Murder at the Spa (5 page)

As she entered the exercise room a few minutes later in her white sweat suit, Charlotte felt like a spa virgin about to be sacrificed on the altar of physical fitness. Her usual idea of athletic wear was a sturdy pair of walking shoes and her usual idea of exercise a brisk walk up the sunny side of Fifth Avenue. The front of the room had been claimed by the dark gray sweat-suited A’s, who awaited the commencement of class with grim seriousness of purpose. Adele wisely staked out their turf at the back next to Art and Corinne, whose face Charlotte recognized from magazine ads. She was a vague-but-wholesome-looking beauty who wore sweatbands around her forehead and wrists to match her low-cut plum leotard, which was definitely not spa-issue.

While they waited, Charlotte chatted with Art, the chemist. By now, she had recognized “What’s your biological age?” to be the conversational equivalent of “How do you like the weather?”—the icebreaker that established a bond of shared experience. For Art, the report wasn’t good. His biological age was seventy-three, a disastrous sixteen years older than his real age. Forty pounds overweight and with a cholesterol level in the stratosphere, he was a prime candidate for a coronary. His doctor had sentenced him to the fourteen-day cardiac rehabilitation program as restitution for a nightly shakerful of martinis, a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit, and little exercise outside of an occasional expedition onto the golf course.

Charlotte liked him enormously. He had a wonderful face: long and narrow, with prominent temples from which his thin blond hair had long ago receded; eyebrows suspended like circumflexes over small, deep-set blue eyes; and a long nose leading down to a narrow mouth filled with small, even teeth. It was a Gothic face, a knight’s face. He looked, with his furrowed brow and pugnacious jaw, like a St. George who had wearied of slaying dragons.

The class commenced with the arrival of the teacher, a limber young woman named Claire who led them through body circles, waist twists, and scissor kicks to the gentle strains of easy listening music. A stylish and energetic leader, she regularly interrupted her routine to cheer on her students with exhortations of the “Come on, you can do it” variety or to demonstrate variations they could do at home or in the car.

Art graciously took it upon himself to be Charlotte’s guardian, showing her how to position her uncooperative limbs and reassuring her in moments of distress that she needn’t complete every count.

But if Art saw no need to complete every count, a lean-and-hungry-looking man in a dark gray sweat suit did. When Art stopped at six counts, he went on to twelve. When Art dropped out of the routine, red-faced and gasping, the man in the dark gray sweat suit went on to finish effortlessly. If Art was the class dunce, the man in dark gray was its star.

“See that guy there?” whispered Art between exercises.

“How could I miss him?”

“His real age is fifty-one—he’s only six years younger than me. But his biological age is only twenty-three. Fifty years’ difference.” He shook his head. “Fifty years!”

Charlotte studied the man in amazement. Narrow-waisted and sharp-featured, he wore a New York Marathon T-shirt. What miracles of rejuvenation had he performed on his body that the computer should assign him an age fifty years younger than a man only six years his senior?

“One of those guys you want to kill,” said Art. “Mr. Physically Fit. Our Role Model, I call him.”

“Keep those heads up,” admonished Claire. Moving around the room, she adjusted here and advised there. She had a bright, cheerful manner and a wide, pale face with a high forehead and a light dusting of freckles. It wasn’t a pretty face, but it was intelligent and forthright.

“What does our role model do for a living?” asked Charlotte as she and Art struggled to swing their legs into the air. She noticed that the Role Model accomplished this feat without a grunt or groan, thanks no doubt to rock-hard stomach muscles.

“An investment banker. Specializes in hostile takeovers,” said Art. He named a prominent New York firm.

Charlotte nodded. She knew the type: up at dawn for a ten-mile jog around the reservoir, lunchtime racquet ball at the athletic club, meals of yogurt and fruit juice and vitamins taken on the run. Physical fitness in the name of the Almighty Dollar. New York was full of them.

After a final series of neck twists, Claire announced the conclusion of class. “That’s it, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. The announcement was met with a burst of applause, in gratitude partly for the style and vigor of Claire’s leadership and partly for the welcome fact that class was over.

Charlotte exited behind Art and the Role Model: one pasty, flaccid, and jowly; the other tan, trim, and sharp-featured. They could be, she decided, the contrasting symbols of the Era of Physical Fitness.

