Mary Clark - Weep No More, My Lady

The letter had been written in Min's florid, sweeping penmanship. Quickly, Elizabeth scanned her schedule. Interview with Dr. Helmut von Schreiber at 8:45; aerobic dance class at 9; massage at 9:30; trampoline at 10; advanced water aerobics at 10:30-that had been the class she taught when she worked here; facial at 11; cypress curves 11:30; herbal wrap at noon. The afternoon schedule included a loofah, a manicure, a yoga class, a pedicure, two more water exercises…

She would have preferred to avoid seeing Helmut, but she didn't want to make an issue of it.

Her interview with him was brief. He checked her pulse and blood pressure, then examined her skin under a strong light. "Your face is like a fine carving," he told her. "You are one of those fortunate women who will become more beautiful as you age. It's all in the bone structure."

Then, as if he were thinking aloud, he murmured, "Wildly lovely as Leila was, her beauty was the kind that peaks and begins to slip away. The last time she was here I suggested that she begin collagen treatments, and we had planned to do her eyes as well. Did you know that?"

"No." Elizabeth realized with a pang of regret that her reaction to the Baron's remark was to be hurt that Leila had not confided her plans to her. Or was he lying?

"I am sorry," Helmut said softly. "I should not have brought up her name. And if you wonder why she did not confide in you, I think you must realize that Leila had become very conscious of the three-year age difference between her and Ted. I was able to assure her honestly that it made no difference between people who love each other-after all, I should know-but even so, she had begun to worry. And to see you growing lovelier, as she began to find those small signs of age in herself, was a problem for her."

Elizabeth got up. Like all the other offices at the Spa, this one had the look of a well-appointed living room. The blue-and-green prints on the couches and chairs were cool and restful, the draperies tied back to allow the sunshine to stream in. The view included the putting green and the ocean.

She knew Helmut was studying her intently. His extravagant compliments were the sugar coating on a bitter pill. He was trying to make her believe that Leila had begun to consider her a competitor. But why? Remembering the hostility with which he had studied Leila's picture when he thought he was unobserved, she wondered if Helmut was viciously trying to get even for Leila's barbs by suggesting she had been beginning to lose her beauty.

Leila's face flashed in her mind: the lovely mouth; the dazzling smile; the emerald-green eyes; the glorious red hair, like a blazing fire around her shoulders. To steady herself, she pretended to be reading one of the framed ads about the Spa. One phrase caught her eye: a butterfly floating on a cloud . Why did it seem familiar?

The belt of her terry-cloth robe had loosened. As she tightened it, she turned to Helmut. "If one tenth of the women who spend a fortune in this place had even a fragment of Leila's looks, you'd be out of business, Baron."

He did not reply.

The women's spa was busier than it had been the previous afternoon, but certainly not at the level she remembered. Elizabeth went from exercise class to treatment, glad to really work out again, then equally glad to relax under the skillful hands of the masseuse or facialist. She encountered Cheryl several times in the ten-minute breaks between appointments. A washed-up drunk . She was barely civil to Cheryl, who didn't seem to notice. Cheryl acted preoccupied.

Why not? Ted was on the premises, and Cheryl was obviously still dazzled by him.

Alvirah Meehan was in the same aerobic dance class-a surprisingly agile Alvirah, with a good sense of rhythm. Why in the name of heaven did she wear that sunburst pin on her robe? Elizabeth noticed that Alvirah fiddled with the pin whenever she got into a conversation. She also noticed, with some amusement, Cheryl's unsuccessful efforts not to be cornered by Mrs. Meehan.

She went back to her own bungalow for lunch; she did not want to risk running into Ted again by lunching at one of the poolside tables. As she ate the fresh-fruit salad and sipped the iced tea, she phoned the airline and changed her reservation. She could get a ten-o'clock flight to New York from San Francisco the next morning.

She had been frantic to get out of New York. Now, with equal fervor, she wanted to be out of here.

She put on her robe and prepared to go back to the spa for the afternoon session. All morning she had tried to push Ted's face from her mind. Now it filled her vision again. Pain-racked. Angry. Imploring. Vengeful. What expression had she seen in it? And would she spend the rest of her life trying to escape it, after the trial-and the verdict?

Alvirah collapsed on her bed with a grateful sigh. She was dying for a nap, but knew it was important to record her impressions while they were fresh in her mind. She propped herself on her pillows, reached for the recorder and began to speak.

"It is four o'clock and I am resting in my bungalow. I have finished my first full day of activities at the Spa and I must report I am absolutely exhausted. Go, go, go. We started with a hike; then I came back here and the maid brought in my schedule for the day on my breakfast tray. Breakfast was a poached egg on a couple of crumbs of whole-wheat toast and coffee. My schedule, which is on a tag that you tie to your robe, showed me as having two water aerobics classes, a yoga class, a facial, a massage, two dance classes, a warm hose treatment, fifteen minutes in the steam box and a whirlpool dip…

"The water aerobics classes are very interesting. I push a beach ball around in the water, which sounds very easy, but now my shoulders hurt and I've got muscles in my thighs I didn't know existed. The yoga class wasn't bad except that I can't get my knees in the Lotus position. The dance exercise was fun. If I do say so myself I was always a good dancer, and even though this is just hopping from one foot to the other and doing a lot of kicking, I put some of the younger women to shame. Maybe I should have been a Rockette.

"The warm hose treatment is another word for crowd control. I mean they turn these powerful hoses on you while you're standing in the buff, and you hang on to a metal bar hoping you won't get washed away. But supposedly it breaks down fatty cells, and if so, I'm ready for two treatments a day.

"The clinic is a very interesting building. From the outside it looks just like the main house, but inside it's totally different. All the treatment rooms have private entrances, with high hedges leading to them. The idea is that people don't bump into each other coming and going for appointments. I mean, I really don't care that the whole world knows I'm going to have some collagen injections to fill out the lines around my mouth, but I can well understand why someone like Cheryl Manning would be very upset if that was general knowledge.

"I had my interview with Baron von Schreiber about my collagen injections this morning. The Baron is a charming man. So handsome, and the way he bowed over my hand made me very fluttery. If I were his wife, I think I'd be pretty nervous about holding him, especially if I had fifteen years on him. I think it is fifteen years, but I'll check that when I write my article.

"The Baron examined my face under a strong light and said that I had remarkably tight skin and the only treatment he would suggest besides the regular facials and a peeling mask would be the collagen injections. I explained to him that when I made my reservations, his receptionist, Dora Samuels, suggested that I have a test to see if I'd be allergic to collagen, and I did. I'm not allergic, but I told the Baron how scared I am of needles, and how many would he have to use?