Spa Read online

  Mildred sighed and returned the brochure to its envelope. But instead of condemning it to the trash basket under the desk, as she did with most advertising, she slid it into the top drawer. A spa might be just what she had been looking for.

  The next envelope she picked up smelled strongly of some cheap, musky aftershave. Mildred sniffed it and pulled a face. She knew the contents before she even slid the letter opener underneath the flap.

  “Regina, darling Regina, I love you. I have always loved you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world and I want to marry you and bring you home to my house in Cleveland.…”

  “Cleveland?” Mildred shook her head. “Cleveland. Do they really think when they write this that.…?”

  The telephone interrupted her thought and she tossed the letter into the garbage, picking the receiver up on the second ring.

  “Taylor residence. Mildred speaking.”

  “Hello, Mildred. It’s Bryan,” said a very weary voice. “Look, can you get down here right away? They’re at it again and I can’t get a word in, let alone stop them. They’re scaring the other models and I’ve only got an hour’s worth of good light left.”

  “Again, eh? Who started it this time?”

  “Who cares? I just want to get them away from each other so I can finish this damn shoot. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and I do have a deadline to meet.”

  “Alright, Bryan. Keep your lens cap on. I’ll be down as soon as I get off the phone and find a cab.”

  “Thanks, Mildred. I can always count on you.”

  “I know. And I can always count on them.…”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, Bryan. I’m on my way.”

  Mildred arrived on the scene about twenty minutes later. It was chaos.

  The wardrobe lady was busy picking up the remains of a rack of designer clothing that had been turned over and trampled on. Three of New York’s finest were trying, not too successfully, to keep the terminally curious off the set. And a horse pulling one of the Central Park carriages—Mildred couldn’t tell if it was part of the shoot or had just wandered into the middle of things—had just heeded the call of nature. This had caused the assistant set director to stop helping the wardrobe lady and begin calling for “A broom, a broom, doesn’t anybody have a goddamn broom?”

  Near the trailer that served as a changing room, two of the other models were crying and consoling each other in turn. And from inside the trailer the sound of raised voices could be heard. A minute later, the door flew open with such force that it banged against the side of the trailer and Bryan half-fell and half-slid down the four steps that separated it from the ground.

  “That’s it! That’s it! Let’s wrap it up. I’ve had it. Clean up this mess and go home. All of you. I can’t work under these conditions.” He was walking away from the trailer, waving his arms over his head, his Nikon bouncing from side to side, when he stepped into the pile of manure.

  He looked down at the still-steaming substance that had squelched up on either side of his butter-coloured Gucci loafer.

  “Horse-shit, how appropriate,” he said sarcastically, scraping his shoe on the pavement. Then he kept on walking until Mildred caught up with him.

  “Bryan?” She grabbed his arm. “What happened in there?”

  “What happened? You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you what happened.” He stopped walking and turned around to face her. “A Big Mac and fries is what happened.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  Bryan sat down on the edge of the fountain and gave an exaggerated sigh. “I sent a gofer out to get some food for the crew for lunch, so that we wouldn’t have to break and maybe risk losing the light.” Mildred nodded, urging him on.

  “Well, he comes back with McDonald’s. That’s fine. I mean, it may not be gourmet, but it fills the hole, right?” Mildred shook her head.

  “Anyway, everybody else digs in and then Regina comes out of the trailer and goes nuts. Seems Mommie dearest in there has never let her eat junk food. So the kid grabs a Big Mac and packet of fries and starts to eat. That’s when Belle comes out of the trailer and.… I don’t have to tell you the rest. You can read it tomorrow morning on Page Six.”

  “Oh, Bryan. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I knew I should have come with them today, but I can’t babysit all the time.”

  “That’s O.K., Mildred.” He patted the back of her liver-spotted hand. “Personally, I don’t understand how you can babysit them any of the time. Do you get danger pay for this, or what?”

