Mari, it is so good to see you again.” Halo greets me with a half hug. I make a note of the style so I can duplicate it tomorrow. She nods as she peers at me over maroon-rimmed glasses that look fresh off the designer’s table. “You look great. So colorful. But of course you do…you are a fashion muse, right?” I realize she has a slight foreign accent. The first time we met, I had been so focused on her long legs that I had not noticed her long vowels.
All weekend I was tormented about what to wear to Majestic Vista. A corporate-appropriate outfit would seem ridiculous here. I settled on a pair of slacks, a multicolored microfiber shirt, and a short scarf tied close to the neck. Later, when I catch my reflection in the glass wall fountain, I realize I look like a sailor on leave from the Good Ship Lollypop.
“Lionel will meet with you later this week. He wanted me to introduce you around and show you the layout. As the member and guest experience designer, you will have full access to the facility. Here is your pass. Lucas will enter your fingerprints into the security scanner eventually.” Halo is walking briskly up a slight incline in the hallway. Colors of the desert are woven into the plush carpet that feels a bit like shifting sand beneath my heels.
A few swipes of her security card lead us to yet another hallway. At the end of the last one there is a receptionist desk where a young woman stands awaiting guests. “This is Amy. She is the guest hostess for all the individual therapy rooms.”
I scan the girl’s name tag. Her “Amy” is spelled like the French word for friend, Amie. She shows me a series of well-appointed small rooms for massage, aromatherapy, facials, hot stone treatments, mud baths, and every other imaginable physical and beauty treatment. Soft instrumental music plays overhead in the hallway, but each spa space plays its own version of relaxation.
“You are in for a real treat. Your first month here you are allowed to try every type of therapy we offer. Lionel insists on this so that you can become familiar with our services. It’s the best time, isn’t it, Halo?” Amie’s calm manner matches Halo’s. I will have to work on that effect.
“Divine. And then every month you are entitled to two hours of services. It’s quite a perk. Most treatments cost between sixty and two hundred dollars an hour for guests,” Halo mentions.
Maybe that is how they stay so calm.
Amie furrows her defined brow slightly. “Too bad they don’t compensate all the professionals for that expensive rate.” She is speaking in a low voice and looking all around her.
I look around too before responding, not sure who to look for but most certain I could recognize an evil listener should I see one. “The pay is really bad?”
“Let’s just say that it varies. We have several incredible Latino masseuses who don’t get the same rate. I don’t think that is a coincidence.” Amie is all about secrets and inside information. I can tell right away she likes to be the revealer of dark news. I notice Halo becoming a bit bothered by the conspiracy theory.
“I’m very sensitive about such things, and I don’t know this to be true, Amie. Let’s not unload too much on Mari her first week here, okay?” Halo organizes a stack of brochures about the spa treatments.
I try out a soothing voice. It just sounds patronizing. “Halo, you mentioned my title as being an experience designer? Would this be a new term?”
“Lionel’s invention. He doesn’t like the sound of director or coordinator for this setting. His belief is that Majestic Vista is a personal experience with health and serenity. Your job is to cater the spa encounter to every guest’s needs. Some people are here for fitness, some for rest, some for energy, some for illness recovery or remedy, and others are here for a sense of pampering and pleasure.” Halo checks each of these off in the air.
“Don’t forget to mention other deciding factors. Some are here for discretion and some for exposure. There is another wing just like this one across the interior river, but guests enter the spa rooms through a populated central area that has an eatery, a small theater, bridge games, and a cocktail hour. People who want to be seen paying obscene prices for a massage go there,” Amie says.
When I am done saying the word “eatery” to myself over and over until it twists into “eat a tree, eat a tree,” I decide that Caitlin and I would head for Amie’s secluded territory. Angelica and Sadie would probably rush across to the other side. Wait until I tell them I am working at a place that has its own river.
The other two sense my awe.
“It really is an amazing place to be. Work used to be so stressful for me—I was a legal secretary—and now I look forward to Mondays. That sounds over the top, but I mean it,” Halo says with sincere eyes.
I believe her. I believe her.
“Believe me, I understand. The job I left was very stressful.” I say this as if I left my post as head surgeon of a major hospital. “I got to a place where I didn’t even believe in my future anymore. Or if I did, I was afraid of it. I questioned faith.”
Amie leans forward over her receptionist desk. “My Buddhist monk friend says that the future is behind us. Our past is in front of us. That is why we can see our past, but we cannot see our future.”
“That’s interesting,” I say, not certain what it means, but I do find it interesting. What we can see is all that has come to pass. What is out of our range of sight, the scariest part of life, is the unknown…the future.
“That concept changed my life. That and daily meditation. Do you meditate? You mentioned faith.” Amie is very enthusiastic about her faith regime, but when she turns the focus to my beliefs, I feel a bit awkward.
Why is it that I can appreciate someone of another faith speaking so openly, yet I cannot appreciate myself enough to volunteer details about Christianity? I’m a wimp surrounded by authentic people. God must get so very tired of my pathetic efforts. But I must say, I enjoy this setting and these new friends who share their deepest selves so soon.
“I pray a lot as part of my faith,” I say in a noncommittal fashion. “Amie, you know your name means ‘friend’ in French…were your parents Buddhists from France?” I face them both. “And Halo…your parents must have been flower children. My name is so drab by comparison.” I smile a wide, honest smile in celebration of my new friends, who are vulnerable, caring, true, honest…
As I stare at my new coworkers, I imagine us shopping downtown, eating big bowls of pasta at Ricardos, playing volleyball with guests in matching tank tops, talking on the phone after work to discuss the meaning of life and faith…Just me and my new amazingly authentic friends.
“These aren’t our real names,” they look at each other and then toward me.
Hold everything. “What?”
“Most of the girls and a few of the guys make up names here. Security reasons. I’m Laura,” Amie whispers her given name. “And I’m a Lutheran from Montana. I just happen to have a Buddhist monk friend.”
“I’m Carol.” Halo reaches out her manicured hand to grip mine. “My parents are federal judges. Not a tie-dyed shirt between them.”
“And your accent?”
“Fake,” admits Carol.
With a shake of hands I am let into the inner circle. But as I head home that night trying to think up a good fake name for myself, I am unable to shake the fact that things are not as they appear.