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 backat 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 goessplat, 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 hoursfree 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.
I tried to start on a new foot. “Hi,” I said. “Good morning.” Again, he didn’t even look at me. I understood. I would hate someone like me, too. He must have thought I was tremendously careless, someone who made messes and left them for other people to clean.
I wanted to look busy but wasn’t sure what else I could do. The phone rang twice, both times people calling from their rooms to ask what time the buffet opened. Deidre said that the casino had programmed them incorrectly and so the button that was supposed to connect callers to other places within the hotel was accidentally routed to the spa, and so most of the calls we got were actually meant for other facilities. The company required a very specific greeting, which I garbled with my cottony, hungover tongue: “Thank you for calling the spa. This is Lily, how may I assist you?”
In front of me, Luis wiped down the brushed steel table in the magazine area, pausing to pick up an issue ofGlamourand squint at the cover.
Maybe I needed to try a different tack. “Does this place always feel so creepy?” I asked him. “It’s weird, right? It’s just so bright and empty and stark. Like being inside a Josef Alberspainting. The one with the white squares.” No response. But that was wrong, too. I just sounded like more of a snob, some spoiled white girl babbling on about abstract art. I cleared my throat. “Look, I’m really sorry about this morning. I’m Lily,” I said. “I just started.” Still, he wouldn’t turn around. I gave up and simply watched him work the paper towel in small, slow circles.
I doodled on the edge of a spa menu as I waited for Carrie to come and tell me what to do next. Time was creeping by. 8:31. 8:35. 8:37. I turned my back to the desk and pulled my phone out of a gift certificate box, held it the way Emily had showed me the day before. No new texts, no missed calls.
