CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Before she even opened her eyes, Janey knew that there was a needle inserted into the vein on the inside of her right elbow.

She felt the distinct effects of a hangover—nausea, muscle ache, the kind of headache where your brain felt as though it had separated from the interior of your skull in the middle of the night and was now floating, unprotected and untethered.

But she hadn’t had a thing to drink.

Yesterday had been yet another epically long day. She’d felt supercharged with energy at the start of it, able to carry thirty-pound sandbags up and down the beach in a series of boot-camp drills that reminded her of that Tamil Tiger Terror class in Brooklyn. Months ago she wouldn’t have been able to lift one of those over her head once, much less twenty times. She’d even managed to choke down her bowl of lunchtime clay before heading out for Stella’s paddle-boarding excursion, followed by a twilight Pilates class on the beach. For dinner she again found herself back in the room, with the excuse that she needed to take a call from Shanghai to see about those samples. It was morning there, after all. Back at the yurt she’d enjoyed a lovely dinner of sweet potato gratin, a farro and spinach salad, and another filet of perfectly prepared red snapper.

“We caught it today, madam,” Carlo, the sweet-faced cook and waiter said when he brought her the tray. “Would you like a glass of wine? I can go down to the cellar and bring you a bottle.” Did he wink at her?

“No, no. This looks like heaven. Thank you so much. I have everything I need.”

After dinner she’d walked down to the open-air massage table unfolded right at the water’s edge, feeling a bit uncomfortable about dropping her robe to stand completely naked underneath the moonlight. As promised Maizee had arranged the massage with Scott. Janey didn’t know what to expect. She wanted to enjoy his magic hands on her back and her neck and her thighs and her calves, but not anywhere else.

She’d assumed he must be a local, but Scott was a run-of-the-mill white guy with nice teeth and shaggy brown hair that just brushed the collar of his white linen shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a taut tummy and a thin line of hair running from his navel down to the button of his jeans. “Relax into the table. Breathe for me,” he said to her once she lay down on her belly. “In for ten. Out for ten. Let everything go.”

As he began to knead at her knotty calves, she audibly sighed with pleasure, but when he moved his magical hands higher up her legs she stiffened and pushed her thighs closer together.

“Your glutes must be killing you,” he said in a kind voice. “I think I saw you ladies do more than a hundred squats today. Let me work them out.”

Just her glutes. That was all.

“Okay. Thank you,” Janey said, wondering where his hands would go after her bottom.

The answer was onto her lower back. He was incredibly professional as he moved his hands away from her buttocks.

“Your psoas is really tight too,” he said and wound his entire hand around the side of her body, squeezing gently at first and then more firmly. “They work you hard here.”

Janey was never one for a chatty masseur, but she felt guilty when she didn’t make small talk. “They really do. Is this your first time working the retreat?”

“Nope. I was here last time. They ship me in from New York for the whole week. I’m a medical student at Einstein actually.”

A med student, and a traveling masseur who made middle-aged women feel “really good” on the side.

“And you do this part-time?”

“I learned massage a few years ago, and it’s a good way to make money. I’ve been a broke student for so long, my fiancée may finally come to her senses one day and marry someone without two hundred and fifty thousand in student debt. This helps a lot. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about money.”

“Don’t worry about it. I asked. I’m curious. I really am. I’ve never met such a well-educated massage therapist.”

He laughed a nice laugh.

“There are plenty of us. It’s not easy to make a living in New York City. Do you want to roll over? I’ll turn around while you do. Not that anyone can see much of anything out here anyway.”

So polite!

“Sure.” Janey pulled the soft white sheet up to her chest, rolled onto her side, and then all the way to her back, breathing in the briny smell of the ocean.

“I’ll bet the tips can be really good,” she said. Was that inappropriate?

“They can be. These women sure know what they want, and they know how to ask for it,” Scott said matter-of-factly. He worked his hands down to her belly, careful to avoid her breasts. She tensed again when he reached the tops of her aching thighs.

“Don’t worry, Janey,” he whispered. “I know what you’ve probably heard. I promise you, the women here know how to ask for what they want.”

She opened her eyes without meaning to.

“And you do it?”

