SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1202 A.M. PST
SOMEWHERE OVER NUNAVUT, CANADA
ANTONIA
The first-class cabin of the plane was dark except for the overhead light above Antonia’s pod.
The rest of the passengers—including Ted and Charlotte (who Antonia suggested they upgrade in a shallow attempt at fixing things)—were sleeping.
But she was wide awake reading over the answers to the guest profiles for next week’s episodes.
Antonia had trouble sleeping even when conditions were perfect, so there was no use in her trying right now, when she was surrounded by strange sounds and strange people.
Over the past few months, she’d grown accustomed to taking a Lorazepam before bed.
‘Grown accustomed’ sounded so much better than the reality, which was that she was dependent on them.
They knocked her out for a solid eight hours, which had put an end to the debilitating insomnia she’d been suffering from.
She knew at some point she would have to taper off, but right now was definitely not the time. Not with so much at stake.
So, like the very serious, responsible professional she was, she spent her time carefully making notes on the guests who would grace their stage when they returned.
The first couple was Daxton and Brittany on yet another ‘My In-laws Hate Me’ episode.
Brittany’s parents hated poor Daxton, but only because he couldn’t seem to stop cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend (whose name was also Britney).
This had led to a horrible situation for Brittany, in which, if her husband called out her name during sex, she couldn’t help but wonder if he meant her or his ex.
Antonia might only have a total of forty-two minutes with them, but she was determined to make the most of every one.
Each episode, her goal was to be an agent of radical change in the lives of her guests.
Guests. How odd to have guests instead of patients.
But that’s what they were. She wasn’t about to diagnose them with a mental disorder (not that she would tell them about anyway), and she wouldn’t oversee medication or provide ongoing treatment.
Her mentor, the late Dr. Lila Abrams, would have been appalled at what Antonia was doing with her training.
Lila was a purist and to her, this would have felt like a gross abomination—the utter abandonment of confidentiality—speed-therapy with all the groundwork conducted by a team of junior production assistants (most of which had no formal psychological background).
The advice was generic, doled out in pithy catch-phrases the audience could easily remember. Trust is a must. Being there means being there. Talk to your partner, not about him.
And the books. Lila would have unleashed a tirade on Antonia that would have lasted for hours.
One size fits all. These are the secrets to happiness.
Hack your relationship. They were hacks all right, starting with the guest questionnaire that read more like an article in Cosmo than an actual therapy tool.
Top Five Things Couples Argue Over and How to Fix Them Forever.
In fact, that was the title of an episode they did late last year.
It had a higher-than-average rating because people love lists as much as they love the idea that something as complicated as a life-long partnership can be fixed between commercial breaks. It was all garbage and she knew it.
She forced herself to focus on Daxton and Brittany’s answers.
Based on the fact that both of their forms had been filled in using the same loopy, feminine handwriting, it was clear that Brittany had done her husband’s homework.
This said everything Antonia needed to know about their marriage.
A man too busy (or, more likely, too careless) to fill it in for himself wasn’t exactly going to be the type to care about his wife’s needs.
She imagined he bought gifts for his wife at the 7-11 on the way home from work, and that he was terrible in the sack.
Selfish and possibly a little rough, but she was basing the rough part on a Facebook post of the family printed for the file.
It was the two of them with their four children somewhere tropical with palm trees and the sun setting over the ocean behind them.
It was the sort of typical ‘look at us having a marvelous time being happy and perfect’ shot that people loved to share.
Their eldest daughter was standing in front of him and he had his hand on her shoulder, only it looked to Antonia like he might be squeezing too hard, as if some sort of struggle had just occurred and he was determined to get this picture.
There was also something about his eyes that made Antonia’s skin crawl.
Something nasty and cold. And his daughter, who looked to be about eight at the time, seemed close to tears even though she had a smile on her face.
The caption underneath said: Making memories that will last a lifetime.
More like making memories that would pay for some therapist’s family vacation in about fifteen years. And so the cycle would continue.
As to Brittany, her answers didn’t give the impression of a woman who was all that engaged in the relationship either.
Everything she wrote was generic, as if she’d searched the questions up online and just wrote down what she saw, which meant she was more than likely one of those people who just wanted the all-expenses-paid trip to Seattle.
Under relationship goals, she’d written: to strengthen our relationship so our children grow up in a happy home, learn how to communicate calmly, and learn about love languages.
(Love languages?! Very insulting. Wrong book.) Under best qualities of your partner, she wrote: excellent provider, charming, and intelligent, and under top three things that bother you about your partner, she wrote: when he cheats on me with Britney, how I feel caught in the middle because my parents hate his guts, and how he never puts the toilet seat down.
Antonia circled the one about the cheating. She’d have to dig into that if she was going to be any help at all. Although if she were honest, she’d admit that forty-two minutes might be enough time to tackle the toilet seat.
Even as she wrote it down, a voice in her head said, Ha! There’s no moving forward for these two. Her medical professional opinion was that Daxton was a dumbass, and Brittany was too, for having four children with such a loser.
She took a sip of water before she closed the file and opened the next one.
Her gaze fell on her own hand as she flipped the page, and she was shocked to see an age spot had appeared about two inches down from her ring finger.
It reminded her of her mother’s hands—deflated, etched with fine lines, and now the spot.
She should’ve started using sunscreen on them at the same time she had started using it on her face and neck.
The hands and the neck were dead giveaways to a woman’s age.
And here they were, about to spend a week on a yacht, her husband drooling over Mercy Bishop, the woman known around the world for being the embodiment of Marilyn Monroe.
Mercy was at least ten years younger than Antonia, and had an hour-glass figure that simply wouldn’t quit, despite having had three children.
She’d probably be lounging around in a string bikini while Antonia wore her faithful black one-piece with lots of ruching and a wrap-around skirt to hide her thighs.
Ugh, and then there was Charlotte—she definitely had a ‘beach body’ under her business attire.
She was young enough that she probably didn’t have a hint of cellulite, whereas Antonia’s thighs had the exact texture of cottage cheese.
A flash of rage came over her, surprising her more than that awful brown spot on her hand.
Antonia shook her head in disgust. She wasn’t supposed to allow such petty, superficial things to bother her.
She was supposed to be above all of that, and instead, here she was thinking like the wicked stepmother in Snow White.
Her thoughts flashed back to staring at Charlotte’s perfect skin a few weeks earlier, and she realized it was envy she was feeling.
Pure and simple. She knew envy was derived from an often-misguided belief that you would never have whatever the other person had.
But as a fifty-three-year-old woman whose husband had long ago lost interest in her, she knew the reality.
She never would have the skin of a twenty-something woman again.
She’d either have to come to grips with that or she’d wind up handing out poison apples.
An awful thought crept into her mind: Charlotte would get the first one.