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Authors: Lynn Schnurnberger,Janice Kaplan

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BOOK: The Botox Diaries
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Back home I log on to my computer to try to get some work done, but fat chance that’s going to happen today. Nasty images of Lucy and Hunter performing seminude contortions in an erotic Cirque du Soleil keep running through my head like a broken DVD. And then, so much worse, I see Botox needles chasing the three of us around the room. I ditch the work idea and decide to check my e-mail. I have three new messages, which immediately makes me think I must be popular. Then I start opening them and I realize I’m popular only with retailers. Home Depot is having a spring sale—twenty percent off toilets and fertilizer. Next message: JCPenney is having a spring sale—thirty percent off fancy bras (don’t get me started again). And who’s having a spring sale in message number three? The subject line says this one is from …

Shit!

Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!

No bargains here. I know that without even opening it. And I can’t open it. I can’t.

My blood is racing and I feel like I’ve swallowed a gallon of coffee. My hands are shaking so hard I’m afraid I’ll delete the darn thing the minute I try to open it. So I get up and walk away from my desk. I pace around the kitchen, nibble on a muffin, brew a pot of herbal tea and try to simmer down. I go upstairs, stare into my closet for a solid three minutes, and then I realize the problem. I’m not dressed right for this e-mail. I change out of my ratty sweats into my oh-so-chic black suede pants. Should I reapply the lipstick and mascara I wiped off at Dr. Kaye’s office? That’s silly. I can probably read this bare-faced. No I can’t. I go to the bathroom and pull out a tube of Estée Lauder Sun-Kissed bronzer and a new Bobby Brown deep-wine lip stain.

With a critical eye, I look into the full-length mirror and swivel around. The Butt Master I bought for $24.99 from that three a.m. infomercial was worth every penny. The suede pants look good. I may be middle-aged and divorced but I still have some flair. I hate to sound like a bad self-help tape, but I’m just as desirable and a lot more self-confident than that pretty young thing who was once married to French dreamboat Jacques.

The man who after a decade of silence has sent me this e-mail.

Which—time to face the music—I am now ready to read.

And it’s really not that hard to do, is it? I go back downstairs to my desk, stare at the computer, and take a few deep breaths. A double click, and Jacques is back in my life.

Or at least he’s back in New York.

Mon Amour
,

I’ll be in your city next week. Can you meet me Monday nite at 6 for drinks at Les Halles or Tuesday nite at 8 for dinner at Balthazar? Let me know which is better for you
.

Avec amour, J
.

 

I reread it six times. Not that there’s much to read. I haven’t heard from him in ten years but Jacques acts like we just broke baguettes together last week. He must have had some sort of emotional breakthrough, though, because he’s actually given me a choice. Something I don’t remember his doing in all our years together. Still, the options are limited at best. What if I want to meet him at Les Halles Monday night for
dinner
instead of drinks? What if I’m available Tuesday but hate Balthazar? And tell me, please, is nobody ever going to take me to Le Bernardin?

Another possibility crosses my mind. Clearly one that would never have occurred to Jacques. I don’t have to see him at all. I could simply delete the message, erase him from my memory bank, and never have to confront my ex-lover, ex-husband and ex-life again. Jacques,
Monsieur Irresistable
, simply takes it for granted that I’ll see him.

And he’s right. I will.

I sink back into my ergonomically correct chair, close my eyes and try to picture what Jacques looks like now. Could he possibly be gray? Is he wondering if I am? Has he gained weight? Whoops, I have. How much can I lose before next Monday if I go on my favorite starvation diet? Maybe I should meet him on Tuesday, to give the Slim-Fast an extra day. I think briefly of trying to scare up some black market fen-phen, even if that’s the one that kills you.

Ten years. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t picture Jacques
looking one iota different than the day I met him, standing on that Caribbean beach in one of those skimpy French bathing suits that no American man would ever have the nerve to wear. I barely had the nerve to look. Twenty-four hours later I wasn’t just looking, I was having what I thought was the fling of my life with a ruggedly handsome hunk who looked like he’d been cast to seduce somebody’s wife in one of those French art-house movies. Instead he seduced me, nobody’s wife yet. And how I ended up as Jacques’ bride is one of the mysteries that I’ve replayed eight thousand times in my head.

