Chapter 10 Lily
LILY
I WOKE TO THE SCREECH of my alarm, and as soon as I sat up I felt the lurch in my stomach.
Oh, I thought dully, as the bar, the bourbon came back to me.
I looked at my phone. I had dialed Matthew’s number five times.
I even called Ramona twice. Based on the call log, it didn’t seem like I had spoken to either of them: each call was between eight and ten seconds long.
I wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing or another humiliation.
I showered, smeared a little eye shadow on.
The swing of the vanity mirror in the bathroom made me dizzy as I opened it and rooted around for brushes, Q-tips, hair spray.
Even with makeup I looked clammy, pale. I heard Brett’s voice.
You wanted to start your own gallery, right?
I slunk out without ironing my blazer. When I started the car and backed out of the driveway, I wondered if I wasn’t still too drunk to drive.
IN THE parking lot I took another swig of Pepto-Bismol before stepping out of the car, and the taste of chalk and fruit made my guts twist. I hurried down the stairs and through the crosswalk to the circular drive that led to the main lobby of the casino.
The elaborate topiaries that flanked either side of the entrance had overgrown, become fuzzy and indistinct at their edges.
A lone gardener watered a patch of red impatiens, holding out the hose in one hand and scrolling through his phone with another.
As I passed him, I could smell the sweet, metallic scent of the water trickling from the hose, and it reminded me of my childhood: My father mowing the lawn while my mother planted in the garden, pulled weeds, mulched.
The softness and idyll of the memory was like a pastel drawing preserved under glass.
At the top of the drive, near the valet stand, a woman in Lucite stilettos was hailing a cab.
She wore a Lycra dress with cutouts that showed the notches of her ribs.
A long, thin scar ran down the back of her calf, and there was a tattoo of a peach above her left breast. She must have felt my stare, because before she turned to get into the taxi she stopped and blew me a kiss, then gave me the finger.
The man at the valet stand saw it all and laughed heartily.
I’m not a prude! I wanted to shout. I’ve seen things!
I’ve done things! I lived in goddamned New York City!
But I stayed quiet, and as I passed, the valet tipped his cap, gave me a smug little smile.
I thought again of Clara and Des, the things Emily had suggested about them. About Clara’s rounded cheeks.
I hurried down the long hall that led to the new wing, past housekeepers vacuuming neat stripes in the carpet and janitors emptying ashtrays into garbage bags, but when I got to the spa the front door was locked.
Through the glass, I watched as a man ran a rag over the top of the steel desk.
I tapped on the glass, but he didn’t turn.
I tapped harder. The man had turned and was walking toward the coffee table with all of the magazines when he saw me.
I waved like an idiot. He unlocked the door and opened it a crack.
“Hi, I’m Lily.” I pointed to my name tag, panting from my jog down the hall. “I work here.” He frowned. “Can I please come inside? It’s the beginning of my shift. I’m new and don’t want to be late.”
He stared at me warily for another moment before stepping aside so I could pass.
I walked as quickly as I could toward the back of the spa, where we were meant to clock in with our swipe cards.
I rooted through my purse as I walked—it was 7:29, and I couldn’t be marked as late on my second day.
I was still looking down when I pushed through the double doors that led to the back hall and smacked into something—someone—and we both went sprawling onto the floor.
Something cold and wet landed on my hand.
“What the fuck?” a woman’s voice said. “Are you insane?”
“I’m sorry, I was late. Are you okay? Please, let me help you. I’m Lily, by the way.”
“I’m Brittany and I don’t really give a shit. I’ll have to mix this mask all over again. Do you know how much that stuff costs? If Deidre finds out, she’ll eat me for lunch.”
“I’m really, really sorry.”
“I don’t have time for new girls running around like morons and then apologizing.
” I realized that the mask—a lumpy gray mixture—had gotten on my skirt and on the front of my blazer.
I tried to wipe it away but ended up smearing it into the fabric.
Was I just this person now? The one who screwed up all the time?
Brittany dropped a pile of paper towels over the spilled mud.
