Лиана Мориарти - Nine Perfect Strangers

She lowered her car window. Hot thick air filled her throat like smoke as she leaned out and pressed the green button on the intercom with her thumb. The button burned from the sun and it hurt her paper cut.

She sucked on her thumb and waited for a disembodied voice to welcome her, or for the wrought-iron gate to magically open.

Nothing.

She looked again at the intercom and saw a handwritten note sticky-taped next to the button. The writing was so small she could only make out the important word “instructions” but nothing else.

For goodness’ sake , she thought, as she went through her handbag for her reading glasses. Surely a good proportion of visitors were over forty.

She found her glasses, put them on, peered at the sign, and still couldn’t make it out. Tut-tutting and muttering, she got out of the car. The heat grabbed her in a heavy embrace and beads of sweat sprang up all over her scalp.

She ducked down next to the intercom and read the note, written in neat, tiny block letters as if by the tooth fairy.

NAMASTE AND WELCOME TO TRANQUILLUM HOUSE WHERE A NEW YOU AWAITS.

PLEASE PRESS THE SECURITY CODE 564–312 FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY BY THE GREEN BUTTON.

She pressed the security code numbers then the green button and waited. Sweat rolled down her back. She would need to change her clothes again . A blowfly buzzed near her mouth. Her nose dripped.

“Oh come on !” she said to the intercom with a sudden spurt of rage, and she wondered if her agitated sweaty face was appearing on some screen inside, while an expert dispassionately analyzed her symptoms, her misaligned chakras. This one needs work. Look at how she responds to one of life’s simplest stresses: waiting.

Had she got the damned code wrong?

Once again she carefully punched in the security code, saying each number out loud, in a sarcastic tone, to prove a point to God knows who, and gave the hot green button a slow, deliberate push, holding it for five seconds just to be sure.

There. Now let me in.

She took off her reading glasses and let them dangle in her hand.

The baking heat seemed to be melting her scalp like chocolate in the sun. Silence again. She gave the intercom a fierce, hard look as if that would shame it into acting.

At least this would make a funny story for Paul. She wondered if he’d ever been to a health resort. She thought he’d most likely be a skeptic. She herself was—

Her chest constricted. This wouldn’t make a good story for Paul. Paul was gone. How humiliating for him to have slipped into her thoughts like that. She wished she felt a surge of white-hot anger instead of this utter sadness, this pretend grief for what was never real in the first place.

Stop it. Don’t think about it. Focus on the problem at hand.

The solution was obvious. She would ring Tranquillum House! They would be mortified to hear that their intercom had broken and Frances would be calm and understanding and brush away their apologies. “These things happen,” she’d say. “Namaste.”

She got back in the car, cranked up the air conditioner. She found the paperwork with her booking details, and rang the number listed. All her other communications had been by email, so it was the first time she’d heard the recorded message that immediately began to play.

“ Thank you for calling the historic Tranquillum House Health and Wellness Hot Springs Resort, where a new you awaits. Your call is so important and special to us, as is your health and well-being, but we are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls at the moment. We know your time is precious, so please do leave a message after the chimes and we will call you back just as soon as we can. We so appreciate your patience. Namaste. ”

Frances cleared her throat as wind chimes made their annoying twinkly dinging sounds.

“Oh yes, my name is—”

The wind chimes kept going. She stopped, waited, went to speak, and stopped again. It was a wind-chime symphony .

At last there was silence.

“Hello, this is Frances Welty.” She sniffed. “Excuse me. Bit of a cold. Anyway, as I said, I’m Frances Welty. I’m a guest.”

Guest? Was that the right word? Patient? Inmate?

“I’m trying to check in and I’m stuck outside the gate. It’s, ah, twenty past three, twenty-five past three, and I’m … here! The intercom doesn’t seem to be working even though I’ve followed all the instructions. The teeny-tiny instructions. I’d appreciate it if you could just open the gate? Let me in?” Her message finished on a rising note of hysteria, which she regretted. She put the phone down on the seat next to her and studied the gate.

Nothing. She would give it twenty minutes and then she was throwing in the towel.

Her phone rang and she snatched it up without looking at the screen.

“Hi there!” she said cheerfully, to show how understanding and patient she really was and to make up for the sarcastic “teeny-tiny” comment.

“Frances?” It was Alain, her literary agent. “You don’t sound like you.”

Frances sighed. “I was expecting someone else. I’m doing that health retreat I told you about, but I can’t even get through the front gate. Their intercom isn’t working.”

“How incompetent! How unsatisfactory !” Alain was easily and often enraged by poor service. “You should turn around and come back home. It’s not alternative , is it? Remember those poor people who died in that sweat lodge? They all thought they were becoming enlightened when in reality they were being cooked.”

“This place is pretty mainstream. Hot springs and massages and art therapy. Maybe some gentle fasting.”

“Gentle fasting.” Alain snorted. “Eat when you’re hungry. That’s a privilege , you know, to eat when you’re hungry, when there are people starving in this world.”

“Well, that’s the point—we’re not starving in this part of the world,” said Frances. She looked at the wrapper for the Kit Kat bar sitting in the console of her car. “We’re eating too much processed food. So that’s why us privileged people need to detox—”

“Oh my Lord, she’s falling for it. She’s drunk the Kool-Aid! Detoxing is a myth , darling, it’s been debunked! Your liver does it for you. Or maybe it’s your kidneys. It’s all taken care of somehow.”

“ Anyway ,” said Frances. She had a feeling he was procrastinating.

“Anyway,” said Alain. “You sound like you’ve got a cold, Frances.” He seemed quite anguished about her cold.

“I do have a very bad, persistent, possibly permanent cold,” said Frances. She coughed to demonstrate. “You’d be proud of me. I’ve been taking a lot of very powerful drugs. My heart is going at a million miles per hour.”

“That’s the ticket,” said Alain.

There was a pause.

“Alain?” she prompted, but she knew, she already knew exactly what he was going to say.

“I’m afraid I am not the bearer of good news,” said Alain.

“I see.”

She sucked in her stomach, ready to take it like a man, or at least like a romance novelist capable of reading her own royalty statements.

“Well, as you know, darling,” began Alain.

But Frances couldn’t bear to hear him hedging, trying to soften the blow with compliments.

“They don’t want the new book, do they?” she said.

“They don’t want the new book,” said Alain sadly. “I’m so sorry. I think it’s a beautiful book, I really do, it’s just the current environment, and romance has taken the worst hit, it won’t be forever, romance always comes back, it’s a blip , but—”