Five Fortunes (3 page)

I miss my husband. I want a drink.

15

16 / Beth Gutcheon

She saw at the edge of her vision the mother-daughter team from this afternoon. And there was the little woman with the huge jewels who had been in her van coming in from the airport. She looked completely different now, with her makeup washed off and the diamonds gone. She looked kind. More real, in some way, than she had in her street clothes.

The door opened and in came a woman with a cap of auburn hair, bright eyes, and a streak of scarlet lipstick.

“Rae!” cried several voices.

“Aha!” Rae cried. Her face lit up as she laughed and embraced old friends. Laurie watched as if she were a fish deep under water seeing a display of fireworks in the sky. It was bright, it was noisy, it had a certain charm, but made absolutely no sense to her. It had nothing to do with the medium she swam in.

The door banged open, and in came a sort of giant woman, so tall that her ankles stuck out beneath her cassock. On her feet were the loafers she must have worn traveling. Everyone else was wearing sandals. The giant stood staring at the table in the middle of the room, where there remained a few cups of scarlet tea and the ruined platter of vegetable sticks.

“This is what they call Happy Hour, is it? I hope somebody brought a flask.”

“The tea is delicious,” said somebody, handing her a tiny cup.

Carter downed it in one motion, and loomed suspiciously over the crudités.

“What’s the white stuff?”

“Jicama, jicama,” chorused many voices. “You’ll love it. Try it, no calories.”

Carter took a piece and ate it.

“A little onion dip would go a long way here,” she said. Life of the party, thought Laurie. The noisy guy at the bar. She thought about going back to her room and asking to have dinner sent to her there, but just then came the sound of a deep gong.

A young woman in civilian clothes whose body was so thin it looked like a collection of bicycle parts assumed a position of leadership.

Five Fortunes / 17

“Good evening, ladies. I’m Mandy, and I’m your hostess tonight.

As you go in to supper you’ll see a temporary name tag for each of you. Please put those on so we can get to know you and the waitresses can give you the right meal.”

She opened the door and led the way into the dining room. Amy followed the bright old bird with the cat’s-eye glasses, and Jill followed her mother.

They were served a delicious soup of wild mushrooms in broth, followed by grilled fish, some grain called quinoa, and French beans.

There was even a parfait for dessert. Laurie noticed that at Rae’s table there was much talk, and lots of laughter.

“You know,” said a little dark-haired woman, “that looks like a Georgia O’Keeffe.” She peered across the room at the painting above the sideboard.

“It
is
a Georgia O’Keeffe; Lalou collects them. They’re all over the place.”

“It’s part of the treatment,” said Amy. “Everything you look at is so beautiful, you hardly ever notice you’re starving.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be a movie star here?” asked a woman at the end of the table.

“She’s here, but she never comes to dinner,” said someone else.

At the head table the girl made of bicycle parts stood up and rang a little bell.

“It’s time to say welcome again. I’m Mandy, one of your Fitness Professionals, and I’m looking forward to getting to know you all better. I’d like to go around the room and have each of you stand up and introduce yourself. Tell us your name, and maybe a little bit about what you hope to accomplish this week. Rae, would you start?”

Oh god, thought Laurie.

Rae rose. “I’m Rae Strouse, I’m from San Francisco, and this is my twenty-second visit, so you can tell I don’t like it very much. I hope to come out twenty years younger.” She sat down.

“I’m Amy Burrows, from New York. I’m here with my daughter Jill, and I hope to lose a few pounds and have fun.”

18 / Beth Gutcheon

“I’m Jill Burrows, from New York, and this is my first time. I’m with her.” She indicated her mother, and sat down.

Some people told their professions. Some people told how many children they had. Laurie half-rose, and said, “I’m Laura Knox from Hailey, Idaho,” and sat back down.

The giant said, “I’m Carter Bond from Los Angeles, and I’m here because I thought I was going to Club Med. You think I’m kidding.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am in deep withdrawal at the moment and I’ll be lucky to get through the week without committing an ax murder.
And
I hope you’ve all admired my loafers.”

She stuck a foot out, to show the juxtaposition of her shoes with her cassock.

