Chapter 5

Waking up in Provo is a beautiful experience at any time. Waking up on a yacht anchored offshore, and having Provo in the morning light be the first thing you see for the day, is an event worthy of repetition, and Sasha planned on doing that for as long as she had the vessel available. Maybe she’d buy herself one when her business was doing well enough, she had thought, except that she’d need to hire staff full-time and that would be kind of beside the point of escape and solitude – the two things she was craving right now. She was really enjoying having no-one around when she woke up, though she had not always been like this. These last couple of years or so, she had found that having peace and quiet and solitude when she woke up, served to set her up for the day. There was a time when she used to sleep with the television on, or turn the music on in her apartment the minute she opened her eyes. Recently, since her business was growing and life had begun to get so very full, with people around her pretty much all her waking hours, and all the bumping around with thousands of strangers in airports and hotels, she was beginning to truly relish these moments alone and quiet. Waking up on the boat, at a distance from land and people, was like waking up away from the world, in another dimension entirely, and she loved it.

This morning, as was the case most mornings nowadays, she wished she had more time to just lie still and soak it all up, not moving until she truly felt like getting up. But she couldn’t. She had meetings scheduled to begin very early – manufacturers in China, shippers in New York, essential oil suppliers in India, tilers and painters on Providenciales! She picked up her cell phone and noticed that Peggy had already sent her schedule for the day along with a couple of urgent reminders.

She stretched herself full-length, rolled over and closed her eyes again for a few minutes, then swung her legs out of bed and got up. Fifteen minutes later, her feet were on the sand, still slightly cool in the freshness of the early morning. The sun wasn’t quite up yet and there were very few people on the beach – a couple walking a big, brown dog, one runner and three or four others just walking in the sand and the surf. Sasha noticed that several of these people were wearing earphones. Involuntarily, she shrugged. She loved the sounds of the waves and the waking island day so much, the thought of blocking them out would not ever have occurred to her.

As she walked, she thought back to the last night’s events and to the man she had met, and whom, until last night, she had thought that she did not like. Not that she liked him, now, but she did wonder why it was exactly that she had not liked him before. She thought back to the conversations they had all those many months ago and tried to remember what it was that had so annoyed her. Strangely, she couldn’t. She had thought about it all night; every time she turned in bed, it seemed, he had come to mind, and yet, she was unable to put her finger on either why she had felt that way or what it was exactly that she was feeling now. She broke into a run. She ran hard and long. It was no clearer after she was done.

Back on board, she downed the last of the water in her green, Kleen Kanteen water bottle, switched on the coffee machine and went to the shower. Hot water, cold water, hot water again. She reached for the shower gel, closed her eyes and lathered up every inch of her body, breathing in the notes of the special SasSha’s Salon perfume blend she had had made exclusively for the opening of the Provo location. Her marketing advisor had recommended that she do that – create unique perfumes for each of the spa locations as she opened them one by one, and make those available exclusively at the specific location. Nowhere else. She had already worked with perfumiers to create a signature SasSha’s Salon blend that was already available everywhere; these location specific blends were different. They would be available only in the Salons that were spas and could be purchased only by women who had actually been clients at that location – a sort of membership, exclusivity thing. She had loved the idea.

It was the same marketing advisor who, a couple of years ago, had suggested she set herself apart again by changing the spelling of Sasha so that they were now SasSha’s Salons. There was marketing gold to be made with the multitude of esses in the company name, she had said, and had further advised that the salons that were spas could, eventually, be marketed as places for women to gather, to go to in groups or alone to share space with other women. She had agreed that they could be that – a sort of communal gathering place, a women’s club, which could eventually be expanded to include workout rooms, specialty restaurants, maybe, and offer other occasions for women to meet – wine tastings, conferences, new product launches, and so on, exclusively for clients – and perhaps, from time to time, to include the special guests of clients. She had had a lot of fun letting her imagination run wild with this. She was expecting to get a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment from whatever would eventually come out of the exercise.

