What A Girl Wants (9 page)

“Well, we'll just see what we can do about that.” She laid the chopsticks carefully on a napkin spread out on her desk, closed the carton, and tossed it back in the takeout delivery bag. Then she passed it to Hayley, who did the same with hers.

Audra's assistant knocked on the glass pane of the office wall and opened the door. “Diane Gradenger.” She ushered Diane into the room and removed the Chinese-food garbage.

Hayley did a double take. “What are you doing here? Don't you have class?”

“Nope. I usually have a team project meeting but I switched it so I could be here.” Diane slid her backpack off and set it on the ground. She shrugged her wrinkled tan linen shirt down her arms and tied it around the waist of her jeans, then flapped the collar of her T-shirt to circulate a little air. “Okay, I'm ready.”

Audra turned back to her computer. “I'm sorry, Hayley, but I have to get some work done, so I asked Diane to take you to Bruno.”

Something was up. “Why do I need Diane to take me? The guy works five floors up. I've got legs.”

“I'm just here to, uh, be here for you,” Diane said. She and Audra exchanged glances over Hayley's head.

They were so obvious. Hayley crossed her arms. “I'm not budging until someone tells me what's going on.”

“You're totally overreacting.”

Hayley glared at Diane until her friend finally sighed and said,
“Okay, look. I'm here to make sure you give it a fair shake. That's all.”

“What makes you think I wouldn't? Audra didn't force me to come here. I asked her.”

“Right, but you've never had any kind of therapy or analysis whatsoever.”

Hayley snorted. “I'm not sure that's actually a strike against me.”

Audra looked up from the monitor. “We're just going to have to say it, Diane.”

“You say it.”

“Fine.” Audra swiveled her chair around and looked Hayley right in the eye. “Hayley, the real reason is that you have a tendency to get hostile.”

Hayley made a disgusted sound and put her hands on her hips. “Hostile. I have a tendency to get hostile? I see.”

“Yes, you
do
,” Audra said. “This could be just the sort of situation that might set off an already loaded gun.”

“You're making me sound like an unstable mental patient with hostages.”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Audra looked at her watch.

“I'm not being ridiculous. I'm one of the most passive people I know. That's what this exercise is all about, isn't it? How can a passive person be hostile?”

Diane cut in. “You're a passive person with a low tolerance threshold. When you're bugged, it's ‘kaboom.' Major hostility. I can't believe you don't see this in yourself.”

Hayley grimaced. “Maybe I
am
like an unstable mental patient.”

“It's not such a big deal. I've simply asked Diane to go along and make sure you don't hurt Bruno's feelings,” Audra said. “He can be very sensitive.”

“
Bruno's
feelings? Isn't he the shrink? This is
crazy
.”

Audra stood up, her eyes narrow slits. “Crazy is inflatable breasts, an ugly dress, and a bad wig.” She put her palms flat on her desk and leaned over it. “Bruno Maffri is an internationally recognized professional. He counts numerous celebrities amongst his clients. The
Chronicle
ran an article about him just last month. In fact, Oprah's people are looking at him. Not to mention, I can personally attest to Bruno's ability to help his clients achieve their goals. . . .”

Within two minutes, Diane and Hayley were in the elevator on their way to the thirty-ninth floor.

They stepped out into the entryway facing two enormous brass doors. Hayley took a deep breath and reminded herself not to make any snap judgments based on the pink-tinged walls and matching set of extravagant artificial flower arrangements.

Diane pressed the intercom doorbell and the doors swung open. While Diane checked in with the front-desk receptionist, Hayley hung back, staring at the pictures covering the walls.

The pictures were color glossies: eight-by-tens framed in black matte with the words “I did it!!!” embossed in gold at the bottom. She wasn't sure she trusted anything involving the excessive use of exclamation points, but if that were the worst of it, she'd probably be fine.

Each picture featured two people with their arms around each other's shoulders, one of whom could only have been Bruno Maffri, personal coach to the stars . . . and apparently a bunch of other suckers in San Francisco.

He wasn't at all what she'd expected. Especially for someone Audra would admit to being associated with, but since he was some sort of
celebrity
personal coach, Hayley figured the standards were different.

In each picture Bruno held the same pose, clad in navy-blue nylon Adidas sweatpants and a white muscle-T that said “Visualize Success!” Hayley noted that the very same shirt could be hers in white or black with gold script for a mere twenty-five dollars, according to a placard next to the leather-bound sign-in book.

She looked back up at the pictures. In each one Bruno's arm was raised in a jubilant fisted salute, positioned just right so that the diamonds encrusted on his thick gold watch reflected the flash of the camera. He looked like a cross between Tony Robbins and a
Sopranos
cast member.

Hayley glanced behind her and started calculating the likelihood of escape without Diane noticing. Thirty-nine sets of stairs were a lot if one couldn't afford to wait for the elevator.

“Hayley Jane Smith?”

Hayley turned back to the front desk. Diane was gone, replaced by a tiny woman with librarian glasses and a clipboard.

She was wearing a pink lab coat.

Hayley swallowed. “Yes?”

The woman peered over her glasses and smiled. “Follow me, please.”

Hayley took one last, longing glance behind her, then followed the woman into a spacious changing room. She immediately honed in on a vase of pink tulips atop a tiny pink-painted coffee table, a pair of pink fuzzy slippers, and a pink dressing gown hanging on a brass hook.

She looked back over her shoulder at Lab Coat Woman. “Um, could you get my friend over here for a sec?” The woman pursed her lips and answered with a curt nod before walking out.

A minute or so later, part of the dressing room wall opened
and Diane came through the fake doorway with two steaming mugs. “Okay, what's wrong?”

