Chapter 6

On Friday morning, with the weekend imminent, Sasha was beginning to feel a little bit relaxed. She and Peggy had covered a lot of ground in their preparations for the opening of the spa and she was feeling good about where they were. All permissions had been received, and all inspections either completed or scheduled. The painters were almost finished and the walls were looking just as good as she had expected. The carpenters had done an excellent job with the woodwork and the space had begun to feel very much like it was supposed to. Shipments were due to arrive in Provo within the next two or three weeks – chairs, desks and other seating for clients and staff, massage tables, work benches various, machines and apparatus, and the critical, top secret perfumed lotions, potions, oils and sprays for Sea and Be Seen!! Everything was moving along nicely, right on schedule.

This weekend was Whit weekend in the Turks and Caicos Islands, too, a British holiday weekend, and for that she was grateful. She could perhaps allow herself some down time over the weekend. Whit Monday would see her spending the entire day onboard the yacht; that was her plan. Today, she would have meetings with all of the workers and outfitters in the spa. They would go over the schedule of works for the weeks remaining up to “opening day”, and check for backlogs and potential challenges. She was hoping they would be able to advance the end date for the works so that she would have a few additional days between the end of the works and the reception of the first client.

Critical staff had already been contracted, and the process of interviewing was continuing. Advertising had already begun in earnest, too, and she was concerned that there be enough time in-between for staff to be fully familiar and oriented into the space as far in advance as was possible. She had planned on a soft opening followed by two weeks of testing and preparations offering complimentary and very low-cost appointments to hotel staff and guests and interested islanders, just to give her staff as good a chance as she could of being as fully prepared as possible. She wanted the opening to go perfectly smoothly and that the whole setup be tight and flawless right from the get-go. Things were looking good. She could take a short break this weekend, she was sure. She had earned it.

In the spirit of the plans she had for the weekend, she made her morning last a little longer this morning, allowing herself a few minutes more entirely to herself before checking in with Peggy and getting started on work for the day.

Yesterday, she had answered a call from Lionel Errivo and had agreed to meet him for drinks in the beach bar at the hotel, after she finished for the day. Actually, he had invited her out to dinner and she had declined, saying that she had some business calls to make to China that night, which was not exactly a lie, except that the first call was scheduled for eleven in the morning, Shanghai time, which was eleven o’clock in the night where they were. She could have gone to dinner if she had wanted to and finished with time to spare before her meetings. She was not sure that she had not wanted to go to dinner, but she was also not sure that she did. There seemed to be so much about Lionel Errivo that she was not sure about! It was very distracting.

“Anyhow,” she added, after she told Peggy that she would be spending the cocktail hour with Errivo, “it would probably not hurt to be friendly with him. I like his sister. We are getting along well and since we are going to be working with her for the foreseeable future, I suppose I might just as well make friends with her brother. They seem to be very close.”

“Makes sense to me,” was Peggy’s response. “He is a good-looking man, too.”

“Oh! I don’t care about that,” Sasha responded, perhaps a little too eagerly, and then added, “Well! I suppose he is. Yeah! And he did give me good advice about China, so it is only proper that I tell him how things went. Yeah. I’m gonna do that. But I’m just going to have a couple of drinks and then, I’m leaving him and getting back to work. I don’t plan on spending all night at the bar.”

“Oh no,” said Peggy. “Of course, not.”

“You don’t need to come to the boat to meet me this morning,” Sasha told Peggy. “I’m heading out now so I’ll meet you at the hotel. Meet me in the coffee shop. I want us to go over something before we go into the spa to meet the workmen.”

“Ok.”

“See you in about fifteen.”

“Cool.”

Immediately after she ended this conversation, Sasha picked up her bags and her water bottle and left the yacht. As she was walking up the dock towards her car, her face carried an expression of such deep intensity that one of the people she passed just could not ignore it. She did not know this person, but of course, she was on a small, tropical island, after all, where people live so closely that everybody’s business is everybody else’s.

“Well! Well!” said the stranger to Sasha, “you got the eye of the tiger, this morning!”