That first night—the very first night we met—we took a bubble bath together in a luxuriously large tub that overlooked a moonlit ocean. Only a Frenchman would know to reserve a bathroom with a view. And that’s how it all started. I was barely twenty-four, still the proper wait-for-three-dates-before-you-kiss-him Jess my mother had raised me to be. But I’d been at my first job long enough to earn this one-week vacation. And why not make it a wild romance with an exotic Frenchman on a balmy Caribbean island? I was so free, so unlike myself. Almost as if the FBI had relocated me with a new name and identity. For seven days, I could be whoever I wanted to be. Or, as it turned out, whoever Jacques wanted me to be.

So there I was that first night, naked in a frothing tub, gazing at the stars, with a hunky man massaging every inch of my body. And then he said,
“Je veux laver les cheveux belles.”
“I want to wash your beautiful hair.” Could that be what he was saying? My high school French was pretty
mauvais
. For all I knew he was saying he wanted to wash my beautiful
horses
. They both made about the same amount of sense to me—until Jacques actually began sensuously caressing my hair, working us both up into a lather.

Lucy thinks she’s infatuated? I’d put my first-week obsession up against hers any day. When my vacation was over, I wanted to die, but instead I went home to Ohio, and that p.r. job at the museum didn’t seem so glamorous anymore. Then Jacques started calling. He had an apartment in New York so why didn’t I come live with him? He missed me. He wanted me. He needed to feel me in his arms again. Just a
short visit, I told my mother, as I bought my plane ticket and packed up the biggest bag I had.

For six months, maybe a year, the passion never cooled. We drank wine, made love, ate dinner, made love, took a bath, made love. For variety, we went to restaurants, drank champagne, and kissed passionately, waiting to get home so we could make love. He stroked my arm so frequently that a friend quipped that like a piece of velvet, my skin would wear out. Getting married was a formality since we were never apart.

Oh, Lucy, you won’t believe me if I tell you that the frenzy won’t last forever. That the sex might continue to be great but that, eventually, other things will matter, too. One day before Jacques proposed, I made a careful list of the pros and cons of our relationship. The negatives: Language, Religion, Political Differences. He Doesn’t Want Children. He Always Expects to Get His Way. Never mind that the French are perversely fond of Jerry Lewis. And on and on for eighteen lines. On the plus side, one lone entry: He Makes Me Feel Alive. That was enough to swing the balance, to change my life, and to carry me over the threshold.

Feeling alive again. Is that the draw of Hunter Green, Lucy? If so, I get it. And what I wouldn’t give to feel that way again.

Chapter
FOUR
 

THE WAY LUCY’S FEELING
when she gets back from L.A. is lousy. She takes to her bed for two days—a distinctly un-Lucy-like move.

“The whole world is just spinning,” she whispers when I come over with a pot of freshly brewed green tea.

“Are we talking physical or the metaphysical here?” I ask.

Lucy looks at me blankly. I decide to rephrase the question. “I mean, are you dizzy? Do you feel sick? Or is Hunter making you crazy?”

“What, are you nuts?” she says, jumping out of her king-sized sleigh bed and smoothing out the six hundred thread count Egyptian cotton blue toile Frette duvet. “Don’t talk about Hunter in here.” Her eyes dart around the room as if she’s looking for microphones, a minicam, or James Bond’s secretly recording martini glass that Dan might be monitoring.

“Do you think Dan suspects?” I ask, truly concerned.

“Would you shut up!” Lucy hisses. “I’m not kidding! Just shut up in here!” She pointedly turns away from me and goes back to smoothing out the duvet. Her life may be a mess but her room never is.

“Calm down. You’re a little overwrought, don’t you think? Have some tea.”

“I don’t want tea.”

Well, this is progress. I’m guessing she doesn’t want the sugar cookies I brought, either. I sigh. “Come on, Lucy. What can I do for you? If it’s a tough time, let me help.”

“I don’t know what kind of time it is,” she says, pausing. “But thanks.” She stretches and anchors both hands on her slim hips. “On top of whatever else is going on, my back is killing me. I feel like I’m eighty.”

I stifle my impulse to point out that back pain is often related to stress—or sexual gymnastics. Instead, I commiserate. “Tell me about it. I swear I creak when I get up in the morning. I don’t care
what
the magazines say, forty is the new eighty.”

“I thought fifty was supposed to be the new forty,” she says, but at least she smiles.