The SasSha’s in the Royal Hotel Providenciales would be the second spa – and perfume blend – to be introduced to the brand. The New York blend was ready and would be introduced in the New York city location just weeks after the opening in TCI. TCI was the warm up for New York. New York was the original; would always be. New York had always been Sasha’s favourite city in the world and continued to be so, even though she had travelled so much in the last few years and seen so many other great cities in different parts of the world. There was no other city like New York City – the Big Apple, some people called it. It was everything that all other cities were, and more; had everything that every other city had, including the varied and various peoples, and more, and she loved it like no other, though like so many residents of the Big Apple, she was not a native New Yorker. She was a small-town girl from the South; from Hillsborough, North Carolina, to be exact. After university in Chapel Hill, she had worked in Durham for a couple of years and then had set out for the bright lights of New York City, for no other reason than that she had always been fascinated by the Big Apple – and that her father had been a native New Yorker.

For the New York blend she had selected the tagline – The Original. Simple and effective she thought, for the message she wanted to convey. Each of the perfume blends in production was named after the location of the specific SasSha’s Salon, and carried a distinct and simple tagline. Provo’s tagline was – Sea and Be Seen. She was still thinking through Newark’s and Chicago’s. She had time for those. She would not be opening those for another year.

She drank her coffee outside on deck, wearing her bathrobe and letting her hair dry naturally in the now-risen sun. She looked through the news on her iPad, checked her schedule from Peggy again, this time in detail, and then went back to the galley to make something for breakfast. Two bananas, one mango, a bowl of oats and some fried fish left over from yesterday’s lunch, toast and a handful of cherry tomatoes sauteed lightly in extra-virgin olive oil, with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. That done, she got dressed and sat down to work at a table on deck, in the shade of the bimini astern. A phone call with Peggy was first on the list.

“Morning, boss lady,” Peggy greeted her.

“Good morning, Peggy. How are things with you this morning?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Peggy replied, and asked, “did you rest well?”

“Yes,” Sasha said, but her brain questioned the truth of that. She had slept, but in fits and starts, was what she really thought. She declined to say that to Peggy, however. “Yes, I did, thank you. I went to bed right after you had all left. I had a shower and hit the sack. I awoke a couple of times, and then got up at just about my usual before-sunrise time, went for my run, had breakfast, and now, I’m talking to you. Not a bad start to my day, I think.”

“You are so right,” Peggy affirmed. “Not bad at all. So-o-o, what do we have today…let’s see…” and together the two women went over the parts of the day’s business activities that required conference.

Just before eleven, Peggy arrived on the dock. She called out before coming aboard and after she had served herself some coffee, on her boss’s invitation, the two women worked together for a couple of hours before heading out to the Royal Hotel Providenciales for Sasha’s meeting with Antonella.

In the high, wide expanse of the foyer of the massive hotel, Antonella Menarello seemed less tall and more slightly built to Sasha than she had the night before in the significantly more intimate space of the yacht. Sasha noticed, without thinking about it deliberately, that she was wearing black and white again this afternoon, as she had last night, except that this ensemble was more formal – a button-front, collared shirt with sleeves rolled up to just below her elbows, and a pair of wide-legged, high-waisted pants. Her shoes were high-heeled pumps in a light coloured, leopard-printed leather.

The women greeted each other professionally and yet, not too formally, an almost instinctive cross between American familiarity and island formality, two sides of the same coin of national response to British colonial legacy.

“It’s nice to see you, again, Sasha.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you were able to make the party last night.”

“Oh, yes. It was a good party, and it was good for me to get out. I’ve been working my arse off from the minute I landed on this island. You, too, no?”

“With hardly a moment’s break,” Sasha replied. “This morning, I worked on the yacht instead of coming ashore just so I could prolong the alone time and deceive myself that I was not really working, yet.” The two women laughed together.

“I totally understand,” said Antonella. “I would so like to be able to do that, but I have apartments right in the hotel, so of course, the staff behave as if I am on duty twenty-four seven!! The hazards of the job, I suppose. Let’s go into my office.” She led the way.

Sasha stood still for a moment to give instructions to Peggy, who went off to check in on the progress of the works going on in the salon space. They’d meet up there after her meeting with Antonella, Sasha instructed.

Antonella’s office was cool and comfortable and the women talked for what seemed a short time, but was actually more than an hour before they realised it.

“So, I shall be at the salon for a little bit still,” Sasha was saying. “I shall probably he here for a large part of every day from now on, as we begin to bring in the furniture and fittings and so on. We don’t have much time left before launch. Peggy and I are fine-tuning the invitee list, meeting with catering staff from your restaurants, figuring out chairs and tables, music or no music and if music, what kind and who deejay…all that stuff. It’s exhausting work, but thoroughly exciting.”