Totally unaware of her expression, and having no idea whatsoever what the person was referring to, Sasha merely smiled vaguely, in acknowledgment.

“Go get ‘em, girl!” he added. Sasha smiled again, and nodded slightly, now thinking to herself, “What the hell! How do I look? What’s wrong with my face?” She tried to relax her face, change her expression. She tried to just look like normal.

“Woah! You’re on fire, today!” she heard someone else say, a little further on. Looking to her right, she saw the marina gift shop attendant smiling at her, coming through a doorway she had just walked by. She waved at the woman and smiled back.

Having got into the car, the first thing Sasha did was pull down the sun visor and check her face in the mirror. How did she look? What were they seeing? she wondered. And why? She wasn’t aware that she felt any different this morning to the way she had felt yesterday or the day before, or the day before that, but obviously people were noticing something. Could it be her outfit, she wondered?

She was wearing a dress, a blue and green wrap dress in a medium jersey, that hugged her curves from her shoulders to just above her knees, and shot a little way down into her cleavage, which she had adorned with a beautiful necklace – a large, fake emerald set amongst small fake turquoise beads hanging on a multiple-strand choker of the same turquoise beads – a bold, statement piece of bigiotteria she had picked up a couple of years before in Milano. It was not the first time she was wearing this ensemble. She had selected it for today, she had told herself, because it would transfer easily to her evening meeting with Errivo. For some reason, she referred to him only as that – Errivo. Never Lionel, despite his entreaties.

Her outfit was professional enough for work, cocktail-ish enough for afterwork and stylish enough to not be overtly sexy. Not that that was a consideration, she immediately reassured herself. Her appointment with Errivo was strictly a professional courtesy she was according him. Nothing to do with any attraction of his toward her. And certainly, there was no question of an attraction on her part, towards him. She had no interest in him – or in anyone, she added hastily. She had no time for any of that at this time. And besides, he was not what she would have been looking for, even if she had been looking.

She eased the car through the gate of the marina and into the morning traffic around Provo. Pretty soon she had filed the matter away into its own little drawer and reset her focus on the day ahead. There would be conversations with her shippers and the manufacturers about the container due to arrive in about a week. Peggy had discovered that some documentation was missing, documentation she needed to produce for the Customs and Revenue Service in Provo. She had hoped to be able to clear all the paperwork and have made all the payments in advance that she could, as she had been advised to, so as to ease the exercise when the container did arrive, and get it out of Customs and on-site the soonest possible.

Today, she would have to deal with that. She’d need to locate the missing documents and have them Fedexed to her, stat! She had engaged the services of Customs brokers to do the running around and handle the bureaucracy, but of course, they relied on her supplying the necessary paperwork, invoices, shipping documents, bills o’ lading and such. She found it a damn nuisance that these issues were cropping up so close to the arrival of the container. And so close to the opening of the spa. They would be cutting it really close if these issues were not resolved within the next few days – a week, max! That, she thought, is what’s on my mind. That’s what’s giving me the eye of the tiger or whatever it was that man said!

Peggy was already there and waiting for her in the coffee shop, with a cup of coffee already served – hot, black, strong and unsweetened, the way she knew her boss liked her morning coffee on workdays.

Sasha’s day flew by pretty quickly after that. It was a marathon of telephone calls – to Shanghai, to New York, to Customs, to the shipping company, to the shipping company’s agent, to the container company, to the TCI Customs, to the transhipment site in Florida, to the whole world and everybody in it Sasha felt like, by the time she sat down to grab a bite for lunch. And then, she did it all again, in between forksful and bites, and after pushing away a plate upon which the food had grown cold. Things were getting complicated. The telephone calls continued throughout the afternoon, and would have to be made in the middle of the night, too, since Shanghai was in a zone with a twelve-hour time difference.