  He stood up. “Anyway, I’ve got to get this lot packed up. We’ll just cross our fingers and hope the weatherman was wrong about the forecast. Have a talk with them, O.K.? Just in case there is some sun tomorrow.”

  “Alright, Bryan. I’ll go talk to them. Though God knows what good it’s going to do.”

  Mildred walked toward the trailer, being careful not to step in anything, and, after listening first to see if the battle was still raging, went up the steps and into—dead silence.

  Mother and daughter were sitting at opposite ends of the room, eyeing each other like two caged tigers. Belle was puffing furiouly on one of her ubiquitous Camels, but the air was blue with more than smoke.

  Mildred looked from one to the other. At nineteen, Regina Taylor was, as they used to say in her day, a real looker. The lustrous mane of blue-black hair which Mildred guessed was inherited from Regina’s father—whoever he had been—had become even thicker and more wavy as she had grown, while the milk-white skin and deep lavender eyes, which were no doubt a present from her mother’s line of Irish forebears, had lost none of their child-like beauty. She had a small, fine nose that tilted slightly at the tip and wide, generous lips, which, though obviously inherited from her mother, looked completely different in her long, oval face. She had grown tall and stayed svelte. She was, in short, everything her mother had planned for her to be, thought Mildred, as the girl regarded her warily from beneath the forest of her lashes.

  Mildred gave Regina her best exasperated look and turned her attention to Belle, who was sitting ramrod straight in her chair, ready to take on all comers. She stared Mildred right in the eye, and Mildred stared back.

  While her daughter had been growing lovelier over the years, Belle Taylor had been growing tougher. At thirty-eight she was a tall, powerful-looking woman, who had one of those bodies that some might describe as lush and others as overripe. She reminded her secretary of a sort of gone-to-seed Ava Gardner.

  But when you got past the fading sensuality, Belle Taylor was all hard edges and steel reinforcement. Mildred credited this to the fact that Belle had never married and had therefore never been subjected to the softening influences of love and wifely compromise. A fact which in itself was not surprising because Belle Taylor also had a mind like a steel trap and, over the years since she had first set the baby Regina on the road to stardom, she had not only developed all the business acumen of a robber baron but the charm, as well.

  By the time Regina was fifteen, the mother and daughter team were more than mere millionaires. And, if cracks had begun to develop in their relationship, it was still too soon to tell if they were serious or just the usual railings of a mother and her teenage daughter. Mildred suspected the former, and she had for some time been trying to find a way to pour some cement into those cracks.

  “Well, you two have really done it this time.”

  Regina looked sheepishly up at Mildred, who stood, hands on her ample hips, half-way between them.

  “I’m sorry, Mildred. I just wanted a hamburger like everybody else and.…”

  Belle interrupted. “And I’ve told you before you can not eat that junk. You’ve got to think of your face. Do you want to get pimples? Do you want to get fat?”

  “I just wanted to get something to eat, Mother. I was hungry. It’s not a crime to be hungry, is it?”

  “Then why didn’t you eat what I prepared for you?”


  “Because I’m sick to death of vegetables and tofu and whatever the hell else is in that plastic container over there.”

  “Listen here, Regina.” Belle took a deep drag on her cigarette. “If it weren’t for me taking such good care of you, you wouldn’t be one of the highest-paid models in the world. You would be just another sloppy, overweight teenager with spots all over her face.”

  “And you would have to go out and get a husband instead of bugging me all the time!” Regina clapped a hand over her mouth as soon as she said it, but it was too late.

  “So that’s the thanks I get, is it? After all I’ve done for you, all I’ve sacrificed for you.…”

  “I think I’ve more than paid you back for being born, Mother.”

  Belle stood up. Things were beginning to heat up again. Her face was becoming the same colour as her flaming red hair.

  “You sarcastic little bitch!”

  Mildred stepped into the fray. “That’s enough, Belle. And you, Regina, apologize to your mother this instant.”