3

After class, Charlotte and Adele headed over to the Hall of Springs for lunch. The Hall of Springs was the most imposing of the spa buildings, modeled as it was after the
trink
halls of the European spas. To Charlotte, its main room, the Pump Room, looked like the nave of a cathedral or perhaps the set of a thirties champagne musical. It was a vast room, a hundred and fifty feet long and three stories high. Huge crystal chandeliers hung from the barrel-vaulted ceiling, which was supported by files of massive Doric columns through which shafts of sunlight poured down through clerestory windows. Encircling the room was a band engraved in roman-style lettering with a quotation from Ecclesiastes: “The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them,” Above the band was a running frieze depicting episodes from the spa’s history: the Indian maiden at the spring, the arrival of John Williams on a litter, Elisha Burnett’s log cabin surrounded by Indian tepees. The highly polished marble floor was laid out in a geometric pattern. Set at intervals along its length were three circular altars where the mineral waters flowed from brass spigots labeled High Rock, Union, and Sans Souci into fonts of dark green marble. Behind the altars, acolytes in crisp white jackets served up the water to modern-day supplicants, the sophisticated counterparts of the pilgrims to Lourdes. The water was served like the Russians serve tea, in glasses with metal holders. For some, it was heated to the prescribed temperature at heaters behind the counters.

But despite the architecture, the atmosphere was far from reverential. Guests sat at marble tables amid the potted palms talking, drinking, or eating lunch to the accompaniment of a Strauss waltz played by the string quartet that concertized three times a day on the terrace outside.

Charlotte and Adele threaded their way among the tables to an empty one in a corner and sat down. A young woman wearing a starched white shirt and a small red bow tie brought them their menus and took their mineral water order. Charlotte played it safe and ordered High Rock water; she had yet to get her mineral water prescription. Adele ordered Union water, heated.

“Actually, I’d prefer a martini,” she said once the waitress had gone, “but I’ve got to purge my system of the toxins I’ve been pouring into it. Quote, unquote. Excuse me if I bolt halfway through lunch. Union water is guaranteed to produce swift results.”

Charlotte laughed, the curious husky laugh for which she was famous.

Adele studied her menu. “I hope you’re not fruits and nuts.”

Charlotte smiled. “No. Cuisine Minceur.”

“Good. The fruits and nuts people are bad enough. But the juice people are even worse.”

She was referring to the spa menu plans. La Cuisine Minceur was the low-calorie continental plan. There was also a low-calorie vegetarian plan—what Adele called fruits and nuts—and a juice plan for the real zealots. La Cuisine Gourmande was for those who didn’t need or didn’t want to diet.

“Not much to choose from,” said Charlotte, scanning the offerings. There were only three La Cuisine Minceur entrées. Each was marked with a calorie count. A maximum of twelve hundred calories a day for women and fifteen hundred calories a day for men was recommended.

“I agree. There’s not much of a selection, but I can assure you that it’s all delicious,” said Adele. “What this chef can do with twelve hundred calories is incredible. Michel Bergeron—he’s very famous for cuisine minceur. I recommend the grilled veal chop—it’s out of this world.”

“That sounds fine to me,” said Charlotte.

The waitress brought their water and took their order. In addition to the veal chop (two hundred and twenty calories), they ordered crayfish in court bouillon (fifty calories), and a field salad with chives (seventy-five calories). By dessert, they would have used up their entire lunch allotment.

“How do you like it so far?” asked Adele suddenly. She spoke proprietarily, as if she wanted Charlotte to enjoy her stay as much as she was.

“So far, so good. But I haven’t been here that long.”

“Who’s your advisor?”

“Frannie LaBeau.”

“Mine’s Claire. She’s an absolute doll. But I hear Frannie’s very good too. I know one thing—she’s the best masseuse here. I’ve tried them all, but Frannie is tops. She may be a little cuckoo, but she gives a hell of a massage. Did she give you the reincarnation bit?”

“The body as the temple of the spirit?”

Rolling her eyes heavenward, Adele twirled a forefinger at her temple. “I wanted her to tell me what I was in my last life, but she said I’d have to take the course. All she would say was that I’m living on borrowed time.” She hoisted her glass. “I’m poisoning my physical envelope.”

“Your physical envelope?” said Charlotte. She raised her glass to Adele’s in a toast. “Here’s to poisoning your physical envelope.” She sipped her drink, feeling the bubbles fizz in her nose. Like Adele, she would rather have been poisoning her physical envelope with a glass of wine.