Her time with Errivo would have to be shortened, therefore, she decided, if she were to go at all. Her approaching date with Errivo had never left her mind for long at any time throughout the day, a reality that only added another point of stress to her day. Several times during the day, she considered cancelling on him and each time, she found herself unable to either call him or send a text. By five o’clock, she was a mess. Not only had she not been able to find the missing documentation, but she also found something significantly more alarming – the container that should have been shipped from Shanghai more than a month before, and for which she had some documentation to that effect, could not now, be tracked. Despite having received notices from both the manufacturers and the shipping agents, not one of the people in any of the offices she had spoken with had been able to give her an exact location for the container of goods today. This was serious. She was beginning to see a real problem looming. Tonight, she would call Shanghai herself, in their morning, and get this sorted.

It was in that mood that she suddenly realised it was past six o’clock, and that she was due to have been at the bar ten minutes earlier. She closed her laptop, grabbed her phone, dropped everything into her tote and told Peggy, “Go home, Peggy. We’ve been at this all day. Go get some rest. I’ll let you know as soon as I get in touch with Shanghai.” She slipped her shoes back on, refreshed her lipstick, spritzed a tiny puff of perfume in the air around her, walked through it, picked up her bag and set off for the bar.

He watched her arrive. He studied her as she walked through the entrance and across the bar. This woman who had nearly knocked him over, literally, on a curb in an airport far away on the other side of the world, walking through a wide doorway on a tropical island, was now knocking him over, again, but in an entirely different sense. He was not sure what to do with this new thing that was happening around and within him. It was making him feel distinctly uncomfortable. He was comfortable with good-looking women, of course. And with smart, competent women, too. At least, that was what he thought! He liked women like that. So, he was at a loss to understand these waves of emotions around this particular one; they were all new to him. He was glad she was late. It gave him a chance to observe her for a bit.

He saw Sasha looking around, trying to find him. The expression on her face made him think she seemed a little flurried, as if she had something on her mind, something other than meeting him, or perhaps she was agitated simply because she was late to meet him. His lips smiled a little bit at the possibility. For a moment, he considered just letting her keep looking while he watched her but he knew better than to do that, so he got to his feet and beckoned in her direction, hoping to catch her attention. He also knew better than to call out her name in this public place, so he started walking towards her. Just then, she turned in his direction and noticed him. She nodded and seemed, to him, to slow down, although she had already practically come to a standstill as she was scanning the room for him. She walked towards him and as she reached him, put out her hand to shake his.

“Hello, Sasha” he greeted her.

“Hello,” she replied. “Sorry I’m late.”

“It’s alright,” he reassured her. “You’re not. Please, sit.” And he indicated a chair, then pulled it out for her and stood behind it until she had seated herself.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What can I order you?” he asked as he moved to his seat.

“Oh my god! Rum!” she said, surprising herself at the ease with which she was entering his presence and letting him know how her day had left her feeling. “I would like a rum, please.” She slipped off one shoe. “With lime, sugar, and lots of ice. A caipirinha, please. Thank you.”

“Coming right up,” he said. Then, “Sounds like you’ve had a hard day.”

“You have no idea!” she said.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her. Declining to call a server, he went straight to the bar to make the order himself.

Sasha slipped the other shoe off, turned her face to the ceiling and leaned back into the chair. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Someone was smoking a cigar. She inhaled again. It was an aroma she particularly liked, though she herself did not ever smoke. Cigar smoke had nothing in common with the odour of the cigarette. She heard sounds of laughter coming from off to the side of her, the light song of a woman’s laughter on top of the deeper sounds of a man’s, two people sharing a moment, a joke, an experience. She wondered who they were – not their names, but their relationship. Were they two people in love? Were they friends, or colleagues? Or just two people who happened to be in the same place at the same time? Would she and Errivo laugh about something tonight? What would make him laugh, she wondered. Before she could give it any deeper thought, she heard him say, “One caipirinha for the lady.” She didn’t open her eyes right away. She brought her head down first, shifted her body in the chair and then opened her eyes. He had seated himself while she was getting herself settled, and was looking at her, observing her with an expression that she couldn’t quite name. He seemed a little bit questioning, which made sense to her – after all, she was also questioning herself and him! Why was she here? Why had he invited her here, really? What would they talk about? Would they enjoy each other’s company? The questions were endless. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the thoughts, picked up her glass, said, “Thank you,” and took a drink, a long, slow drink. He watched her, unable to look away. She watched him over the rim of the glass. Finally, she put the glass on the table and said, “Thanks again. I needed that. More than I was aware.”