  Regina mumbled a reluctant “I’m sorry.”

  “You two really take the cake.” Mildred shook her head, grey curls bobbing like bubbles. You are so intent on needling each other that you don’t see what you’re doing.”

  Belle sat down and started to speak, but Mildred cut her off.

  “You pay me to take care of you, and that’s just what I’m going to do, before you manage to destroy each other.”

  Regina started to protest, but Mildred held up her hand. “Sssshush! Now, the way I see it, you two have a lot that needs to be said. You have to get it all out in the open. Not by scrapping like you do, but by honest, serious talking. You need to go somewhere away from the work, away from New York, and settle your differences while you still can. And I think I know just the place. There’s this new spa.…

  Chapter 6

  When Cathy Stewart had decided to go shopping, she headed straight for the local mall. Fortunately, it had both a Saks and a Macy’s. But, unfortunately, neither of the ladies’ wear buyers of either Saks or Macy’s had seen the recent Vogue layout and read how fat women could be fashionable too.

  After three hours of shopping, the only things that Cathy had found in her size were polyester pantsuits which were designed to cover the offending areas in the least comfortable and most unattractive fabrics.

  Maudlin mauves, geriatric greens, and boring beiges had accompanied her into the various change rooms until she felt that there was a giant conspiracy “out there” to force overweight women to wear a uniform which proclaimed, to anybody who cared to look, “I AM A FAT LADY.”

  Discouraged and tired, she took the twins for an ice-cream cone, thought above having one herself, decided Why the Hell Not! and ordered a triple scoop of pralines and cream at Baskin and Robbins. Then she pushed the twins’ stroller out into the middle of the mall and sat licking her compensatory confection by the in-door fountain.

  Suddenly Jennifer started to shriek, and Cathy looked down to see Jeffrey mashing “raspberry ripple” down the back of her neck.

  “Oh, Jeffy.” She took a Handi-wipe out of her purse and cleaned up Jennifer’s neck and Jeffrey’s hands and then finally her own hands, and looked up in time to see two teenage girls on the other side of the fountain giggling. They stopped as soon as they saw her looking, which of course made Cathy think they were giggling at her—the poor fat lady with the bratty children. She sighed. Would she like to be that age again? That size? Wouldn’t she.

  “Come on, you two. Before you do anything else, I’m taking you home. I’ve had enough fun for one day.’

  She pushed the double stroller back through to the other end of the mall and headed straight for the car.

  After the twins had been put down for their nap and before Joey was due home from school, Cathy went into Michael’s den looking for something to read. Normally she would have steered a wide berth around her husband’s inner sanctum, because Michael didn’t like anybody “messing with his things,” as she had explained to the children when they wanted to know why this room alone was off-limits. But she had finished the latest Kathleen Woodiwiss, didn’t feel like turning on the game shows or the soaps, and Michael usually kept a good supply of magazines on hand to see how some of his agency’s ads were doing.

  She went straight to the magazine rack by the desk and pulled out a few of the most recent issues, perfunctorily discarding both Road and Track and GQ. Next came Destiny and Cosmopolitan, but the sexy young girls on their covers only made her feel more depressed about the day’s shopping, and she put them aside.

  Family Circle and Homemaker were next, but they joined the reject pile too. She didn’t need to read them, she was them.

  Toward the bottom of the pile she found the latest issue of Town and Country. On the cover was an attractive youngish woman, dressed in what was obviously a very expensive green satin ballgown, leaning against the pillars of an old plantation house veranda. The caption on the bottom left corner of the cover read, “Mrs. Beauregard Simpson Chase enjoys a breath of air on the veranda of her antebellum home in Atlanta.”

  “I’ll bet she does,” said Cathy out loud, and took the magazine back to the family room.

