Chapter 22
After an hour of blissful sensation, our therapists brought us another tray of lemon water and cups and said we could take as long as we liked to just lie there. Seriously? I was thinking of overnight camping here, I was so relaxed.
“Are you ladies ready for your mud wraps?” she asked in a soft voice.
“Just so long as I don’t have to move,” Kimi answered. “I don’t think my legs work anymore.”
“Same here,” I chimed in.
“No, no, you just stay and relax, and your mud technicians will be in shortly.” She closed the door gently behind her.
Mud technician? Was that really a thing? I tried to picture the school aptitude test results coming back recommending “mud technician” as your career.
“Kimi, in your career planning, did you ever consider ‘mud technician’ as a career choice?”
“I can honestly say that I did not.” Her eyes were closed and her voice sounded sleepy.
Our “technicians” arrived several minutes later.
They removed stainless steel pots, essentially crock pots, from under the counter where they had been simmering like a bubbling cauldron of grey goo.
The ladies gently spread the thick mud up our legs, all around, then encased them in plastic wrap.
They moved up to our hips and abdomen, then finally our shoulders and arms, leaving only our faces free.
They said we could relax for 20 minutes while the mud from some exotic locale would pull yet more toxins from our tissue, then they left us alone.
I did a quick bladder check and was fairly confident I could last 20 minutes.
But if there was a fire alarm, we were toast. I wasn’t sure we could waddle to the door, let alone make it outside.
My face was pouring sweat by the time the techs came back and released us from our plastic prisons, gently scraping the mud off with sculpted jade stones to “stimulate circulation and lymphatic drainage.”
Then we were allowed to shower the remaining muck off and put our robes and slippers back on.
Shanice guided us to a table set for two on the mezzanine of the atrium.
An actual waterfall cascaded into a pool with bright fish and lilies.
Ferns springing from between the rocks and vibrant hanging plants gave the whole place a tropical feel.
Almost as soon as we were seated, a white-coated server brought us our lunch orders.
Large bowls of salad were generously topped with bright pink shrimp, garnished with avocado and mango with our dressing on the side.
There was a plate of fresh croissants and a plate with assorted fresh fruits.
Our server, a young woman, was just placing glasses in front of us, informing us that it was fruit-infused sparkling water.
I pushed my glass aside and leaned toward her with a persuasive smile. “Thanks, but we’d like mimosas.”
She seemed taken aback and stuttered something about cleansing and hydration, but I fixed her with a firm gaze and repeated, “We’d like mimosas.”
Clearly remembering that we were VIPs, she nodded her head and said, “Yes, ma’am, right away.”
Kimi leaned across the table and fist-bumped me. “Boss move, Eve. I can see why you are the deal closer.”
I smiled wryly. “It’s all about knowing what you want and not taking no for an answer.”
After our drinks arrived we clinked glasses and took big sips. “Ahhhhh,” we said at the same time.
Kimi forked up a big bite of salad and gave it a thumbs up. I reached for a croissant and critically tore off a bite, testing for flakiness, then let it melt on my tongue, enjoying the flavors.
“Pas mal,” was my seal of approval. “Not bad at all.”
“Oh, that’s right! I’d forgotten you’re French. Or part French. Didn’t you pull some kind of Frenchy shit when you met Jack?” Kimi asked, after another sip of her drink.
I chuckled at the memory. “Yes, I always put on a heavy French accent when I’m traveling so that people don’t try to strike up conversations with me.
And it happened that I’d already done that when I was seated next to Jack.
He was going to a funeral, and he asked me to go along as his emotional support animal, so I pretended to be his French girlfriend. ”
Kimi barked out a laugh. “That’s hilarious! He didn’t tell me that part. What were people’s reactions?”
I smirked at the memory. “The best part was when I was in the bathroom stall, and a posse of girls came in trash-talking me and saying how one of them was going to snatch up Jack as husband material.”
“No way!” Kimi leaned across the table, eyes wide. “What did you do?”
“I came out, smiled charmingly, washed my hands, then went back outside. Then I got Jack out of there pronto. He didn’t need to deal with the harpies while he was sad. And drunk.”
“Drunk? Jack almost never gets drunk. That must have been funny.”
“He wasn’t funny, so much as just…sweet.”
“Sweet?” Her eyebrows perked up in interest.
“Yes. It was too late to call my driver, and I didn’t want to call an Uber, so he offered that I could stay in his room for the night.”
“I’ll bet he did!” She bit into a strawberry with a wicked grin on her face.
I threw a grape at her, which she caught in her open mouth with ease, laughing.
“Nothing happened, Kimi. He was a bit drunk, but still a gentleman. Nothing happened.” I emphasized.
“Oooookaaaaay,” She drew out the syllables way too long, looking skeptical. “If you say so, Eve.”
She forked up more salad then said, “Say something to me in your French accent. I want to hear it.”
I sat up straighter, pulled my shoulders back and tilted my chin upwards. “Kimi,” I began, laying the accent on with a trowel, “eet is a lucky zing for Morgan zat ‘enry Cavill ‘as never met you.”
She laughed out loud. “That’s amazing, Eve! I love it! I think we should have a shopping date where you speak nothing but Frenglish.”
I nodded imperiously, but with a smile tugging at the corners of my lips. “Zat would be agreeable to me, cherie.”
