Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

Douglas. Thinking of her husband, Caroline smiled. Husband . The word was still magical. In the eleven months they'd been married, she'd often thanked the gods for bringing this man into her life. Douglas, a freshman congressman from the state of Tennessee, was handsome, respected, admired. And he was kind. It was the kindness Caroline loved most. He'd found the twelve thousand dollars to send them to Phoenix Spa because he believed Hilda was in pain and he was a good man. Caroline had agreed to accompany her, not because she was a good daughter, but because she was afraid that Hilda's increasingly bizarre behavior since Hamlin's death would reflect badly on Douglas's career.

Phoenix Spa was so exclusive that it was booked two years in advance. Once Hilda knew Douglas would foot the bill, she'd wrangled two spots in less than a day. Claudia de Vries, the spa's owner, had been Hilda's roommate her first-and only-year at Brown University. Hilda said Mrs. de Vries made room for them because of old friendship. Judging by the bitter undercurrent that soured her greeting when they'd arrived, Caroline couldn't help thinking it might have had more to do with a spot of petty blackmail.

Caroline looked across the table at her mother. She didn't bother with a covert glance. Hilda liked to be watched and courted attention. Hilda was in her element, or what she'd always believed her element should be. Phoenix was a favorite hideout for the rich and famous and those who wanted to be rich and famous. They paid for the promise of the motto carved in gothic letters across the massive stone arch at the entrance: Incipit Vita Nova -the new life begins.

To Hilda's left, elbows planted heavily on the crisp white tablecloth, was Howard Fondulac. Claudia swooshed by their table, dust and fawn silks fluttering, exquisitely applied makeup doing a fair job of camouflaging the sharpness of her eyes and an age she surely lied about, and introduced Fondulac in what was apparently the most important factor at the spa: not who you were but what you were. Caroline was "Congressman Blessing's wife." Fondulac was a "leading Hollywood producer." Claudia listed highlights from Fondulac's resume: a Mel Gibson film, movies by two of the Baldwin boys, one with Sarah Jessica Parker. If Caroline remembered right, the most recent had been made six years ago.

Claudia de Vries was more of a politician than any congressman Caroline had met in her time as a political wife. Small of stature and big of ego, she had dragged herself up from poverty to become an arbiter of health and fashion for the privileged few. Hilda, smug in her own upper-middle-class heritage as a podiatrist's daughter, said Claudia went to Brown on scholarship. Not even having enough money for a nice dress for homecoming, she had to borrow one Hilda had worn in high school.

In a flurry of silks, Claudia moved on. Caroline looked back at the movie producer. "Nerves" was the explanation he gave for being at the spa. Alcohol was Caroline's guess. Watching him stare morosely into his water glass, forlornly clinking the ice cubes against the side, she could almost smell his whiskey wish. Despite the aging properties of the booze, at fifty he was still a handsome man in the craggy school of Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas.

Hilda loved the movies. Lived life like she was writing her own script as she went along. At the moment she played her newest role to perfection. The attractive widow in flattering weeds: subdued, grieving, but not sloppy about it. Bitter tears stung Caroline's eyes.

"Are you okay?"

So deep was she in reverie, it took Caroline a moment to realize she was being addressed. Turning to the speaker, she smiled. The woman was younger than she, twenty-two at most, and achingly pretty. Caroline had seen her, dressed in expensive clothes that hung like empty sails from her angular frame, peeking out from magazine covers. Her name was Ondine, just Ondine, and she'd held pride of place in the fashion industry's pantheon of waif goddesses for nearly six years. Like a professional gymnast, she had the undeveloped body of a girl denied puberty. Her hair was as fine as corn silk and as pale. Tonight she wore it down, adding to her trademark look of a lost and ethereal child. A faint brown discoloration covered her right eyelid and ran in an irregular stain to the corner of her mouth. That was never seen in the photographs.

Caroline was no slouch in the looks department. Light brown hair, softly curled and kissed by the sun, skimmed her shoulders. Her trim, almost boyish body was sleek and strong and usually did what she asked of it. Partisan politics in the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra where she'd played cello for seven years had honed away the roundness of her face and carved lines at the corners of her hazel eyes. Age looked good on her; it brought out the fine bones of her face. Caroline knew she was pretty.

Ondine was not pretty. She was stunning. Because of the girl's beauty, Caroline was sufficiently shallow that she wanted to hate her but, instead, found herself feeling protective.

"I'm fine," she said and felt better because Ondine had asked. "It's all so… so much."

To her relief the model laughed, and for a few seconds the two of them looked around like awestruck teenagers on their first trip to Bloomingdale's. Phoenix Spa didn't stint on luxury. The tablecloths and napkins were linen, not polyester spun to look like it. The tables were set with fine china, plates, cups, and bowls ringed in a lapis pattern set off in gold. The dining room's decor was white and wood and glass; clean, modern; a perfect backdrop for the huge urns of cut flowers that fed the eye's need for color and the soul's for anarchy.

The dining room captured that rare blend of spaciousness and intimacy-just large enough to comfortably seat the spa's thirty pampered guests but two stories tall. Peaked cathedral windows framed a view of the lake and the grounds.

" Too much?" Ondine asked, arching a manicured eyebrow.

"I could get used to it," Caroline admitted.

"I am used to it," Ondine confided. "I'm here to see if I can't hang on to it at least a few more years."

"How so?" It was a personal question and one Caroline usually would not have asked on such short acquaintance, but Ondine had an openness about her that made them friends with a single shared admission of lusting after the finer things.

"I've got to lose this." Ondine brought both fists down on her midsection.

Weight. It took a second for the meaning to register in Caroline's brain. Ondine was here to lose weight. Had it not been for the low clatter of forks and tongues, Caroline was convinced she would have heard the clack of Ondine's wrist bones hitting her pelvic bones when she struck herself. She was that thin. Suddenly Caroline was afraid for her.

She looked at the plate in front of the girl. The small square of salmon, lifted from mere food to an art form by the fan of baby asparagus spears and a drizzling of dill sauce that Jackson Pollock would have been proud of, was largely untouched. One tiny corner had been disturbed as if a mouse nibbled briefly before being frightened away. Caroline had sucked her own dinner down and had to refrain from devouring the nickel-sized orchids used as garnish.

Caroline was a musician. She knew nothing about medicine or diet. But she knew skinny when it poked out of a silk sheath in the chair next to her. Ondine was pathologically skinny, her perfect bone structure all too apparent beneath translucent skin. Not flesh, the woman had none of that, just skin.

Casting about for something to say, she settled on careful inquiry. "Have you planned out your diet with Mrs. de Vries?"

"Oh, yes." Ondine laughed; a breathless sound. "She and Raoul have promised to lock me in my room and keep me on tofu and water if that's what it takes. My manager would probably call out the Virginia state troopers if they ever did that!" Ondine's face took on the pouty cast of a spoiled child but remained lovely.