“I’ll get Luis to clean this up.” She vanished through the double doors and came back with the man who had let me in. Brittany pointed to the spill, and he frowned at her. She pointed back at me. He gave me a mean look before getting on his knees to assess the mess.
“You must be my new girl,” a voice said, from down the hall. I turned and saw a woman in a black dress. She disappeared into a doorway and yelled to me to come into her office. I looked back at the man, Luis, on the floor, mopping up the mud with paper towels.
“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” I asked. He didn’t look up.
I assumed that the woman in the black dress was the manager Deidre had mentioned: Carrie.
I hadn’t gotten a good look at her before, but I was surprised to see how different she was from Deidre: petite, with long dark hair streaked with caramel-colored highlights, and blue eyeliner smudged underneath her eyes.
When I walked through the doorway, she was eating a glazed donut and guzzling a blended coffee drink, mid-melt into sludge.
“Hi, I’m Lily,” I said.
“Hey,” she said. I extended my hand. She gave me a limp little handshake and turned back to her computer.
“Um, is there anything in particular I should get started on?”
She laughed. I smiled, more out of nerves than anything else, and she noticed. “Sorry, not you.” She laughed again and kept typing. “Just go make sure all the computers are on and unlock the door. I’ll be up in a few minutes to help.”
As I passed the dispensary, I could hear Brittany complaining about me to another technician. “And then this moron slams into me, practically breaks my tailbone, and it all goes splat, everywhere …”
“I don’t know where they’re getting these receptionists,” the other woman said. “These girls just fuck everything up. You should see my books for the next two weeks. Disastrous.”
I wanted to scream, I went to Vassar! I’ve sold art to buyers in sixteen countries! But I knew the inevitable question would be: How did you screw all that up?
I stepped behind the desk and had the feeling that I had been left to man a ship, steering the prow into a day I knew nothing about, with instruments I didn’t understand how to use.
The day before I had been so relieved to know I would have a few hours free from Deidre, her all-seeing gaze, but now I missed having directions, having rules.
What if a guest came? What if someone had a question?
What did I say if the phone rang? All that, and I was still feeling weak and disoriented from my hangover.
I wished I could step out of my body for a few hours.
I’d had that feeling often lately. I couldn’t stand being in my own skin.
As I waited for Carrie to come train me, I watched a woman wearing what looked like a safari guide outfit—bucket hat, khaki shorts, hiking boots, khaki vest with lots of pockets—make her way through the Swim Club.
She climbed into the bank of plants that ran along the edge of the dome and starting snipping leaves and branches, other times misting a plant with a spray bottle, cupping a leaf tenderly in her hand.
I was so engaged watching her that I didn’t see the woman approaching the spa until she had her hand on the door.
As she entered, I said, “Good morning,” sounding girlish, a little shrill.
The woman was petite, smaller than me, with thin blonde hair that was nearly translucent. “I have a wax appointment,” she said.
“Sure, the last name, please?”
“Greer. First name is Ellen.”
She was booked for an 8 a.m. I checked her in the way Emily had showed me, slowly moving through the series of clicks and keys, trying to pass off my hesitation as intentional—the measured, calm way someone who worked in a spa should move, should speak.
“Yes, Mrs. Greer, we have you with Brittany today for your Brazilian bikini wax. Follow me, please.” The spa offered four types of waxes.
According to Deidre, one finger-width in from the crease of your thighs was a touch-up.
Two fingers in was a standard bikini wax.
Three fingers in was a Brazilian, and they were doing something new now, she said, called an hourglass, which was two fingers down from the top of the bikini area.
It helped elongate your stomach and make you look slimmer.
I led Ellen Greer to the locker room and tried not to think of Deidre holding up six fingers side by side.
I couldn’t imagine starting my day by paying almost $100 to have a stranger rip off all my pubic hair.
It was the kind of thing I would have loved to talk to Ramona about—how violent beauty could be, how misogynistic, how cruel.
Mrs. Greer was petite, muscles toned with expensive barre and pilates classes, fat edited away by five-day cleanses, green juice, kale.
A woman who was constantly negotiating with her body, thinking of it as something to be punished or tamed.
While Mrs. Greer was in for her service, the man who had cleaned up the mud—Luis—came back to the front desk.