  Half an hour later, having digested the lives of Mrs. Beauregard Simpson Chase and the beautiful people of Atlanta, and having found out how the sudden burst of interest in polo was driving the price of a string of ponies almost out of sight, she reached the back of the book. She always read the ads, just in case there was anything she could talk to Michael about, though most of them were usually in black and white and not very interesting.

  But a sudden splash of color on page 236 caught her eye. Palm trees and beaches were the backdrop for a beautiful blond girl in a bright orange maillot. She was beckoning. “Join Me in Paradise,” read the banner. “Sexist,” muttered Cathy to herself, but she read the copy anyway.

  “The Spa at St. Christophe can give you the answer you’ve been looking for. Rest, rejuvenate, lose weight, tone your body. Whatever you need, we can provide it. Join us—in Paradise.”

  Cathy looked at the picture of the beckoning girl again. A spa. Why not? It might be just enough to get her started in the right direction. So she dog-eared the corner of the page the ad was on, and decided to talk to Michael about it right after dinner.

  Michael got home just after seven, earlier than usual. She heard him coming down the hallway and into the kitchen as she stood stirring a pot on the stove. He was whistling—something about everything coming up roses. He came up behind her, reached his arms almost all the way around her waist and kissed the back of her neck.

  “How’s my Bi … How’s my Cathy?”

  “Just fine, Michael.”

  “Kids upstairs?”

  “I put the twins down already, and Joey’s in his room watching reruns.”

  “Good. We can eat in peace. You want a drink before dinner?”

  “No thanks.”

  Michael went into the bar off the family room, came back a few moments later with a gin and tonic and leaned against the counter next to the stove.

  “Guess what?”

  “Whatever it is, it must be good news. You’re early and you were whistling.” She continued to stir, so that the cheese sauce wouldn’t get too thick.

  “You’re right.” He turned her around to face him. “Michael Stewart has done it again.” He paused until she looked up, a film of steam covering her rounded cheeks. “I got the Buckminister account.”

  “Really? That’s great. What’s the Buckminister account?” She turned back to the stove and took the pot off the burner.

  “You know. It’s the one I’ve been after for the last year. They’re the people who own those vacation time-sharing places all over the world, and I’m going to handle their advertising—exclusively. You know what that means?”

  “No, what?” She reached into the oven and the wall of heat hit her right in the face. She pulled out the casserole dish, set it on to
p of the stove, and closed the door.

  “It means, Cath, that we are going places. Exotic places. All over the world. Hawaii, Tahiti, Mexico. No more long, dreary winters. No sir. Your mother can look after the kids and we are going to have fun. It’s going to be warm tropical nights, sun-washed beaches.…”

  “Bathing suits.” She was draining the broccoli water into the sink.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Dinner’s ready.’” She turned around and set the dish of broccoli on the table and poured the thick, creamy cheese sauce over it.

  “Mmmmmm, smells great. I’m starving.”

  “Me, too.” She sighed, and started ladling out the casserole.

  After dinner, Michael went into the den and Cathy checked on the children and then cleared the table. She put the dishes in the dishwasher, scraped the last of the chocolate icing off the cake plate with her finger and then, armed with a fresh gin and tonic for Michael, she joined him in the den and placed the drink beside him.

  “Michael?”

  “Hmmmm?” He did not raise his head or lower the newspaper, but she plowed on anyway.

  “Michael, I’ve been thinking.”

  “Hmmmmm?” He turned the page and continued to read.

  “Michael, I’m trying to talk to you!”

  Reluctantly, he lowered the paper.

  “Yes, Cathy, I can see that. And I am trying to read. This is the only quiet time I get all day to read the newspaper. Now, what is it?”

  She brought out the copy of Town and Country and, opening it to the page with the ad for the spa, placed it on his lap.

  “Read the ad.”

  Michael adjusted his gaze downward and scanned the contents.

  “You want to buy a Shar pei?”

  “Not that ad. The one about the spa.”

  “Cathy, I don’t have to read it. It’s my account. I know what it says. What I don’t know, is why you are so interested.”