Marcia Talley: Through the Darkness

“Dante hired me yesterday,” she replied.

At the mention of my son-in-law, my eyelids flew open and I stared at the ceiling where track lighting with pink bulbs suffused the room with warmth, making the walnut paneling-the best that Dante’s major investor, Phyllis Strother’s money, could buy-glow. Shelves surrounded a porcelain sink that was made, I swear, from an ancient Chinese bowl. With the exception of the exotic oils stored in dark brown bottles that ranged along the shelves, the massage room could just as easily have been the library of a corporate CEO, minus the executive desk and all the leather-bound books. And Paradiso had three more rooms just like it, each situated at the end of a short corridor-north, south, east, and west-off the spa’s focal point, a Roman-inspired Natatorium that featured an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

“Bravo for Dante.” If my hands hadn’t been trapped underneath the towel, I would have applauded.

Somewhere, a power saw screamed as if hitting a nail. Garnelle squeezed my little toe. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m still not used to all the construction, and that saw, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard.” She began again, working on my other foot. It felt so divine, I wished I had three feet to offer her.

“Do you think he’s going to make it on time?” Garnelle asked, referring, I knew, to the gala opening of Paradiso, scheduled for the following Saturday, barely a week away.

“He has to,” I told her. “The invitations are already out. Everyone’s RSVP’d, even the mayor.”

“So, who’s catering?”

“Nobody. Dante’s hired a chef, thank God. Frank Lesperance, a guy he knew at Haverford College.”

“Ah, yes, I think I met said chef when I went scouting for a bottle of water in the kitchen. He was checking out the walk-in freezer.” Garnelle patted my foot and covered it up with the blanket. “Except he introduced himself as François.”

“Viva la difference,” I said, thinking about the other new hire I’d just met, Wally Jessop, the nail artist. With a name like Wally, I expected somebody butch. Hah! Eyebrowless Wally of the gleaming scalp and multiple piercings would probably do a bang-up job on sculptured fingernails, I supposed, if he didn’t expire in a hissy fit every time the water in the pedi-spa got one degree hotter than 143. I lay on the table and wondered how long any spa could survive being staffed by a ragtag band of former classmates of a guy who was born Daniel Shemansky but always wanted to be called Dante. Just Dante. Like Cher or Madonna or Elvis.

Dante’s Paradiso . The spa had been a dream of my son-in-law ever since he dropped out of Haverford a year before graduation and eloped with my daughter, Emily, to Colorado. Out West, he’d studied massage as seriously as if it were nanophysics, then apprenticed at the Golden Door before moving east to the New Life Spa in the mountains of Virginia. There, his charm, impeccable manners, and talented fingers had developed such a following that it wasn’t long before grateful clients began urging him to open his own establishment. Some, like Phyllis Strother, putting their money where their mouth was. Paul and I had enough confidence in the enterprise to invest in it, too, although our piece of the corporate pie amounted to the size of a broom closet.

Listening to the sawing and banging going on outside the room, I wondered if Dante were regretting his decision to venture out so soon on his own. His talented fingers hadn’t touched a client for months, except to shake hands with a new employee or sign a work order for one of the contractors who had been transforming what had once been a restaurant into Dante’s Paradiso, a twenty-thousand-square-foot luxury day spa.

When I tuned in again, Garnelle had picked up the flannel sheet and was holding it in front of her face like a mother playing peekaboo. “Turn over,” she instructed. Pleased with the way she respected my modesty, I obeyed, settling my face comfortably into a padded doughnut that surrounded a hole cut into the massage table.

Garnelle’s fingers pressed into the muscles of my shoulder, forcing my face further into the doughnut that cradled it. “What have you been doing? You’re tight as a drum, right here. All knots.”

I opened my eyes, but instead of a flowering meadow, I stared into the quiet mauve of the carpet where Garnelle’s toes, painted acid green, peeked out from the ends of her Birkenstocks. “Moving furniture,” I moaned. “Oh God, your fingers are magic. They should be insured by Lloyds of London.”

Garnelle’s big toe twitched. “Speaking of London, it’s that personal trainer with the British accent that I’d like to get my hands on.”

“You mean Norman Salterelli?”

“Uh-huh. Abs from here to Christmas.”

“He’s a former trainer with the U.S. Olympic team.”

“So I noticed.”

“He’s also married.”

Garnelle shrugged. “So what?”

“With kids.”

“Rats.”

Thinking about kids reminded me of my daughter, who had been working flat-out for days on Puddle Ducks, the day care center that would tend to the children of clients while they were being pummeled and steamed and exfoliated. Surprisingly, Puddle Ducks had been Dante’s idea. Providing day care was a necessity if one wished to attract younger clientele, the yummy mummies who had left their high-salaried corporate positions to devote themselves full-time, and with every bit as much attention as they had formerly given to corporate America, to raising their children. As if he knew I was thinking about him, I heard Dante’s voice ricocheting off the hand-painted Mediterranean tiles that decorated the Natatorium just on the other side of the door.

“The exercise equipment! Thank gawd ! Where the hell are you, dude?” Dante seemed to be on his cell phone, shouting directions. “You’re way off! Turn your rig around and get yourself down Forest Drive toward Bay Ridge. Right on Herndon. When you get to the water, look right and you’re there. Ask for Emily. She’ll show you where the stuff goes, get you a cup of cawfee .”

After six months living north of the Virginia border, the slight drawl Dante had affected while working in the Blue Ridge Mountains was slowly giving way to his native New Jersey twang.

“Oh, Emily will know where it goes, all right,” I muttered to the floor. “But if she has to keep taking up the slack for her husband, she’ll never get the day care center done.”

Like a good employee, Garnelle ignored my remark. “I almost didn’t come, you know,” she commented softly a few minutes later.

“That would have been tragic,” I said, meaning it to the tips of my well-massaged toes.

“When Dante first called about the job, he told me the spa was going to be built down Indian Head way. Frankly, I didn’t think you’d get a whole lot of business down in that neck of the woods, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s what Mrs. Strother’s market analysts advised. The golf club was gorgeous, but after they conducted a series of focus groups, they decided to look for property around Annapolis instead. Better demographics. I’m not complaining, mind,” I said. “I enjoy spoiling my grandchildren rotten, and for the first time, I won’t have to drive three hours to do it!”

“I love it here,” Garnelle commented as she kneaded my left bicep. “The view of the water from the front porch is fantastic. You can see all the way to the Bay Bridge.”

“I know. Before it became Paradiso, this was the Bay View Inn, a pretty classy restaurant. I can’t tell you how many wedding receptions I attended here over the years. It’s really strange to see Jacuzzis installed in the middle of what used to be the main dining room.”