I speared a bite of salad and chewed, thoughtfully. “You know, what I said when I first met you, about you being a Palmer girl, I am really sorry about that. It was just the first thing that popped into my head. And my mind was…elsewhere at the time.”
She grinned. “I’ll say it was. Somewhere in the region of Jack’s tonsils, I think.” Taking the last sip of her drink, then looking regretfully at the empty glass, she said, “No worries, though. I looked up the Addicted to Love video and it’s hilarious! Those women can’t even fake playing well.”
I turned around and held up my own empty glass. Mere moments later, our server came over with a tray bearing two fresh glasses.
Kimi picked hers up delightedly and took another big sip.
“I love the way you get things done, Eve. I think you’re my new best friend.
After Morgan.” She tipped her head back and forth consideringly for a moment.
“And Jack. He is the one who gave me the certificate after all. So, you’re my new 3rd best friend. ”
I laughed and raised my glass to clink hers. “To new besties!”
I chased the last of the shrimp around my bowl and stabbed it with my fork. I chewed it and swallowed it with more mimosa.
“So, tell me about you and Morgan. You met at Julliard?”
Kimi gave a small shrug. “Ish.”
“Ish?” I queried.
“Yeah. I never attended Julliard. Morgan and Jack were roommates. They met Chip on campus.”
“So how did you meet?” I persisted.
“Ok, so you have to understand, I grew up in a little town in Nebraska. Podunksville ,USA. All I ever wanted to do was play in a band, but there was nothing like that in Armpitsville. After my big brother graduated with some major yawn degree, he got a job in New York, and it just sounded so amazing. So, I begged him and my parents, and they let me come to New York so long as I stayed at his apartment.”
“What does your brother do? Not music?”
“Oh, Lord no, that boy’s about as musical as a plate of overcooked pasta. He’s in insurance. And if you ever need help getting to sleep, I’ll ask him about his job and record his answer. Just talking about it makes me sleepy. Or maybe that’s the drinks.
“Anyway, I moved to New York, worked my ass off in a bar serving handsy bankers, and found a band that played in a hole in the wall kind of place. I asked if they needed a bass player and they took me on. Didn’t even have me audition. That tells you the level of music they played at.
“So, I’d been playing with them for a couple of months and one night in comes the Three Musketeers. They sat at the back and were real chill, just watching us play. After the set, Jack comes up and basically says, ‘Your band is shit. We aren’t. Want to come play with us?’”
I snorted out a laugh. “That sounds like Jack. Mr. Tact.”
“Yup, pretty much. So, I went and played with them for an afternoon, and they said I was in. And we’ve been together ever since.”
“And did you start dating Morgan right away?”
She was just taking a bite of a croissant as I asked that and she coughed, “Nooooooo. Hard no. One of my life survival rules was to never date a drummer. And also, never date a fellow band member. That way only leads to nuclear level badness.”
“So why did you? Did he ask you out?”
“All the time. To an annoying degree. He just wouldn’t leave me alone, no matter how much I said no.”
“So, what changed your mind?”
“We were rehearsing. We were renting a crappy garage to practice in at the time. Anyway, we were working on a song that started with a drum riff, then bass coming in on five, but every time he’d mess it up, so that when I was supposed to come in, he was doing some double time drag triplet crap.
Like for ten times. We were all getting tense because the intro kept getting screwed up and I yelled that it was Morgan’s fault, and he yelled it was mine.
Jack called a time out. Said that he and Chip were going for coffee while drums and bass worked things out.
“As soon as they left, I turned to Morgan and let him have it. I told him he was a jerk and he was wrong. He just sat there with a stupid, smug smile on his face and said, ‘I know.’ And I said, ‘so why won’t you do it right?’ And he said, ‘I will if you go out with me.’ Even though he was a dick, I agreed, just to save the song.
The guys came back in to try again, and it was beat for beat perfect. ”
“So, what did you do for you first date?” I asked.
“You’ve met Morgan, so you know he is…like a giant.
I was worried that he was going to be all pushy and gropey and I wouldn’t be able to fight him off.
And I was worried that we were going to do something lame like go to a movie.
I mean, it doesn’t take much imagination at all to take someone to a movie.
And I was worried that if the date went south, that it would make the whole band dynamic awkward.
So, there was a lot riding on that first date.
” She stopped and said with a little curl of her lips, “But Morgan nailed it. First off, he surprised me by being a total gentleman. Zero handsiness. We took a bus, and he wouldn’t tell me where we were going.
Turns out it was the Brooklynn flea market.
Which was awesome. We poked through stalls of crap for like two hours, then we bought some dogs from a stand and had a little picnic, and then he went back and bought me a painting that I loved.
It was so sweet that he was paying attention to what I liked, and we had a hilarious time trying to get it onto the bus for the ride home.
The bus driver tried to tell us we had to pay a separate fare for the painting, but Morgan just grew a couple inches in front of him and growled and we got to go sit down. ”
“Oh, that’s so sweet, Kimi!”
“Yup,” she smiled and took the last slurp of her drink. “And we have that painting hanging over our bed.”
“So just one date and you fell for him?”
“I wouldn’t say that. But it was good enough that I said yes to a second date. And then a third. After a couple of months, I had him over for dinner at my brother’s apartment, so Owen could vet him and send a report back home. And then I moved in with him.”
“Wow, that sounds like it happened quickly, Kimi.”
She gave a small shrug and said, “When you know, you know. You know?”