Over a lunch that was artfully presented to look like more than it was, the garrulous Adele gave Charlotte a series of brief reviews of the treatments. She praised the Salt Glo, in which you were rubbed down with coarse salt from the Dead Sea; and panned the Herbal Wrap, in which you were wrapped, mummylike, in warm sheets soaked with herbs: “It’s supposed to be a quasi-mystical experience, but I felt like I was being buried alive.” From zone therapy and biofeedback, she went on to the latest gossip on the spa physician, Dr. Sperry, who, she said, used to be spa director. Paulina had reportedly demoted him because of problems caused by his skirt-chasing habits. “Irate husbands and the like,” was how she put it. “He told me I had a Reubenesque figure,” she added with a giggle. The new spa director was Paulina’s son, Elliot. It was Elliot, who was something of a health food nut, who had introduced the fruits and nuts and juice plans. “But if it weren’t for Anne-Marie, Dr. Sperry would have been fired outright,” said Adele.

“What did Anne-Marie have to do with it?” interjected Charlotte between bites of her tiny veal chop, which was indeed delicious.

Adele explained that Dr. Sperry was Anne-Marie’s ex-husband. But they remained on good terms. It was Anne-Marie who had talked Paulina into keeping Dr. Sperry on, if only as spa physician.

Anne-Marie struck Charlotte as being too smart to have married someone like Dr. Sperry. She said as much to Adele.

Adele shrugged. “Who knows? Sometimes even intelligent women make mistakes. I’m sure we can all think of some examples.”

Charlotte smiled. It was known to all the world that she had been married four times. “Touché,” she said.

“You’re not the only member of the club.”

By the time the raspberry tart (seventy-two calories) arrived, Adele had moved on to her own life story, which wasn’t very pretty. In short, she was a pill junkie. For more than a dozen years, she’d been “riding the pill roller coaster.” She had started with amphetamines, prescribed to help her lose weight, and gone on to barbiturates, prescribed to help her sleep. And then to other drugs: Valium, Dalmane, Quaalude, Librium, Seconal, Percodan, Darvon—the names rolled off her tongue like a list of old, beloved friends. She spoke slowly and determinedly. Occasionally she’d lift a hand to her throat, as if her memories interfered with her ability to breathe. “I didn’t consider myself an addict,” she explained. “My pills were all prescribed by doctors. Every time I went to the doctor, I was given another prescription. In all that time,” she said, her voice rising, “no one ever said to me, ‘Adele, don’t you think you ought to cut back?’”

Charlotte listened. She was a good listener. Unlike many actors, she had the ability to be intimate with people; it was an ability that few actors keep, which few ever had. Her role was that of the sympathetic stranger. It was always easier to confess your problems to someone you didn’t know than to someone who might be around to remind you of what you wanted to forget. She knew the importance of letting Adele unburden herself. By telling her story, she was putting it behind her, making it history. Besides, Charlotte didn’t need to ask questions. In her business, it was a familiar story: the need to be on, to perform, day after day, whether sick or well, up or down, demanded incredible stamina. It was hard to resist the pill that gave you the oomph to get through another performance, and then, when you were too keyed up to sleep, another pill or the bottle to bring you down again. For people like Adele, who were doing their best to pull themselves out of a nose dive, Charlotte had nothing but respect. She had known all too many over the years who had failed.

Gradually, Adele’s life had unraveled! Her husband left her, taking the children with him. Her eldest son died tragically in a plane crash. She began drinking, swallowing her pills with booze. She ended up in a cheap hotel on the Lower East Side where she was free to spend her days taking pills and her nights in neighborhood bars. The end came one cold January night when she was found frozen to the sidewalk next to a leaky fire hydrant. She was taken to Bellevue and treated for hypothermia.

The waitress reappeared to clear the dessert dishes.

“In AA terms,” Adele said after the waitress had left, “I had reached rock bottom. For some, rock bottom is something as minor as making a fool of yourself in public. For others it’s a drunken driving conviction or passing out under the dining-room table. But until you’ve hit it, you’re not going to change. For me, it was being picked up off the sidewalk like a Bowery bum.” Her voice shook. She paused to compose herself and then went on. “AA got me off the booze. I haven’t had a drink in four months. But,” she added with a wry little smile, “I’m still on the pills.”