A Total Waste of Makeup (24 page)

“Yay,” I say happily, and tear open the paper. Inside is a shoebox with the Jimmy Choo logo.

“You didn’t,” I say, beyond excited.

“We did,” Dawn says, clearly proud of herself. “Size seven. The ones you were looking at last month.”

I pull them out, and they are stunning—open-toed high heels with rhinestones on the straps.

“Those are so cool!” George exclaims.

“Aren’t they?!” I agree, taking off my shoes right there in the lobby to put on my new Jimmy Choos.

“That’s why we need the pedicures,” Dawn says, admiring the shoes. “When I told Drew about them, he insisted we add pedicures to our day.”

I put them on, and they fit perfectly. They are truly the coolest shoes I’ve ever owned. “I love them.”

“I knew you would,” Dawn says. “I have to be honest, though—I had to wear them on a video shoot. The wardrobe person gave them to me for half off at the end of the day.”

“Jimmy Choos half off are still twice what I spend on your birthdays,” I say happily, taking them off to put my tennis shoes back on. “These are going to be perfect for tonight.”

“Together with your black silk skirt…,” Dawn says.

“I’m not sure about that skirt,” I say quietly, knowing I’ve already lost this battle. “It’s kind of tight on me….”

“And that red wraparound top,” she continues, deliberately ignoring my “too tight” comment. “You will look divine.”

George finishes typing on his computer. “Okay, your herbal baths are at eleven, and the rest of your treatments begin at the top of every hour at noon, one, three, and four. Please go to the quiet room five minutes before your treatments begin, and your therapist will come for you.”

“Thank you,” we both say.

“We encourage you to spend the next hour enjoying our facilities. We have a whirlpool, sauna, and steam room, and you’re welcome to use any of those for as long as you like. Would you like someone to lead you in, and give you a tour?” George asks us.

“No,” Dawn says, opening the double doors to the spa. “I’ve been here before. I can show her around.”

“Great!” George says, and hands us two keys with little ropes on them. “Here are your keys. Lockers forty-six and forty-seven.”

We walk through a hallway, and the sounds are hushed. There is a fountain up ahead of us, gurgling soothingly while quiet music plays in the background. The hallway is kind of cold, but the atmosphere is relaxing.

“I think that’s called the waiting room,” Dawn whispers. “It’s the only place where both men and women are allowed.”

We turn left and head to our lockers.

“That’s the quiet room,” Dawn says, pointing to a bunch of overstuffed leather chairs. “You go there right before your appointments and read magazines.”

I am starting to feel cold, but then Dawn opens the door to the women’s locker room, and a whoosh of moist heat envelopes me.

The large locker room is painted in a soothing tone of beige. We walk to the locker area and find our lockers. I open number 46. Inside is a beige robe and plastic slippers.

“The steam room is right there,” Dawn says, pointing behind us. “Sauna’s next to that.”

We both take off our clothes and put on our robes.

I feel weird being here. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s being naked in front of all these women with perfect bodies. I feel like I should have a swimsuit on or something.

And there are “assistants” all over the place: girls who are cleaning up, handing patrons towels, stuff like that. I’m an assistant. I feel like a fraud letting these girls wait on me.

“The Jacuzzi’s over there,” Dawn says, pointing. “I say that’s where we start.”

We head over to the Jacuzzi area, which has two Jacuzzis surrounded by beige cement urns filled with washcloths in ice, and dry beige towels. The walls are painted to look…I don’t know, Greek, maybe? Paintings of cracks and urns. Maybe Italian.

It would help if I had ever been to Greece or Italy.

Dawn puts her robe on a hook, so I follow suit. One of the Jacuzzis has two women already lounging in it, so we jump into the other one.

I sink into the Jacuzzi, lean my head back onto a folded towel, and try to relax. After a minute or so, I have to say, I’m starting to feel better.

“So,” I say to Dawn as I sink farther into the water to let the bubbles jet against my neck. “Did you know Drew’s parents were coming to the party tonight?”

Dawn’s eyes are closed as she talks. “Yeah. He called me this morning.”

“You okay with that?” I ask.

She shrugs and opens her eyes. “I don’t like meeting parents. Actually, I’m okay with it once they get to know me. But I hate that first moment of ‘Oh my God, she’s black.’ They never say anything, so it’s just this look of shock followed by not bringing it up for ages.’”