Oh good, Rae was thinking, she looks like fun. She surveyed the room with a feeling of warm pleasure. Such jolly old friends, such a lot of new people to get to know!

Amy was thinking of Jill. And thinking of the shit she’d take from Noah if she spent all this money and Jill didn’t like it. Fine, she’d accepted that Jill wasn’t going to lose fifty pounds and solo with the ABT, but it would be nice if she could find something that would make the girl
happy
for a week.

Jill was thinking that she admired that Carter woman for using the word “withdrawal.” There were plenty of heavy people who claimed they ate like sparrows but had cruelly slow metabolisms.

Jill was not one of them. To get as fat as she was and stay there, you had to eat a
lot
, and she was now ravenous. It was shocking, in fact, to have to stop eating when everyone else did, and register how little food normal-sized people thought was enough. But at least it was nice to eat without feeling her father’s eyes tracking every mouthful she swallowed.

C
arter had slept very little, and she had dreamed about smoking. She was so hungry she felt hollow, and she couldn’t believe a human being could be so cheerful while uttering the words “Good morning, it’s five forty-five.” She had had every intention of sleeping through until breakfast, but now that the damn phone had rung, she realized there was no point. If she hadn’t slept all night, she wasn’t going to now.

She got up and made her way through the dark room, whose ghost shapes of dresser and suitcase and chairs had loomed large in her half sleep throughout the night, sometimes appearing to have turned into appliances, or hunched animals, or large stones. She pulled the curtain cord to let in the cool blue-gray dawn light, and discovered the strange and magical little bonsai garden that her room overlooked. The elaborately gnarled trees looked alive, like dwarfs frozen during a game of Mother, May I? In the center of the garden, there was a rectangle of powder-fine sand. Perfect for putting out cigarettes, Carter had thought last night, stumping past it. A great big ashtray. This morning she noticed that someone—one of the guards, she presumed—had used a rake to make an oddly attractive pattern in the sand.

Now, what was she going to wear? She had a pair of white linen slacks, and of course her tennis shoes. And a tennis sweater and a fancy beaded jacket for evening. She put them both on, the evening one under the one with red and blue stripes. When she’d packed, she hadn’t bargained on any dawn excursions. She had thought of sloth, and midday heat. In her dresser she found she’d been given a watch

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20 / Beth Gutcheon

cap and a pair of gloves. She figured this joint must know what they were doing if they were handing out woollies. She put them on and went out.

In the Saguaro Pavilion she found a sleepy group with scrubbed faces holding steaming mugs of coffee and tea and talking quietly.

The Movie Star was there in violet sweats looking rather plain and human. She held a cup of herbal tea and stared into space. A number of others reported not having slept well, as if this was surprising in people whose systems had just been abruptly deprived of salt, sugar, nicotine, background noise, and alcohol. No one, Carter noticed, had turned on the television. Carter was itching to, but what would be on? Prayer programs or farm news. She poured herself a mug of coffee.

A Fitness Professional—Carter was beginning to recognize the type—bounced into the room wearing neon-yellow parachute material and a lavender headband.

“Good morning! I’m Helena, I’m leading the Five-Mile Mountain Hike! Three-Mile Mountain and Three-Mile Moderates leave in five minutes! One-and-a-Half-Mile leaves in ten. Five-Mile Mountain!

Let’s Stretch!” And she bounced out of the room followed by about ten hardy souls, including the Movie Star.

Carter wasn’t counting on having to make choices at this hour.

She sat still and clung to her coffee mug, and hoped that five minutes was a really long time.

In bounced another Fitness Professional. This was a black one who yelled that her name was Terri.

“Three-Mile hikers, let’s go! Put down those mugs, ladies, time to stretch! One-and-a-Half-Mile Hike in five minutes. If you have a medical condition, especially knees, start with the short hike today.

Everybody else, let’s GO!”

Had there ever been a murder here before breakfast? Carter wondered. Probably lots. Would it be one maddened dieter at a time going over the edge, or would they occasionally rise in a body and tear a little Mandy or Terri to shreds? How long could they get away with it before someone noticed?

Five Fortunes / 21

She was tempted to wait for the shortest walk, but realized with regret that only four other ladies had failed to rise, and they were all fairly frail-looking. Carter had too much vanity.

