Nevada Barr: Naked Came The Phoenix

"Is your manager here?" Caroline asked, already liking this caller-out of the troops.

"Always. Everywhere. Endlessly. Ubiquitously." Ondine smiled shyly. "I just learned 'ubiquitously,' and it fits Christopher Lund to the eyeteeth. That's him over there sitting between Raoul and that guy who looks like a roadie for Alice Cooper."

Ondine pointed ostentatiously, clearly hoping her manager would see her doing it. Playing along, Caroline stared, taking her time studying the occupants of the next table. Raoul was Claudia de Vries's husband. From the scraps of gossip Caroline had picked up since their arrival, that's how everyone thought of him, but he didn't look like a second fiddle. He wore his tux like a man born to it, and his face was shaped by a long line of aristocratic genes. Self-assurance hung on him like a shimmering cloak. Opposite Raoul was the man Ondine had characterized as a roadie. Caroline knew better. Her mother had pointed him out in excited whispers not two minutes after the valet had taken their car. King David, a rocker from the seventies, who still toured, still brought in the crowds, though his fans were now approaching the age of his grandkids, presuming the man had grandkids. Passing years had honed King's look: dangerous. Body lean from exercise or heroin, long hair streaked with iridescent greens and tattoos in the shape of lightning bolts at the corners of both eyes made him ageless and intimidating.

The man between King and Raoul, the one Ondine pointed out as her manager, was in profile, his attention fixed on his plate, making a workman's job of the delicate dinner. Noting the conservative suit, tie carefully knotted, short, neatly brushed brown hair, and bland unapologetic face, Caroline said, "He looks out of place."

"He won't have an ounce of fun. Count on it. He's here to protect his interests," Ondine said scornfully. "If I'm not careful he'll be force-feeding me chocolates when Raoul's not looking. Raoul's the doctor here. I thought Christopher was going to deck him when he found out Raoul had okayed three hours of aerobics every day to get the fat off me. You'd think Christopher of all people wouldn't want me blown up like a blimp. I'm his meal ticket."

Caroline barely heard the last. She was staring at Raoul de Vries. Tomorrow she had an appointment with him. "A complete physical by the spa's own physician." It was in the brochure. She made a mental note to take a look at his walls for medical degrees. What kind of doctor would prescribe hard exercise for a woman who was clearly teetering on the brink of anorexia?

"Newcomers' moonlight walk." The words pattered down like light rain, surprising an unladylike grunt from Caroline. Claudia de Vries had wafted to their table on soundless wings of peach chiffon. Everyone at Phoenix was encouraged to dress for dinner. Slightly ill at ease in a clingy burgundy spandex number gussied up with black bugle beads and a velvet shawl, Caroline had the bad grace to wonder if it had been thus decreed not to "celebrate your own personal glamour" as the brochure said but so Mrs. de Vries could float about in Hollywood confections a la Ginger Rogers.

Claudia drifted on, Caroline and her mother following in her wake. The woman was definitely eccentric, perhaps even a touch absurd, but the force of her personality could not be denied. Claudia was one of nature's true charismatics.

In Pied Piper fashion, she played her fluted voice and called Phoenix's newcomers to follow. From the table where Ondine's manager sat with Dr. de Vries and King David, the group gathered in a short, stout woman with cropped iron-gray hair and an evening dress of the same no-nonsense shade. The dress was brocade, the stiff kind Caroline had seen on her mother's old prom dress when she dragged it out of the attic to illustrate the story about how she could have married the boy who was now CFO of WorldCom.

With a start, Caroline realized that the wearer of brocade was Phyllis V. Talmadge. The recognition was spurred by Ms. Talmadge's latest bestseller, Flex Your Psychic Muscles , lying near her plate, her picture, unsmiling and intense, glaring up from the back cover.

As Claudia de Vries led them on, Caroline was relieved to see the book retrieved by King David. Had Phyllis V. been toting her own tome around, Caroline might have lost her composure.

The image of this uncompromising chunk of womanhood stumping through the spirit world in her all-purpose formal wear and Sears Roebuck foundation garments, the lavish unreality of the dining room coupled with the diaphanous presence of their hostess-a businesswoman in butterfly's clothing-were working on Caroline like cheap champagne at a wedding. Laughter, broken in pieces by an adolescent inappropriateness, threatened to explode in uncontrollable giggles.

A sudden and too familiar sense of falling hit Caroline. For her the room turned cold, the colorful people surreal, as if normalcy was a gift others shared without her. Hilarity turned abruptly to the icy pinch of an anxiety attack.

Four more spa clients were swept up by Claudia's passage, but Caroline was only peripherally aware of them. She breathed slowly, concentrating on pulling the air in and pushing it out as her therapist had taught her, a way of anchoring herself in the present when an attack threatened to carry her away.

Caroline's panic attacks had started three months ago, when her father was first diagnosed with cancer. Stress, her therapist had told her. Not me , she'd thought. The therapist listed the changes in Caroline's life: new marriage, husband's election, traveling to Washington, leaving her job with the symphony, her father's death. Not me , Caroline had insisted. Straight-A student, magna cum laude from Juilliard, youngest first chair in the philharmonic.Always in control.

Unfortunately, logic had little effect on the process. Feeling fear pour through her veins, shatter her thoughts, Caroline had to accept that she was only human. Stress was real.

Perhaps she was due for some world-class pampering. For the first time since they'd driven through the imposing front gate and up the winding drive, she was glad to be at Phoenix Spa.

Her terror receded slowly. At length Caroline could breathe again. Eyes opened fully to the beauty of the night and the place, she finally allowed herself to laugh; not the hysterical giggling that threatened earlier but a full-throated woman's laugh that she didn't feel obligated to explain to anybody.

Hurrying to catch up, she ran down the shallow steps flowing from the dining room to the brick walk circling the lake. The others had stopped at the shore to admire the view. As Caroline rejoined the group, Hilda smiled and held out her hand. Her mother was so small, her figure, still perfect, straight and proud in her new midnight velvet dress, her never-to-be-gray hair in a classic French twist. Maybe it was a trick of the moonlight, but Caroline thought she saw something new in her mother's face-a softness she remembered from when she was a very little girl. Caroline took her hand and squeezed it briefly before letting go.

"The lake is twenty-five acres," Claudia said in good tour-guide fashion. "Fed by natural springs."

Purposely, Caroline tuned out the statistics. Like a poem, the night should not be dissected into mere meter and rhyme but enjoyed in its wholeness.

Claudia prattled on. Caroline let the musical voice babble around her, taking in a word or two when interest stirred. The lake was nestled in a hollow formed by the rumpled skirts of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Around it, scattered at odd angles to fit in with nature's artful chaos, were A-frame cottages, each different in design but all echoing the cathedral windows of the main hall and dining room. Ground-level lights, shuttered to shine only on the walkways, ringed the water and branched off to the cottages, creating a spiderweb of light.