I roll my eyes. “They’re not going to think that,” I insist. I’ve heard this argument from Dawn a thousand times, and I think it’s ridiculous.

“Yes, they are,” Dawn assures me. “But that’s okay. Most people get past it fairly quickly.”

I want to say more, but she closes her eyes again, and I know the subject is closed.

One of the women in the other Jacuzzi yells
Ssshhh,
so we decide to be quiet for a while.

Which gives me some time to obsess about Jordan.

I checked my e-mail from Drew’s house this morning, and he hadn’t sent anything else since last night. Nor had he received my apology e-mail yet.

Rats! I could be on the beach with him today, and instead…

“Grab me a washcloth, will you?” Dawn says.

I take a washcloth from the ice urn, hand one to her, take another for myself, and put it on my forehead. Aaaaahhhhh…This is pretty relaxing.

Maybe I could get used to this.

We spend the next forty-five minutes in and out of the Jacuzzi, and frankly I could have gone home happy just with that.

But then our official spa day begins. We go into a room with a large bathtub on each side. I get into the tub on the left, and Dawn the tub on the right, as two women run the water for us.

My woman asks if the temperature’s good. I say yes, and she smiles, and pours some sort of mud mix (I don’t know what they call it) into my tub. She swirls it around in the tub, and I get in.

Once again, I feel weird. I’m really not comfortable with people waiting on me. But I do like my bath; it’s warm and smells heavenly.

The women leave, and dim the lights. I close my eyes, relax, and sink farther into the tub.

“Bet you never thought you’d be taking a bath with me,” jokes Dawn.

I laugh. “Yeah, well, you’ve met my parents, so I guess we’ve moved to the next level.”

Dawn giggles a little. “You’ve met them. Are Drew’s parents as nutty as yours?”

“I’d like to think no parents are as nutty as mine. You know, you could see this as quid pro quo—you meet his parents, he’s got to meet yours.”

“Yeah,” Dawn says dubiously, “that would work if I had told them about us.”

“You haven’t told your parents about Drew?!” I say, maybe a little too loudly.

“Ssshhhh,” Dawn says, lowering her voice. “We don’t want to be shushed again.”

“But why not?” I ask.

“Because we’ve only been dating a week?” Dawn says in a sarcastic “answering in the form of a question” tone.

“Yeah, but…” I grasp for something else to say. “I don’t know. I just thought you guys were really clicking.”

“Oh, we are,” Dawn says, closing her eyes and relaxing her neck against a bath pillow. “But, you know, I’m not sure where this is going. And, until I do know, I don’t want it around my old neighborhood that I’m dating a movie star.”

“I guess…,” I say, wondering why that would be such a bad thing.

We’re both silent for a few minutes, just enjoying our warm baths. Actually, that’s not true. I’m not enjoying the bath right now. I’m worried that if Dawn’s not telling anyone about Drew, she’s not serious about him, and he’s going to get hurt. I know Dawn, and I love her more than anything. But she can sometimes go through men faster than I go through bottles of shampoo.

Or donuts.

Well, okay, nobody goes through men as fast I go through donuts, but shampoo. Definitely shampoo.

I finally decide to broach the subject again. “But you do like him, right?”

“Hmm?” Dawn says, opening her eyes again. I think I woke her up. “Yeah, I like him a lot. He’s a good person. And really sweet, and adorably cute. It’s just, you know, there are issues.”

I shouldn’t ask. I should just let it go. It’s none of my damn business. “What kind of issues?”

“Hey, come on, every time I’ve ever seen Drew, there are women throwing themselves at him. Who needs that kind of aggravation? Besides, he’s your boss.”

“Yeah, but…” I can’t think of a comeback. “I mean, I understand, it is a pain that women are always all over him. But, you know, you can’t really blame
him
for what they’re doing. And, as for him being my boss…I mean, you guys are already an item, right? So, you know, that train has left the station.”

Dawn gives me this look like,
Yeah, I guess you’re right
. But I know she doesn’t completely believe me.

I decide to let it drop, and relax in my tub to obsess over Jordan.

At five minutes before noon, the two of us head to the “quiet room” and I sit in a big leather chair and pick up a woman’s magazine while I wait for my massage.