“What about Botox for the back pain?” I suggest, drawing on my new, all-purpose remedy. “They use it for migraines.”

Lucy rolls her eyes. “You’re so naïve,” she says, patting my hand. “That’s just a way to try to get the insurance to pay for it.” She pauses, and suddenly her eyes light up. “But do you know what we do need?”

Something better than new lingerie, I pray silently.

“Thai massage!” she says, suddenly bubbling again like the old Lucy. “It’s amazing, you’ll see. You’ll come with me, right?” As usual she doesn’t wait for an answer, but snaps her fingers and snaps into action. “I’ll make the appointment.”

“Face down on the mat, hands behind your head.”

Now that’s a promising beginning, particularly since I’m standing here with nothing on but a thin cotton robe, held together by a rib-bony sash. The burly man barking the order stands inches away, and he flexes his muscular arm so that the snake tattoo on his bulging bicep practically jumps out and bites me.

“Is this a massage or a bank robbery?” I whisper to Lucy.

“Shh, don’t make jokes. Pay attention and just go with the flow.”

Lucy looks Zen tranquil, which is completely baffling to me since
Mr. Biceps—aka the massage therapist—is forcing us down toward the cushions on the floor. The room is cozy and dimly lit, a lavender lava lamp glows in the corner and the strong odor of vanilla incense makes me gag. Mercifully, Yanni isn’t moaning in the background. So far, the Thai massage that Lucy promised would relax every muscle in my body has instead put every muscle on alert.

“You’re welcome to take off the robes and anything underneath, ladies,” says the guy I met only five minutes ago. And why wouldn’t I strip for someone with one day’s growth of beard and a mail-order diploma from Massage America? Lucy, however, drops her robe and immediately starts to peel off her thong.

Next thing I know, I’m lying facedown on the mat with Lucy beside me. I shut my eyes tight. I’m going to relax right now if it kills me. Okay, we’re starting. But how can I relax? I swear the guy is mounting me. He is. He’s sitting on my behind, all two hundred pounds of him, and grabbing my wrists. I try to twist around to see what’s going on, but Ravi Master, as he’s told us to call him—I’d bet anything that’s not what the priest called him at his baptism, but I’m in no position to quibble—shakes my wrists and doesn’t let go.

“The tension through your muscles is moving into my arms. Into my arms. Into my arms,” Ravi Master chants as he tightens his grip. “So you can relax. You can relax. You can relax. You’re at peace with the world. Peace with the world. Peace with the world.” Does the man have a stutter or is he just a poor conversationalist?

He’s chanting. He’s shaking. I’m losing consciousness—not in a good way. My arms have been starved of blood flow for at least four minutes. I think they’re dead. They must be dead. They are dead. Now that I’m too numb to reach for a can of Mace, Ravi Master yanks my arms back around his head and clasps my hands to his neck. This makes my back arch so steeply into the much-heralded cobra position that my breasts pop out straight into Lucy’s face.

“Feel good?” she asks me. I can’t begin to answer because in this stretched-out state, my vocal cords are bulging and all of the air seems to have been socked out of my lungs. Just wait till it’s your turn, Lucy, I think.

For a blessed moment, Ravi Master releases my wrists. There is a god. But within nanoseconds he’s turned into The Hulk, lifting me up in the air and slamming me over on the mat into the missionary position. Upon which, yes, he mounts me again and pins down my shoulders.

“U-uncle,” I stammer. “You win.”

But he’s not done. Now that he’s working on Side Two, he pushes, pulls, contorts and distorts my body into a series of positions that would impress any Pennsylvania Dutch pretzel maker. And much as I resist, it starts to feel good. I don’t know if he’s loosened my muscles or my spirit, but after about twenty minutes of this I’m all warm and tingly. I’m so at peace that the room is all happy pinks and purples and the meaning of life seems much, much clearer. Uh-oh. What’s in that incense anyway? I don’t have time to worry the question as I drift into a light sleep and Ravi Master abandons me to minister to Lucy.

Half an hour later, Lucy and I drag our Ravi-relaxed bodies to the sauna where it’s a steamy 180 degrees—we’re paying $150 apiece to experience the exact conditions that cause thousands of New Yorkers to flee the city each summer. We’re sipping small bottles of Evian, sitting on hard benches, staring blankly at glowing coals.

BOOK: The Botox Diaries
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