Out by the pool, there was a long row of ladies of many shapes and sizes, all wearing violet or navy blue sweatpants and jackets, except Carter. She found she was beside the terrific old trout from last night, the one with the cat glasses who had been here two hundred times.

Terri exhorted them to assume various queer positions designed to stretch their calves, their thighs, their hamstrings. Carter did her best to comply and was surprised at how bad she was at it. There were bursts of embarrassed laughter from time to time from others down the line. The air was beginning to take on the pinks and yellows of full morning, and she could smell jasmine.

“Great! Ladies, Three-Mile Mountain follow me. Three-Mile Moderate, Tanya will be your guide. Let’s Go!” And Terri strode off, followed by a gaggle of energetic walkers. The terrific old trout stayed put, so Carter did too. Tanya, in iridescent pinks, rounded up the remaining group and herded them off.

Carter decided to let the trout set the pace. She liked the way she strode out, swinging her fists as she walked, her jaw set in earnest purpose. Carter figured she must be close to eighty.

“I didn’t like the sound of a mountain at this hour,” Carter said to her.

“I never go up it if I can help it. This is prettier, you walk through the vegetable gardens. You’re from Los Angeles?”

Carter was pleased that Rae remembered her. They strode along talking, once in a while admiring the light, or an unexpected vista below them. The mountain, or at least the foothills, were definitely on the program even for Three-Mile Moderates. The surprising thing to Carter was, not only didn’t she hate it, she was feeling kind of great.

“I never heard of this place till I got here. My business partner sent me, as a birthday present. I haven’t decided yet whether to thank her or kill her.”

22 / Beth Gutcheon

“I love it,” said Rae. “Well, you could probably guess that. It’s a week of your life when nothing goes wrong. And you don’t have to cook.”

“I don’t do much of that anyway. Everyone at work’s been after me to quit smoking. My mother popped off from heart disease when she was fifty-one.”

“How much do you smoke?”

“Pack and a half a day.”

“Oh, my goodness. And you’re going cold turkey?”

“Looks like it,” said Carter.

“Well, hang in there.”

They marched along. Rae said, “I quit smoking when I became a dance instructor. I noticed how much you could smell it on your partners. But I never smoked more than half a pack.”

“You weren’t addicted.”

“No, I don’t believe I was. I smoked to keep my husband company.

My first husband. He was a jazz musician.”

“And you’re a dance instructor?”

“Oh, no, not anymore. I was a
dancer
, I was on the stage, my dear, in my salad days. What do you do?”

They had arrived at the crest of a ridge, and found Tanya waiting for them. The rest of the group was already there, or straggling in.

Laura from Idaho was leaning against a railing and listening to a redhead, very wound up, telling about multiple conflicting diagnoses she’d been given regarding a condition in her abdomen.

“It sounds so frightening,” Laurie murmured.

“That’s just it, it was terrifying,” cried the redhead.

“Everybody doing all right? Anyone getting blisters, need a Band-Aid? Anyone want a section of orange?” Terri and Tanya had produced fruit and Evian from their backpacks. When Carter bit into her section of orange she began to laugh.

“Oh my god. It’s so good, it’s like a hallucination.”

“Fresh air and early rising makes things taste better,” chirped the pearly teethed Terri. She was gathering everyone’s peels and napkins
Five Fortunes / 23

into a plastic bag that she put back into her backpack. Then, with a rallying cry, she started off again.

“Ooh,” said Carter to Rae as they fell into line. “That was
good
.”

“It’s probably because of the cigarettes.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Carter said. She thought, Damn…am I going to go through with this?

“So anyway, what do you do?” Rae asked again.

“I’m a private investigator.”

“You’re not!” Rae cried. She had met a lot of interesting women on this mountain, but this was a new one.

“I am, in fact.”

“Well, I want to know everything!”

“First I was a public defender—what an awful job. You see everyone at their worst. But I learned the nuts and bolts of what goes on in a criminal trial. What you need in the way of evidence, how to tell when someone is lying, what juries believe and what they don’t. My partner, DeeAnne, was a police detective. She had hit a glass ceiling, and I was burning out. We’d gotten to know each other in court, from opposite sides of the aisle, and we decided to make a break for it.”