The restroom was unisex: a one-seater. I opened the window, an old-fashioned crank type, and inhaled fresh, moist, pine-scented air. I closed my eyes, did some yoga breathing, and listened to the sounds of women calling to one another about where they were going: massage? hot pool? aerobics?
Why, this might as well be camp, right?
I had loved camp. I’d gone to the same one on Cape Cod for four years, from age seven to twelve. I’d done swimming and boating, and when it rained, arts and crafts, where I’d made lanyards in every shade of the rainbow. There’d been lots of rib-sticking food, too, and with all the activity, you were always ravenous for it. This was like that, I said to myself, breathing deeply. And the wedding tomorrow evening? Why, I was just fixing a really big dinner for all the campers, who’d be dressed up in costumes.
With my new positive attitude firmly in place, I reached to close the window, and saw Jack hustling off toward the hiking trails, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Apparently he’d had enough of both Charlotte and Victor.
Okay, but I was being positive. I straightened my back and stepped out of the restroom, where I immediately came face-to-face with a thin, black-haired woman who’d had such a bad face-lift—tight skin, eyes pulled back—she looked like a cat who’d learned how to stand up.
“Didn’t you flush?” she demanded.
“Uh, I was just using the, uh, window.”
She tsked, pulled open the door of one of the other restrooms, and slammed it behind her. Guess she and I wouldn’t be sharing s’mores tonight!
I hustled into the dining room, where one of the staff members was giving a talk to a group of women. Charlotte and Victor were waiting for her to finish, and this appeared to make the speaker nervous.
“Gold Gulch Spa,” the tour-group leader said, flicking her eyes over to Victor, who made a circling motion with his hand to hurry her along, “was at various times a mining camp, a hot springs retreat for the wealthy from Denver, who would make the horse-and-buggy trek before there were roads—”
“All right, Isabelle,” Victor Lane interrupted. “Could you please take the ladies out to the hiking trail that leads up to Mount Red-tail Hawk? I’m sure they’d enjoy that. I mixed up a batch of smoothies about twenty minutes ago. Why don’t you pour them now so the ladies can have smoothies for their walk?” The ladies murmured their appreciation. “When you get halfway up the mountain, you can give them the background on the spa. Here’s the key to the Smoothie Cabin.”
“Yes, Mr. Lane,” Isabelle replied with alacrity. Thin, fine boned, and what my mother would have called “interesting looking” (which meant, not really pretty), Isabelle was about twenty, had thick bunches of curly red hair, and freckles everywhere. “This way, ladies, to the Smoothie Cabin. How do fruit smoothies sound?”
It sounded pretty darn good, apparently, because I wouldn’t have thought that many overweight women could move so quickly.
“We use less than half this space at any one time,” Victor began, sweeping his hands to indicate the huge dining room. “We give our clients lots of individual attention, so the spa accommodates no more than sixty-five weeklong clients at a time, plus staff. We average between ten and twelve day-spa clients, every day except Sunday. On Sunday, we clean the rooms and get ready for a new group of guests, who arrive on Monday morning. So a Sunday wedding is perfect.”
The room contained a collection of extremely large round tables, each of which was surrounded by eight chairs. “We’ll have ten of these moved out, with just enough set up for Billie’s guests. Then we’ll save this side of the dining room for the head table….”
And on and on he droned. He seemed to have thought this out fairly well for someone who had just been asked to have the wedding and reception at the spa. Maybe he’d done it before. I certainly hadn’t heard of Victor giving parties out here, but after all, he used to be a caterer, so maybe this kind of thing came easily.
“But, Victor,” Charlotte protested, “are you sure all these women will be completely gone by Sunday morning?”
I couldn’t help smiling. Maybe she’d noticed how quickly they’d all repaired to the kitchen in search of “smoothies,” which was the term health foodies used for “milk shakes.”
“I absolutely promise,” Victor reassured her. “And I’ve already lit a fire under our staff, saying they have to be done cleaning the whole place by lunchtime, otherwise they don’t eat!”
Great. Starving the staff didn’t usually work as a motivator. Maybe I should see if I could hire a couple of extra cleaning people—
“Oh, Victor,” Charlotte said flirtatiously. “You’re such a card.”
“Well,” Victor continued, all smiles now, “I suppose you have your servers lined up, Goldy?”
Oh my God, the extra servers! I’d forgotten. I said, “I have six servers lined up, Victor. But that was for a hundred people, and Billie has invited an extra fifty—”
“Oh, dear, what a mess,” Charlotte murmured.
“Not to worry, Charlotte dearest.” Victor had that oily way of speaking that reminded one of Uriah Heep. “I will arrange for extra—”
“Mother!” came an all-too-familiar shriek. Billie Attenborough, pulling Dr. Craig Miller, stomped into the dining room. Did Craig Miller have any hobbies besides Billie? This being Saturday, shouldn’t he be playing golf or tennis or being a good Coloradan and hiking up a mountain? Somehow, I doubted Billie allowed Craig to do much of anything in his spare time except take care of her.
Billie was wearing a flaming-red pantsuit, which I thought fit her mood, if not her figure, to a T. “How could you come out here without me?”
“Sweetheart, I thought you’d want to sleep—”
“And how was I supposed to sleep with someone dinging on the doorbell?”
“Well, that was Jack—”
“Jack, huh?” Billie said. “Where is he? I’ll ring his bell for him!”
“Billie dear—”
“So, you’re here,” Billie said to me, lifting her dimpled chin.
“Your mother requested my presence,” I said, trying to keep the defensiveness out of my voice.
“And I suppose you’re charging us for your time?” Billie’s eyes blazed at me.
Come to think of it, that wasn’t a half-bad idea.
“Billie, my sweet,” Craig Miller began, pushing his mop of dark curly hair out of his face with his free hand, “Goldy has been more than generous with you, for numerous extra hours of planning.” He held up his hand when she began to interrupt him. “And your mother has been the soul of kindness—”
“What about me?” Victor Lane’s high-pitched voice caught me off guard. “Got any kind words for me, Doc?”
Craig Miller actually laughed, a wonderful snuffling noise that made me smile. He wore a navy polo shirt and khaki slacks, looking casual, relaxed, and not at all worried about the upcoming nuptials. Well, if he was relaxed about it all, he was the only one present who was. “How about,” Craig addressed Victor, “if the two of us guys let the women work things out in here?”
“Great idea,” agreed Victor Lane, smoothly following Craig Miller out of the dining room.
I wanted to scream, No, no, don’t leave me here with the Harpies! But I didn’t. Plus, we hadn’t exactly worked out the flow issues.