the side of the lounger and hopped to the floor, surprised at how incredibly refreshed I was. Now I could understand what Thomas meant when he said people could spend a lifetime here.
Considering how wide-awake I felt, I worried that when I opened the door I’d find that it was already night time and I’d missed another interview with Jace, but everything looked the same when I squinted out at the brighter light of the hub again.
Everything except one detail. There was a woman who looked to be in her late twenties helping herself to some of the food on the table, and talking a mile a minute to the man there. Her face lit up when she saw me.
“There she is! Hi, Kendall!”
“Uh… hi. Do I know you?”
The woman put down her plate and glass of Champagne before quickly walking towards me with her high-heels tock-tocking on the ground.
“No, but you will! I’m Beth!” She grasped my hand and pumped it up and down enthusiastically.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Do you work here too?”
“Me? Nooooo. I’m your assistant for this afternoon, we’re going to have so much fun!”
“Assistant? What… what would I need an assistant for?”
Beth’s smile grew to a point where I thought I might have to call the Guinness Book of World Records. She held her hands out to each side as she twinkled her fingers and leaned back a bit, as if what she was about to say needed that little bit more room between us to fit it.
”Shopping!” she squealed.
Kendall
After a massage from a woman who looked like she could lift me over her head and tear me into two pieces, my ears were almost ringing from all the cracks and pops she managed to stretch and pull out of my joints. Combined with the various saunas, I was feeling more limber and alert, yet relaxed, than I had in, well, ever, actually.
I needed it, because spending time with Beth was like being driven around with a tornado. She had something to say about everything, and opened the fresh bottle of Champagne in the back of Thomas’ limo within seconds of entering it. To my amazement, the dome light I’d shot with the cork earlier had either been fixed, or we were in an entirely new car now.
“You’ve really never heard of me?” asked Beth, pouring me a glass.
“Really, no. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. You will next year, I’m getting my own show. ‘Beth Knows Best,’ has a nice ring to it, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s great. What’s
the show about?”
“This.” She gestured at me, herself, the car, everything in general. “It’ll be about me taking the rich and/or famous out shopping and finding all the best stuff. We’ve got three episodes in the can already. I can’t tell you who’s in those episodes, but like omigod it’s so fantastic!”
“Congratulations.” I clinked glasses and took a sip while she downed half of hers. “What are we doing? This isn’t on TV, is it? Like… you don’t pay for things as part of the show, do you?”
“Me? No, are you crazy? Haha! I almost forgot. This is safer in your hands than in mine.”
Beth reached inside her purse and, with an introduction like that, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she pulled out a gun or something. Instead, it was a credit card of some kind. She handed over the little piece of black plastic.
“The limit on this card is so high that, for all intents and purposes, there is no limit. I mean, if we hit a million dollars then I’ve let the bubbly go to my head, know what I mean?”
“A… a million dollars?”
“Yeah, but we can do everything I’ve got planned and have blast for six figures,” said Beth.
“S-six figures?” I shook my head before I transformed into a parrot completely.
“Oh yeah. When Mr. Barlow contacted me and said you seemed like you hadn’t been in Port Magnus very long, but he wanted you to have the works, I knew just what to do. We’re going to a beauty salon that a friend of mine owns. Honestly, she’s a goddess with make-up, what she can’t do can’t be done. She’s got the best, the best, team in the country for everything else too.”
It wasn’t long before I was sitting in a chair, staring at myself in a mirror surrounded by lightbulbs, being poked and prodded by a woman named Becky who spoke almost as quickly as Beth. I could only follow about half of what they were talking about, with all the beauty-jargon they used.
My heart was racing with nerves, and a fair amount of excitement too. I’d never done much with my hair, just tidied it up a bit every now and then, and I’d never used much make-up.
