"No, I'm fine, just fine."
"Tea? Coffee?" Even the easy questions sounded quizlike here.
"No thank you."
"Mineral water? Wine?"
"Wine would definitely be redundant."
The receptionist narrowed her eyes as if she thought Tess might be trying to slide a rude word past her. "You are new to us, yes? Then you must fill out a client card."
She handed Tess a clipboard with a questionnaire as long as anything a doctor's office would require. Tess perched gingerly on the edge of the backless sofa, one of those low-slung pieces of modern furniture that seemed to be designed for Candid Camera stunts. Only a person with steel thighs could rise from it with a shred of grace intact. Dutifully, she checked off a series of "no" boxes-pregnancy, medications, chronic pain-pausing only when she reached the lengthy portion on plastic surgery. She had not even heard of some of the procedures named.
Tess seldom gave much thought to what she wore or how she looked, but the checklist and the Velvet Frost's curled-lip inspection were making her self-conscious. Covertly, she glanced at one of the many mirrors in the room. She had a few freckles, souvenirs of a summer spent mainly outdoors, but her face was otherwise clear and unlined. Her hair was at an unruly length, neither long nor short, but that was the price of growing it out. Her makeup routine consisted of darkening her lashes and penciling a narrow line beneath her eyes to keep them from disappearing into her face.
True, her clothes were not particularly distinguished, not by Adrian's standards. She wore black trousers and a black T-shirt beneath a man's vintage shirt, a butter yellow Banlon with black stitching. Her one concession to adulthood was a newfound preference for expensive shoes and boots, but only because she had learned they were a good value, sturdier and more comfortable than cheap ones. Today she had on a pair of black cowboy boots, whose two-inch heels put her within shouting distance of six feet.
I yam what I yam, she decided, glancing toward the salon side of Adrian 's, presumably full of women trying to be anything but. Meanwhile, white-uniformed men kept leading women out of the "Spa" door, holding their charges by the elbow of their terry-cloth robes as if they were recovering from major surgery.
"Salmon and asparagus," one attendant whispered to his client, whose face was covered with a pale green goo that made her look as if she had just been smacked with a key lime pie. "All you want, but nothing else. Your… uh, urine will smell, but your skin will look fabulous. But only asparagus and salmon, nothing else for seven days, or it won't work. It's all about the salmon."
"Belly or Nova?" the woman asked, and Tess's head shot up at the familiar voice issuing from the green cream.
"Deborah?"
"Tesser!" her cousin crowed with pleasure, and Tess remembered too late that she was here under a semifalse name and thoroughly false pretenses. At least the old family nick-name didn't give her away. "Since when do you come to Adrian's?"
"Oh, I thought I'd start paying a little more attention to my appearance, get a manicure."
"Well, it's a start."
There was no malice in Deborah, although Tess had not always understood this. Her cousin simply lacked the usual filters: If a thought passed through her brain, it headed straight to her mouth. Tess had come to think of Deborah as sort of a walking James Joyce novel, albeit one narrated by a preternaturally self-satisfied matron. They had been competitive as girls, and even as adults, until they finally stopped to wonder what, exactly, they were competing for. They had chosen different paths, but not as a rebuke to each other. And they had the foxhole of family in common, a powerful bond.
Deborah peered into Tess's face. "Isn't this awfully far off the beaten track for you? I thought you never went outside the Beltway if you could help it."
"Yes, but everyone says this place is the best."
Her cousin smiled, happy to be complimented for her taste in spas. "It is, and it's convenient to Sutton Place Gourmet, not to mention a Starbucks."
"No caffeine," her attendant practically squealed. "Are you trying to undo everything we've done?"
Deborah giggled. She was not a stupid woman, and it was doubtful she believed that this young man had any interest in her beyond her lavish tips. Yet she clearly was enjoying their flirtatious shtick.
"Not even one mocha?" she wheedled.
"Decaf, no whipped cream," he decreed, and she nodded, as if his word were law, but Tess knew that her cousin would be clutching a venti with the works when she roared out of the parking lot. The Weinsteiri side of the family did not run toward sacrifice. "Now let's go make sure that Carlos does a fabulous job on your hair. Not so red this time. Something softer, a shade that sneaks up on a person. I didn't do all this work on your face just to have the Castilian wonder screw up the presentation."
"Have fun," Deborah called to Tess over her shoulder as she headed into the salon. "You ought to think about getting a seaweed wrap next time. Or a kosher salt scrub."
"Does that come with belly or Nova?"
But Deborah had sailed out of earshot, so all Tess's flippancy earned was a frown from the Velvet Frost.
"I believe Lana is ready now. You were lucky to get this appointment. She is our most popular girl." The voice thawed perhaps one degree. "I did not realize you were one of the Weinsteins. Is Deborah your sister?"
"Cousin," Tess said, feeling the lack of challenge occasioned by telling the unadulterated truth. "First cousin."
"Ah," the Velvet Frost said, and Tess could see her calculating: not one of the Weinsteins of Weinsteins Jewelers, just an impoverished twig from another part of the family tree. Tess's advantage was lost as quickly as it had been gained.
Chapter Seven
LANA WlSHNIA BALANCED TESS'S HANDS ON HER fingertips, clearly unimpressed. No rower has pretty palms, but even the tops of Tess's hands were unattractive, with short, nicked nails, ragged cuticles, and a few random cuts that she couldn't recall inflicting on herself. After a few moments of stony inspection, Lana took Tess's left hand and flipped it over, touching it the way one might handle a dead animal brought home by a faithful cat. Here the damage was far worse-a corporal's stripes of hard yellow calluses. Still, Lana said nothing, her face impassive.
The only consolation was that Lana's hands, while nowhere near as damaged as Tess's, were not spectacular. Her nails were blunt cut and unpolished, her fingers stubby and plump. Manicurist, file yourself.
"What do you do?" she asked, dropping Tess's hands into warm, soapy water. They were the first words she had spoken since they were introduced. Her accent was quirky-American, with a hard, aggressive edge, more New York than Baltimore. She had a broad, unsmiling face, and her heavy makeup made her look older than she was, assuming she was Natalie's contemporary. A single pockmark on her forehead indicated a poor complexion or a bad case of chickenpox, but heavy foundation covered any other telltale marks.
"Do?" Tess echoed. She preferred not to lie outright, but she also wasn't ready to tell Lana that she was a private detective, not just yet.
"To your hands. What do you do, that they're so beat up?"
"I row."
"What?"
"Row. On the water-I row a single scull." Tess couldn't use her hands, as Lana was now holding them both in the water, pushing them down as if they were a pair of kittens she hoped to drown. She rolled her shoulders and jerked her elbows, attempting to mime the movement, and succeeded only in looking as if she were having a convulsion.
"For exercise?"
"Yeah." It was easier to agree than try to explain that rowing was more for her head than her body or heart. There were a dozen activities Tess could do for endurance and strength training, but rowing was the only thing that brought her close to the kind of Zen-like state that others claimed to find in yoga and meditation. She had never loved it more than this summer, when she'd had to give it up for a few weeks. Sidelined after cutting open her knee, she had needed it more than ever.