“It is for us, too,” Antonella concurred. “It is a beneficial arrangement for you and for the hotel. So, please, if you need any assistance at all to help you get set up and ready, let me know right away. We have loads of staff and resources and it is in our immediate interest that you succeed. The company will do whatever we can to help with that.”

“Thanks, Antonella,” said Sasha. “We’ll talk again, soon.” Antonella walked her to the door and reached out to hug her goodbye.

“See you later, Sasha. Good luck. Talk later.” The women embraced, kissed each other’s cheeks, feeling now as if they were friends as well as colleagues. Right at that moment, a knock was heard and the door opened. Lionel Errivo entered.

“Hello, ladies,” he greeted them.

“Hey!” said his sister.

“Hi!” said Sasha, walking past him.

“You’re leaving?” he asked. “Right as I am arriving.”

“Yes,” Sasha replied without turning ‘round. “Work. Duty calls. We’ll meet again, I’m sure.” And she was gone.

“Woow! A minute too late,” he lamented.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” his sister asked, giving him an amused kind of look.

“Heading out to the golf course for a bit, just thought I’d stop by and say hi.”

“Well, thank you for thinking of me. And after golf, what?”

“Work, I guess. I still have to finish up those Chinese reports for the big man. I want to send them out to him by morning.”

“Cool. Go golf. I’ll catch up with you later. For dinner, perhaps?”

“Sure.” And he went back through the door.

Of course, he had not planned it on purpose, but somehow, on his way out to the golf course, Lionel managed to walk in the opposite direction, down the wide staircase, past several huge, round columns and all the way to the other side of the vast building right to the papered-over glass front behind which Sasha, Peggy and the decorators and fitters were working. Following some irresistible urge, he also found himself knocking on the door. One of the workers opened and let him in. Sasha, Peggy and two men were standing in the middle of the room, amongst a number of cardboard boxes in various sizes, many yards of bubble wrap and piles of packing materials. Two men were kneeling on the floor manipulating some rolls of something that looked like a number of very long and wide grass mats.

Peggy watched the visitor and waited for Sasha to acknowledge him. For a few seconds, Sasha didn’t. She, too, merely watched wordlessly as he walked across the space toward them.

“It’s looking good,” he said. “An active scene, I think writers would call it. Nice to see you again, Peggy.”

Peggy glanced over at her boss before replying. “Thank you. Nice to meet you again, too.”

“I was walking through the building and noticed the covered windows, and my curiosity got the better of me. I like building sites and things in progress like this, but I wasn’t sure what was behind here. There’s no sign.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Peggy. “That goes up last. Literally, in the hours just before the opening.”

She turned back to Sasha. “We have our meeting with the sommelier in about ten minutes. I’ll wait for you in the restaurant.”

“Oh! No, no,” Sasha stopped her. “I’ll come now. It’ll be at least that long a walk across to the restaurant and I just spoke with Mr. Errivo a few minutes ago. We met in his sister’s office.”

“Make yourself at home,” she said, turning to Lionel. “This is Johnny Walkin, interior designer. He has my permission to show you around. We’ll see you both, later. Good work, Johnny.” And the women left the room, Sasha walking very consciously, step by step, afraid that in her movements, she might be giving away something she didn’t even know how to describe.

Peggy opened the door for her. Outside in the corridor, Sasha exhaled and relaxed, sort of. She was becoming more and more disturbed by the seemingly involuntary response she was having to Lionel Errivo’s presence. Among other things, she told herself, it was a distraction that she certainly did not need, and at this particular time, especially.

“Where do we need to go, now, you say?” she asked Peggy.

“Wherever you want,” was Peggy’s reply. Sasha swivelled her head sharply around to look at her. The expressionless expression on her assistant’s face did not flicker, did not change. Sasha blinked.

“Ok,” she said.

“I would suggest not a restaurant,” Peggy advised.

Sasha looked at her and chuckled. Then, she laughed outright. “Thanks, Peggy.”

“Don’t mention it,” Peggy told her. By mutual, tacit consent, they turned together in what they knew was the direction of the hotel parking lot. They walked in companionable silence to Sasha’s rented car. As she settled in behind the steering wheel, Sasha asked Peggy, “How’d you know?”

“I don’t know,” Peggy replied. “It just seemed to me that you were not too keen to spend too much time with him.”

