“ ‘Rather upsetting,’ hell,” the lean, muscular man cut in. “It was damn upsetting. Fred had no right to search our rooms. The brochure guaranteed our privacy would be strictly respected. I wouldn’t have signed up here otherwise.”
“Yes, that’s the only reason I came to the center,” the stylish young woman said, “because it promised our privacy would be guarded stringently.”
Quickly, I matched the guests with their profiles. The lean, muscular man was Brian — wealthy entrepreneur, overweight since childhood, lost over eighty pounds in just six months, now so obsessed with diet and exercise that his doctor feared he’d endanger his health if his body fat percentage sank any lower. And the young woman had to be Courtney, a chronic plagiarist on final probation with her college, facing expulsion unless rehab made her change her ways.
“Damn it, Courtney,” Brian said, “don’t just repeat what I said. You do stuff like that all the time. Don’t you have any ideas of your own?”
“I didn’t simply reiterate your statement,” Courtney protested. “I used different words, in a different order. And I have plenty of thoughts that originate with me.”
“Is that so?” Brian said. “Then I guess it’s just a coincidence that during yesterday’s session, the so-called reflections you shared matched up almost word for word with what Martha had written in her Recovery Journal. I bet you’d gone into her room the night before, snuck a look at her journal—”
“Sneaked a look,” the gaunt woman said. “No matter what anyone thinks, sneak is not an irregular verb — never has been, never will be. Get used to it.”
So this must be Martha, the compulsive proofreader. I’d try to draw her into the discussion in a more constructive way. “Martha, how did you feel about the search?”
She looked up from her embroidery — a sampler, featuring cross-stitched words and an eagle soaring past a beautiful mountain. “I resented it,” she said. “Fred confiscated my Fowler’s English Usage.”
“I can see why,” Brian said. “You shouldn’t dwell on that stuff so much.”
“I don’t dwell on it,” she shot back. “I just like to browse through it for an hour or so before bedtime. It helps me relax.”
I tried to remember more details from her file. “As I recall, you used to be a copy editor — is that right?”
Savagely, she thrust her needle through the taut circle of linen. “I’m still a copy editor,” she said, “and a tutor. I do freelance work now.”
“She used to work for a publisher,” Brian put in, “but she was fired last year. She got on her co-workers’ nerves by correcting their grammar at staff meetings. I understand how they felt. It’s not much fun when someone keeps pointing out your mistakes.”
“Yes, their reaction is comprehensible,” Courtney said. “Nobody enjoys having their grammar corrected.”
Martha glared at her. “Nobody enjoys having his or her grammar corrected. ‘Nobody’ is singular. Good God! Don’t you know anything? And for your information, some people do enjoy being corrected. Some people are eager to learn, to improve themselves.” She let her needle rest a moment and fingered her bracelet — a clumsy, heavy-looking circlet composed of large red beads.
So far, the session was not going well. Maybe I should ask Courtney a question, to try to force her into saying something that was truly her own. “How are you enjoying your first week at the center, Courtney? Do you feel you’re making progress?”
She looked around uncertainly, then shrugged. “It’s all right. I mean, the massages are nice, the yoga’s okay, and I like the hot tub. As for progress — who cares? I’m only here because my parents talked the dean into giving me another chance.”
“Misplaced limiting modifier,” Martha muttered, but nobody paid much attention.
“Courtney plagiarized eight times,” Brian said helpfully.
Courtney smiled — a quick, secretive smile. “I got caught eight times. So the dean said he wouldn’t let me back unless I went to rehab. Or Daddy could’ve given the college another building, I guess. But rehab’s cheaper.”
“Not much cheaper,” Brian said. “They really fleece you at this place.”
“Unstated antecedent,” Martha said, and went back to stitching.
Courtney had gotten started now, and she wasn’t stopping. “I don’t see why my parents won’t just let me drop out. I mean, college is so stupid. You’ve gotta spend hours writing all these dumb essays. My parents just want me to go so I can get the right kind of job for a few years and then marry the right kind of man and go to the right kind of parties. But I don’t want that. I mean, ever since I was a kid, my mother’s been dragging me to garden shows, and horse shows, and charity luncheons, and it’s all so boring. I don’t wanna waste my whole life doing that stuff.”
“What do you want to do, Courtney?” I asked.
She sat forward eagerly. “I wanna be a personal assistant. I wanna go to Hollywood or New York, meet somebody famous, and, like, assist her. I could help her shop for shoes and purses, and drive her home from parties when she gets drunk, and bail her out, and stuff. I’d be perfect for that. I mean, I’m really pretty and really smart, and I’ve got great taste and a great personality. I don’t see what else anyone could want.”
“What is an interesting vocabulary?” Felix asked. He mumbled it; I don’t think Courtney heard.
“Well, lotsa luck, kid,” Brian said. “Your parents won’t give you one penny for a harebrained scheme like that. And you don’t have money of your own, right?”
“I will,” Courtney said, “as soon as I turn twenty-five and come into my trust. But that’s so old — who’d want a personal assistant who’s practically middle-aged? And who’d care if an assistant can write a dumb essay?”
The teacher in me couldn’t let that go unchallenged. “College can be valuable in ways you haven’t considered,” I said. “Even if you don’t think the skills and knowledge you’re acquiring are relevant to your career choice, you’re encountering ideas that can deepen your understanding of the world. And if you do your work honestly and independently, you’ll develop work habits and discipline that can help you succeed in any field you enter.”
She looked at me sourly. “Work habits and discipline. Oh, wow. Now you’ve got me excited.”
Brian looked ready to hurl back an insult, but the door opened, and Fred walked in, accompanied by a tall, fit, thirtyish man with a mass of curly blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a half-shy, half-flirtatious grin. I think we all gasped at once.
“Hello, everybody,” Fred said. “This is Roland. He arrived today, and he’s joining your group. I have to get going, so Leah can handle the introductions.”
I stumbled through them. Fred should have warned me, I thought. Both of my daughters have crushes on Roland. He’d first won fame as a stand-up comedian, a favorite on late-night talk shows. My daughters fell in love with him when he landed a role on a situation comedy, playing the easygoing coach of a hapless girls’ soccer team. And now he was set to star in his first movie, a romantic comedy pairing him with one of the most famous young actresses in Hollywood.
But during the last few years, most of his publicity had come from his off-screen antics — rowdy behavior at restaurants, shouting matches with directors, a reputation for missing rehearsals, bounced checks, disputes with the IRS, arrests for reckless driving. I wondered which of those offenses had brought him here.