Pressing her palm to her chest, Camilla admits, “My heart is beating so fast. I’ve never done anything like this in my entire life.”
Jessica smiles reassuringly. “It’ll be over before you know it, and you’ll be thankful you were brave enough to try it at least once.”
Anxiety tickles the back of my throat, and the words sneak away before I can stop them. “Don’t do it if you don’t want to.”
“What about you?” Camilla asks. She sits on the table but doesn’t lie back. “Is this something you do?”
My voice is not to be trusted, so I nod and clench my teeth to cage any more unsolicited suggestion from leaving my lips. I’m disappointed in how fast my self-control is unraveling, but I’m past the point of reeling it back in undisturbed. The only thing I can do now is keep it from tangling.
“Let’s do it. I’m sure it’ll be great.”
I wonder if I should leave the room. Camilla wasn’t shy when undressing, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready for me to see her wide open while Jessica strips the hair from her most intimate places. But she surprises me again and lies back, hitching the robe around her waist. Jessica guides her knees apart and shows her how to position her feet so that she’ll have no issue getting everything with the wax.
Camilla’s complexion warms, but I’m not sure if she’s shy or nervous. She covers her eyes in the bend of her elbow and bites her bottom lip. But she doesn’t make a single noise when Jessica spreads the wax along her bikini line and pulls it back in one swift motion.
“How was that, sweetheart?” Jessica asks. She applies pressure to the area she just waxed.
“I think my anxiety is worse than the pain,” she admits. She uncovers her eyes, shaking nervousness from her hands.
“It’ll change your life. Being a woman is hard enough without worrying about razor burn.” Jessica pulls Camilla’s skin taut and smears more wax, working efficiently. Camilla’s checked out, doing her best impression of a dead person. “Did you see Inez when you were coming in, Cara?”
Correcting my posture, I tilt my head in confusion and ask, “I thought she was out of the office today.”
“She doesn’t normally come in on Sundays, but Naomi showed up and wouldn’t leave until Inez agreed to see her. It wasn’t pretty. You must have just missed her.”
I check my phone to see if I have a missed call from Inez, but she hasn’t tried to contact me at all. In fact, I haven’t heard from her once today. I’m not delusional enough to assume Inez includes me in all comings and goings at Hush, but a disgruntled ex-employee who tricked me into sleeping with Talent Ridge seems like an issue I should be included in.
“Did she make a scene?” I ask.
Jessica rolls her eyes and scoffs, and it dawns on me that she knows. When did Inez tell her?
“She was relatively calm until Inez showed up, and then she got loud. Inez was able to wrangle her into the office. We turned the music up to muffle out the sounds of their disagreement from clients. Not sure what it was about. We haven’t seen Naomi around here in weeks. If any of the clients noticed anything out of sorts, they didn’t bring it up. I just thought the entire thing was odd. I know Naomi was her personal assistant for a while, but we were under the impression that relationship went sour. Screaming at your ex-boss is no way to get your job back.”
An hour later, Camilla and I are on our way to the grocery store. My mind whirls, wondering what caused Naomi to confront Inez after all this time. Hush is off-limits and exists for the sole purpose of laundering money for the escort service. Whatever Naomi’s up to, she knew she was crossing a major line causing a scene at the spa.
Between Camilla’s Brazilian and eyebrow wax, I excused myself and called Inez to get answers. She didn’t pick up, so I sent her a text. She hasn’t responded. I’m uneasy because it isn’t like her to keep me in the dark.
“Tell me the truth, Cara. Don’t lie.” Camilla turns to face me. I look up from my phone. “Am I still really red?”
That’s an understatement. She had her entire face waxed and now she resembles a tomato, but the arch in her eyebrows looks impeccable.
“Your skin is irritated,” I say truthfully. “It’ll return to normal in a couple of hours. It’s not a big deal.”
She sinks into her seat, patting her cheeks. “That’s easy for you to say, you still look like a damn goddess. I don’t want to walk around the grocery store looking like this. Everyone’s going to stare.”
“Let them.”
“My skin feels so weird,” she continues. “It’s not going to stay like this, right?”
“You’re going to love it.”
“Like the Brazilian?”
“Yes,” I say. “Like the Brazilian.”
Twice a month, I take a trip to the same grocery store across town. A market recently opened closer to my apartment, but for the sake of routine, I come here because it’s familiar. The items on my list rarely change, and I know my way around so well that I’m in and out in less than an hour.
So how come I can’t find the fucking salad dressing?
Sometime during the last two weeks, the powers that be decided to rearrange the entire grocery store and I’m mid-meltdown. The bread aisle is now the international food aisle, and the canned food aisle is now the soda and water aisle. They’ve relocated the alcohol to the other side of the store where the eggs used to be, and I haven’t made it far enough to discover where those are now.
“We can split up to save time,” Camilla offers, taking pity on me. “Assign me a few items on your list and we’ll knock it out together.”
“My list coincided with the layout of the store. None of it makes sense now. I have to relearn where everything is to adjust my list for next time. There’s no point in us both running around trying to find the damn Italian dressing.”
Camilla has the decency to look understanding. “We can ask to speak to the manager.”
Chuckling, I say, “Okay, Karen.”
We find ourselves walking up and down every aisle more than once to find the items on the list. The problem with shopping this way is that we end up with a lot more in our cart than I anticipated. Couple that with the fact that we haven’t eaten all day, and we now own the cookie aisle I typically don’t get close to.
“Do you like Nutella?” Camilla asks. She took it upon herself to cross items off our list as we find them on the shelves. She’s doing a great job of rearranging the order of the list for next time, and I’m grateful for her help.
“I don’t eat shit like that.”
“My mom never allowed sugar in the house when I was growing up,” she says with an edge to her tone, and I find myself listening intently. “No juice. No soda. No fun snacks of any kind. So, when I left, the very first thing I did was run to a convenience store to eat a candy bar. It wrecked my stomach, but it didn’t stop me from eating all the junk food I could get my hands on from South Carolina to here. Nutella is my favorite.”
My image of Camilla’s life before she ended up behind the reception desk at Hush is unclear. But I get the idea that it wasn’t an easy existence and we may have more in common than I assumed.