I look at the cover, where a beautiful twenty-something has had her teeth whitened via computer, her body stretched via computer, and the flyaways in her hair airbrushed away.

I think even I would look good if you ran me through a computer.

Anyway, on the cover is an article that tells me, “Yes! You can finally change your body!” which is diagonal from the article stating, “Sorry supermodels—men on why they love us as is.”

I put down the magazine, shut my eyes, and try not to obsess over Jordan.

“Charlize,” a woman says from the doorway, and I can tell everyone’s looking around for Charlize Theron. Nope—just me. I get up in my robe and follow the woman through a hallway.

An older, tiny Asian gentleman says, “Charlize?” and I am already dreading saying I had no preference between a man or a woman therapist. I should have said, “I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman—but not a Yoda.”

The gentleman brings me to a room with lilting Asian music like you sometimes hear in yoga class. (Yes, I’ve been to a yoga class. Once.) He asks me to disrobe, lie on the massage table, and put the sheet over me. Then he leaves.

I throw off my robe and climb under the sheet. The man comes back in, and begins my massage.

Ouch!
It hurts like hell. But it’s a good “ouch,” and after my last few days of no sleep, I fall asleep immediately.

He wakes me at some point and asks me to turn over, under the sheet. I do, and he begins rubbing the tops of my legs.

Aaaahhhh…And, within a minute, I’m out cold again.

The masseur wakes me again to tell me the massage is over. As far as I can tell, my massage lasted three minutes, and I slept the rest of the time. But I must say, I feel so much better. I feel energized—ready to take on the world.

Well, ready to take on Jordan, anyway.

The man leaves for a moment to let me put my robe back on in privacy. Then he comes back and leads me back to the quiet room, where I am to wait for my next session—something called an Emilee’s Intrigue.

I don’t see Dawn, so I get back into my chair, feeling beyond wonderful, and pick up another woman’s magazine. There’s an article called “Orgasm Do’s and Don’ts: Make Him Go Wild For You.”

I just can’t motivate myself to read it. I’m so relaxed right now, it seems like too much work.

A middle-aged woman with a British accent calls my name, and it’s off to my Emilee’s Intrigue.

Once again, the therapist leaves the room to allow me to disrobe in privacy. Only this time, I get on my tummy and don’t bother to pull the sheet up.

She comes back in and, in her British accent, cheerfully asks, “Have you had an Emilee’s Intrigue before?”

“No,” I admit. “Actually, until today, I had never even been to a spa.”

“It’s pretty fantastic, isn’t it?” she says. “I gave my mum a spa day as a gift recently. She thought it was silly at first, but ended up loving it. Now, what I’m going to do is give you a massage, but I’m going to combine it with heated rocks placed on pressure points around your body….”

“Oh, I already read about it in your menu,” I say. “It sounds great.”

I get yet another massage, only this time there is heat involved, and man, I’m feeling so wonderful.

I’ll admit, when we moved on to putting eucalyptus leaves all over me, I felt silly. But then the steam from the hot towels hit, my sinuses cleared up immediately, and when she started massaging my scalp, I fell asleep again.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh…

A little over an hour later, I went back to the locker room, where I had forty-five minutes to wait for my next session, the “Hunter’s Retreat.”

I don’t remember having felt this relaxed and happy in my whole life. I’m telling you, my mother could be here with me, and I’d still be relaxed.

Okay, maybe not. I mean, they don’t do miracles.

I decide to slip into the steam room, which also smells like eucalyptus—I think. Well, it smells good, anyway.

I lay a towel down on the wooden bench, and lie down on top of it.

Dawn walks in about a minute later and lies down on the bench across from me. Neither of us say a word. All is peaceful in the universe.

Until a minute later, when a woman in a towel swings open the door and yells, “Men are assholes!”

I look over at Kate as she storms in. “How did you know we were in here?”

“I didn’t. I’ve been walking from room to room, making that statement,” Kate says, taking her towel off and laying it on a free wooden bench. “And not one woman disagreed with me. As a matter of fact, several women told me if I couldn’t find you guys, I was welcome to join them and commiserate.”

Dawn squints to see Kate through the steam. “Did you make it through your show okay?”

Kate lies down on the towel. “I did better than okay. I opened my show with a new political topic: Male politicians: How are these fuckwits still in power? You should have seen the boards lighting up with callers.”