“You said it yourself. They tip well. I shouldn’t be telling you this. But you seem nice. Different from the rest of them. You’re not in there doing mescal shots and hitting on men half your age. They’ll tip a couple grand for the whole week. I’m not doing anything I’d consider cheating. It’s a fairly mechanical thing, really. Just massage of a different kind. But they seem like they need it. They don’t get any attention from their husbands. They come here to let loose. It started with one woman last year and then word got around. I paid this semester’s tuition and bought an engagement ring with what I made last time.” He shrugged. “We do what we have to do.”

Janey nodded and tried to keep her facial expression from veering into judgmental territory. “We do what we have to do,” she repeated.

He had moved to the base of the table and was kneading her feet between both hands. She could only imagine the things those hands could do. She kept her sadness about the situation to herself.

“You’re incredibly talented with your hands, Scott,” she said instead. “I’m sure you’ll be a great doctor. You’ve got your bedside manner down.”

His voice brightened with the subject change and the compliment.

“I hope so, Janey. It was great meeting you. I’m almost done. I want you to drink plenty of fluids and maybe take a soak in a bath. Your muscles were tight as rocks. I know you’re all here to lose weight, but be careful. Don’t strain yourself too hard.”

He left her alone on the beach to get dressed and was nowhere to be found as she walked back to the main property. Janey was about to take his advice, get some water, and head straight into the bath, when she was intercepted by Suzy outside their yurt.

The imposing woman swayed as she talked and threw her arm around Janey’s shoulders. “Hey babe! How was the massage? Did you get your special treat at the end?”

“He gave me an incredible foot rub,” Janey said.

Suzy was clearly put out by Janey’s answer. “You’ve gotta come in and play with us tonight. We’ve got the dance going and the mescal and we’ll go swimmin’ in a little. Come on.”

“Nah. Suzy, I’m so sleepy. Maybe tomorrow night.”

But her roommate was strangely aggressive. “Just one drink. Whatchoo don’t like us or somethin’?”

She didn’t want to come off as a snot. That would make the rest of the retreat unbearable.

“One drink won’t hurt me.”

“Yayyyyyyyy!” Suzy threw her arms over her head and then grabbed Janey’s hand, dragging her to the main house.

The main house was a whirl of debauchery that rivaled a frat party. Where had this group of handsome young men come from? All of the women were clearly intoxicated.

“Can I get you a margarita?” It was Maizee. Janey nodded. She’d politely accept the margarita, sit down for a few minutes, and then quietly slip back to her bathtub.

Maizee snapped her fingers at a waiter carrying an empty silver tray.

“Margs over here, puh-leeze and thank yoooo!” she commanded, emphasizing too many of the vowels.

Janey found her way to a fluffy chaise longue in the corner, eager to rest. When the young man brought her the drink, she ran her finger along the rim and put it in her mouth to suck the salt. The salt, Janey had always believed, was the best part of the margarita anyway. She hated a tequila hangover.

All around her, the other women jumped up and down, dancing provocatively with men half their age, groping them in ways Janey couldn’t believe, and throwing back shots of mescal as if they were water. She placed the margarita on the ground and closed her eyes for a second.

And that was the last thing she remembered. She had gone to sleep, and now here she was in bed with an IV in her arm and a pounding headache. Suzy, once again looking no worse for wear, was sitting up in bed, her own IV dangling out of her forearm, reading last month’s issue of Architectural Digest.

“You really ate it last night,” Suzy said.

Janey looked at her.

“You were one and done, my dear. Lightweight.”

Janey didn’t want to admit she hadn’t even drunk her margarita. “I guess so,” she said, gesturing over to the man in the white coat across the room. He held up a hand, splaying all five fingers.

“He says you have five more minutes. Trust me, you want the whole five minutes.”

But why did she feel so awful? It couldn’t be a hangover. She must be dehydrated. Scott had said her muscles were all tensed and that she was supposed to drink fluids after the massage. But all she’d had was a lick of salt before falling asleep. Fluids would do her good.

“Did I miss another wild night?” she asked Suzy, not really caring about the answer.