“What brought that on?” he asked.

“People!” she answered, “Or paper. Or people with paper! People who did not do the papers they were supposed to.”

“What kind of papers? For the spa?”

“Yes,” she responded. “Papers that I need in order to get Customs to process the container we shipped more than a month ago…like almost two months ago, actually – and even worse, papers for the container. We can’t locate the container of goods that we can’t find the papers for!” She paused, again noticing that she was actually telling him stuff. She was talking to him as if they knew each other well, or had some kind of friendly relationship. How is that? she wondered, briefly, far in the back of her mind, and then started talking again.

She recounted her entire day, the many telephone calls, the questions, the frustrations, everything. She told him of her trips to China and to India and to Italy, to source cloths, perfumes, oils, soaps and such; about her visits to other spas and beauty salons, the treatments she had taken as she was trying to figure out what her spas would offer and how they would operate; and she told him about the failures she had encountered over the years, all the money she had spent and lost in projects she had initiated or agreed to participate in that had not worked out; about the changes that had come to her life since she had started out working in a salon in New Jersey and then driving up, down and across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to accommodate the clients of Tasha’s Mobile Salon. He listened. He interrupted only once or twice when he needed her to clarify some point she was making, and then he stayed silent again, listening and looking at her from across the small table.

When she stopped, when she had said everything, she leant back in her chair and looked across at him with a slight frown which seemed to him to be a questioning expression, almost as if she were asking how he came to be there. It seemed to him as if, for a moment, she had forgotten that he was there.

Sasha reached for the remains of her first drink, still cold but watered down now because the ice was fully melted. In her head, as she drank, she was asking herself if she had said too much and why she had said all those things to this man, and elsewhere in her being she felt lightened-up, relieved, comforted even, that she had, indeed, told him everything she had. Why had she, though? On the one hand, she worried – vaguely, very vaguely – that she had crossed some threshold somewhere, and on the other she was confident that it was, in fact, hers to cross.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. She felt, very strangely, almost like she wanted to cry. She wasn’t feeling sad, though. Not really. As far as she could tell. But right now, she was not at all certain what she could actually tell.

Lionel was asking himself what had just happened. Watching Sasha and listening to her speak had filled him with a very unfamiliar kind of pleasure. He had found himself hanging on her every word, listening to every change in tone or volume, noting each rise and fall, responding to every moment of hesitation with silent encouragement. Through the moments of her recounting, he was feeling as if he were somehow being raised up, lifted up, as if her telling him her story was a gift to him. It made him feel very special, although at that point he was not quite able to recognise it that way. He just knew he felt like she was supposed to be telling him, specifically, and he was supposed to be listening to her, specifically. It felt right and good and complete in a way he had never experienced before. Without taking his eyes off her for a second, Lionel called the server over and ordered another drink for her and one more for himself.

They continued talking, taking turns now, asking and responding, and before they knew it, hours had passed and suddenly Sasha looked around and noticed that the bar was practically empty. Where there had been a bustle of many people and a distinct hum of conversation and laughter just a while before, there was now quiet, and perhaps seven or so other patrons in the bar. Sasha looked at her watch and noticed that it was after nine o’clock. With a start, she reached down to put her shoes back on, across the table to pick up her cell phone and in the chair next to her for her handbag, in a flurry of movement.

“Oh! I must go, Lionel,” she said, in the middle of moving about and picking up things. “I didn’t realise the time had gone by so fast.”

“Neither had I,” he told her.

“I really have to go,” she said. “I have to make some calls to China. I have to get this thing sorted. I’m sorry. Thank you. For the drinks,” and then after a pause, “and for listening.”

He observed her for a moment without answering. That stumped her. She stopped in mid-flurry and looked at him.

“Ok,” he finally responded. “I want to hear how you get on. I hope you get things sorted tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He waved the server over.

“Wait, Sasha!” he said, as she got to her feet. “Let me take care of this and I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Thanks,” she told him. “I’m going back to the spa. I’m working from there.”

“Ok! I’ll walk you to there.”