What wasn't wrong? Hayley stared into the secret passage, then back at the fuzzy slippers. “Um, what is all this?” She gestured to the pink. “I'm not here for the mani-pedi.”

“Now, don't start getting excited.”

“And what's this about?” She pointed back toward the open door through which Diane had just arrived. “Am I being observed? Is there something sinister afoot? Does some security guy want to watch me take my clothes off?”

Diane kicked the door closed with her foot. She took a sip from the mug in her right hand and held the other one out to Hayley. “It's just the kitchen, Hayley. Cool, huh?” Hayley didn't take her mug, so Diane put it down on the mini–coffee table.

Instead Hayley picked up a throw pillow and ran a hand along the seam of the sofa, vigilant for any hidden recording equipment. She gave up and tossed the pillow back on the couch, then looked at Diane, who was obviously not amused. “Hey, don't look at me like that.”

Diane rolled her eyes and took the dressing gown off the hook, laying it over her arm.

Hayley grabbed the mug from the table and sniffed. “And what's this?”

“Chamomile.”

Hayley held the mug back out to Diane. “I drink coffee.”

Diane pushed it back. “You can't have coffee. Coffee invigorates. You need to be calmed.”

“Is this the part where my friends trick me into drinking a sedative, and I wake up as an inpatient at the asylum on the edge
of town, unable to convince the evil nurse who resembles a small pink rat that I'm not crazy and end up spending the rest of my life in fuzzy slippers and a dressing gown?”

“Okay, this is why I'm here.”

“I'm simply tense. I'm not hostile.”

“That's debatable. Have some tea.”

Hayley took a sip. It wasn't bad. She took another sip. Actually it was quite tasty, in a New Age sort of way. She tipped her head toward the garments. “You know I can't wear that stuff. It's pink. I'll break out with welts all over my body. It's like Audra and failure. I haven't worn pink since I was two.”

She poked at the dressing gown on Diane's arm as if it were a dead animal. “This is why I don't go to fancy salons. There's always a pink smock to be worn. And I never know how I'm supposed to put the thing on. And what items of clothing I'm supposed to take off and what I should leave on. Like at the doctor's. They tell you to take all your clothes off but you can actually leave your socks on. If you leave your socks on before you get in the stirrups, it's not like they're going to tell you to take them off.”

“What's with all this about taking off clothes? Jesus Christ, this isn't a haircut or a Pap smear.”

Hayley gulped down some tea. “Well, you just don't know, you know?”

“This is definitely not a Pap smear.” Diane started tapping her foot.

“I mean, you just don't know about the protocol. The salon protocol. It frightens me. I wasn't raised properly or something.”

“What do I know? I go to Fast Cuts and get the nine-dollar special.”

Hayley noticed Diane's voice was developing an edge, but she chose to ignore it. “No, really, can you imagine the horror of walking out of the dressing room with your smock tied in the back, only to find a salon full of women with their smocks tied in front pointing and laughing at you?”

Diane didn't say anything for a moment. “I'm thinking you had some bad high school locker-room experience that is still with you. Maybe you should save this for Bruno.”

As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. Lab Coat Woman looked in. “Oh. We're not quite ready, are we? Well, a few more minutes. But Bruno's waiting for us.”

Hayley elbowed Diane. “She's doing that collective ‘we' thing. I can't stand that.”

“You're stalling.”

“You know, Suz said that to me just the other day.”

“There's nothing to be nervous about.”

“I'm merely tense.”

“You've been babbling since you got here. Come on. You don't have to take your clothes off.” Diane took the mug out of Hayley's hands and set it back down on the coffee table. “Just put the robe on over the clothes. . . .”

“Why the robe? Can you just explain that to me? I can kind of see slippers, although these particular slippers—”

“Bruno likes all of his clients to be as relaxed as possible. It's part of his strategy to have the professional experience simulate relaxing in the home.” Diane pulled a couple of disposable “peds” from a pink cardboard box sitting next to the tulips, took the slippers out of Hayley's hands, and got on her hands and knees. She pulled Hayley's black loafers off and tried to force the fuzzy slippers over her feet.

Steadying herself with a hand on Diane's shoulder and not helping at all, Hayley said, “I don't think I've ever been this tense in my own home. . . .”

Suddenly Hayley jerked upright and Diane grabbed her around the knees to keep her from falling. “What am I doing? What. Am. I. Doing?” Hayley asked.

“Um . . .” Diane let go and rocked back on her heels, chewing her lip. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

“I did the same thing when Suz was trying to help me. I bitched and I moaned and I made her know that I wasn't happy about it. Why? I actually volunteered for this. And I'm not even paying. Why am I being so difficult?”

“Because you're just being you?” Diane guessed.

Hayley frowned. “Not this time. I'm going to embrace this. Yes, I am.” She struggled to slip her other arm into the pink smock. “I am going to embrace this fluffy slipper therapy and work on improving my inner self so that jobs and men will fall at my pink-clad feet. There's absolutely nothing wrong with chamomile tea. In fact, it's delicious. And they say pink makes your skin look smoother.” She wiggled her feet deeper into the slippers. “Okay, now. Are you sure I don't need to take more clothes off?”

Diane stuck out her hands defensively. “No, really. You can leave your clothes on. Please.”

“In that case, I'm ready. Wait, let me get my tea. Don't want to leave my yummy chamomile tea.”

Hayley ignored Diane's suspicious look as they left the changing room and approached the door to an adjoining room in the suite.

Diane knocked, and a man who was unmistakably Bruno
Maffri opened the door. It was a surreal moment, particularly when Diane, of all people, did the East Coast socialite kiss-kiss thing.