“It’s not that,” Sasha attempted an explanation. “It’s just that…I dunno! He just…he just…This is pissing me off! I talked to this man in the business group meetings and he was just so annoying and know-it-all!” Peggy remained silent.

“Now, he wants to ‘hear all about’ my business in China,” she soon picked up again. “Pfffft!! I wonder how he did with his!” Still nothing from Peggy. They drove in silence for a while. Peggy checked her telephone for messages. Sasha did her best to navigate the unfamiliar streets, still having to be extra careful about driving on the other side of the road from the one to which she was accustomed. A motorist honked at her for some reason that she could not understand and she put up her middle finger in the direction of the vehicle, sending towards the driver a quintessential New York City hand gesture. Not much relieved by that, however, she followed it up with a loud rendition of a choice two-word New York City greeting beginning with the letter eff and ending with you. Peggy gave her boss a quick side-eye glance and hastily returned to her cell phone screen.

Lionel Errivo was finding himself behaving very strangely indeed. He told himself he had no idea why. The only thing he could pinpoint, now that he had given it some deep thought, was that it seemed he could remember having first experienced it sometime during his flight from Shanghai a few weeks before. Last night, he had walked his sister, Antonella, to her car from the SasSha’s in Provo party on the yacht, fully intending to get into his car right after and go straight back to the hotel, but that did not happen.

Instead, he found himself walking back into the party, thinking he needed to talk to this woman Sasha, herself, tonight, before tomorrow, before another minute had passed. He wasn’t drunk; he’d had only one drink that he had eventually put down on a side table after only a few sips. He didn’t do drugs; he was not feeling ill. But, he could make no argument to convince himself that he should turn around and leave. This afternoon, the same thing happened again. He ran into her as she was leaving Antonella’s office, and all he could think was that he had to talk to her, had to find her and talk to her, now. Not later. Not tomorrow. Now.

He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say to her. He had no plan, no talking points, no questions, even. Last night, he had managed to ask her about her interaction with the Chinese market. He did think that he would have liked to know how she had got on in China, but he didn’t want to come across as obsessed with her business activities, and he certainly did not want her to think he was harassing or importuning her in anyway. But he had to see her. He had to talk to her. So, he had gone to where he figured she would be at the hotel, in the space which she was preparing to be her new salon. It had been an easy calculation. But she had left the room almost immediately after he had entered. But, it was her assistant who had reminded her about their next meeting, he reasoned. She had not just taken up and rushed off because of him.

He chatted with the workmen there for a few minutes, let them show him around and explain the work they were doing, then he thanked them and made his exit. He was feeling a little bit like a kind of fool. Who does that? he asked himself. Who follows a grown woman about trying to get to talk to her? An adolescent, that’s who, he answered himself. An adult man would either extend a proper and specific invitation to a meal or drinks or something. Or, he would drop the matter altogether and leave the woman alone. He was having difficult doing either one.

He had her number still, he reminded himself. He could just call her and ask her out, he figured, but he wasn’t even sure that was what he wanted to do. Was it? Besides, she hadn’t seemed too keen to talk to him in their phone conversations, nor did she seem any more eager now, so what were the chances she would agree to lunch or even just a drink? Not great, he answered himself. He kicked at a chair that had somehow found itself in his way, and swore. He’d call her tomorrow. To do so now, after those two meetings in the one day would be weird. Tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon, he would call her and invite her to drinks the following evening, Friday evening happy hour in one of the hotel’s bars. Yes, that’s it. Done. Decided.

He pushed his hands deep into his pockets and picked up his pace. In less than five minutes, he was in the golf club picking up a set of clubs, a couple bottles of water and a golf cart. It would be a splendid afternoon hitting the links. It would clear his head.

Tomorrow, he would call and talk to Sasha and put an end to this weird behaviour. He’d feel better. All will be well. Yes. Tomorrow.

It did not go so well for him on the golf course, though, so he eventually left it feeling a little out of sorts. His form was off, his swing inconsistent and his feelings, increasingly irritable with each faulty swing. He somehow made it to the sixth of the eighteen holes he had intended to play, and finally gave it up. Packed it in just over an hour after he had begun. He threw his club into the back of the golf cart and cursed as he climbed into the front. He swung the vehicle round to head back to the clubhouse, cursing some more as he put his pedal to the metal and maxed out at the ten miles per hour top speed of his chariot. His mood, however, was more like zero to a hundred in much less than sixty!