“The best,” Suzy said definitively. “I live for these fucking trips. Live for them. We went into town and found a little taverna and made friends with those local boys,” she said. Janey could only imagine. “I just got back a couple of hours ago, but I had some clay and some tea before bed and I’m feeling good. That stuff is magical. It’s like herbal magic. All those vitamins and minerals. Whatever Sara is putting in there, it’s the best energy boost I’ve had since I stopped taking uppers.”

“Sounds great,” Janey said, closing her eyes for a sweet brief moment again. This was day three. There were five more days of this. She had to find Stella. She wanted out.

· · ·

“You can’t leave,” Stella exclaimed when Janey found the shaman sitting on a meditation cushion on the deck of her own yurt.

“I don’t feel good, Stella. I had an IV in my arm this morning, for Christ’s sake,” Janey said with determination. “I can change my ticket and go home tomorrow. No hard feelings. It’s not you. It’s these women. This place. Sara.”

For the first time since she’d met her, Janey saw Stella’s face darken. “I know. I’m not sure what’s going on. The first time we did this it was magical. Now it is going all wrong, isn’t it?” Stella stood, strode over to the bed, and pushed the mosquito netting aside. After brushing the henna dust from her comforter she patted the space beside her. “I think Sara is under a lot of pressure. She handpicked these women for their money and their clout because she’s dying to bring in investors to help her expand. And that’s not the right vibe at all. I get it. Go home if you need to.”

Janey was certain there wouldn’t be a refund if she left early. But what was she even paying for? The workouts? The clay? The on-call doctors or the sexy local men?

Janey released a long sigh. “I’m going to go for a walk on the beach. I’ll figure it out.”

Stella reached over and enveloped her in a bear hug. “I just want to make people’s lives better. You know that, right?” The normally confident shaman’s vulnerability was unnerving.

“Of course.”

Out on the beach Janey needed something to distract her while she walked. She fiddled around with her iPhone, looking for a podcast. If she found the right one, she might even muster up a jog. One TED Talk looked interesting. Who was Gabby Reece again? Janey clicked through. Of course. It was that professional volleyball player, the one married to the sexy surfer dude. The topic of the podcast was learning to love yourself. Well, that was fitting. Janey left her flip-flops underneath a pretty shrub with orange flowers that looked like tiny trumpets and hit play as she ambled toward the waves.

“Do you ever wake up and think, ‘Wow, I’m perfect today’?” came the assured voice of the TED speaker through her headphones.

“No,” Janey said out loud.

Janey picked up the pace, finding something between a power walk and a light jog, the resistance from the sand straining her calf muscles. “Of course you don’t,” Reece continued. “I don’t. I have friends who look at my Instagram and then say things to me like, ‘You have the most perfect life.’ I’m the first one to tell you that the way someone’s life looks on Insta is bullshit. Real life doesn’t come with filters. We are often comparing ourselves to other women who may be younger or more fit than we are. The problem is that every year as we get older we have a larger group to compare ourselves to. Stop comparing. Acknowledge other people’s greatness and you will be more powerful and centered. Others will notice and embrace your confidence. There’s nothing sexier than someone who is content with herself and trying every single day to be better and improve on her own terms.”

The advice rang too true. Janey turned the phone around and snapped a selfie of her smaller but still round belly peeking out over her jogging shorts and without a second thought posted it to Instagram. “This is forty!” she captioned it and then added, “There’s nothing sexier than someone who is content with herself.” And then she tagged the professional volleyball player.

Writing the words gave her a moment’s pause. Wait a second. Janey rewound the podcast and listened to it again. Janey looked at the date of the TED Talk and saw it had taken place more than a year ago. But the words sounded so familiar because Janey had heard them very recently. It was almost the exact same thing Sara had said during The Workout in New York and again here at the start of the retreat.

Sara Strong was an inspirational plagiarist! Janey listened to it a third time to make sure, but there wasn’t any doubt. What was up with this woman? Was she a complete fraud? Did it matter if she was? She wasn’t claiming to be a doctor or a preacher or a Supreme Court justice. Sara Strong was just a personal trainer with a following of very rich women. What did it matter if she cribbed a few lines from a famous person’s inspirational speech? It still left a sour feeling in Janey’s stomach. She was just about to dial the phone number for American to find out how much of a change fee she’d have to pay to switch her return ticket when she heard Suzy screaming from down the beach.

“Miranda’s had a heart attack!”