Merry Jones - Elle Harrison 02 - Elective Procedures (6 page)

But here I was splashing alone through unknown waters, feeling lost, still missing my past. I needed to focus on other things. The sound of the ocean slapping the sand. Jen’s surgeries, how they’d go. How different she’d look afterwards. And her doctor, Alain Du Bois. Lord. He’d asked me to dinner. My mind moved in sync with my steps, thinking in staccato, and eventually, I came to another development. A row of gleaming white hotels along a sandy beach.

Up ahead, a woman was standing in the sand, wearing a strapless sundress and a scarf over her hair. The breeze blew the scarf, covering her face. As I got closer, the breeze shifted, and the scarf moved away. I stopped, shuddering, eyes riveted. Where her face should have been was a flat crimson mess. Her features—lips, cheeks, chin—seemed a scrambled, indistinguishable mass of flesh. I slowed down, staring. Told myself to avert my gaze. Made myself walk on and look at the water.

Maybe I wasn’t seeing things right. The bright sunlight must be causing distortions. Of course—that was it. What looked like raw wounds were probably sun glare and tricks of the light, not real. I kept walking, not looking at her. Got closer. Glanced her way.

Even with the scarf and the glare, I recognized her.

I looked away, out at the ocean. My breathing was shallow, my mouth dry. I was probably dehydrated. I’d walked too far, had had too much sun, hadn’t recovered from the shock of the day before. And my dissociative disorder must have kicked in, distorting my thoughts. I was reacting to the trauma of Claudia’s death and my failure to save her, reviving her in my mind. When I’d look back, she wouldn’t be there. I counted: one, two three. On three, I turned back.

Claudia Madison stood at water’s edge, just up the beach. Her scarf again blew over her face, hiding the disfigurements. But, obviously, she wasn’t actually Claudia Madison. She hadn’t fallen six stories onto her face. Her wounds had been caused some other way. Don’t stare, I told myself. If she’s real, she’ll be sensitive about her appearance. She won’t want people gawking. I moved my gaze past her, toward the hotel. A man was there, stepping through a gate, approaching her. Maybe her husband?

Or no. Not her husband.

My husband.

Charlie.

I stopped walking, stopped breathing. I was hallucinating,
had to be. The man looked just like him. He had Charlie’s shape and height. Charlie’s loose and confident gait. I blinked, but he didn’t disappear. I squinted into the distance, and with the glare of the sun, had trouble seeing his features. I felt off balance, needed to turn around and head back. I’d gone too far from the hotel, too far from reality. The man stopped beside the woman and turned toward me, raised a hand. Oh God, was he waving? Was Charlie emerging from the dead and just casually saying, “Hi”? Or wait—was his raised hand a warning, signaling me to stay back and come no closer? I hugged myself, unable to move, and watched as the man put his arm around the woman, kissed the side of her head, and led her across the sand into the trees, toward the road.

I stood on the beach for a moment, deciding that I’d imagined the resemblances. Then, I turned and headed back, running most of the way.

I might not have recognized our hotel, might have kept running all the way into Puerto Vallarta if not for Melanie Crane. She accosted me as I ran along the beach.

“Elle—” She called from the water’s edge as if she’d been expecting me and took hold of my arm. I slowed to a stop, panting. “Thank God. I was hoping to find you. I don’t know what to do.”

I bent forward, trying to catch my breath. Unbearably thirsty.

“He’s been tailing me all day. I went to my room, just to get away. Grandma said that someone had sent flowers. Guess who? I went online to check my e-mail. Guess who tried to friend me on Facebook? What am I supposed to do?”

My breathing was slower, my heart calming down. “Tell him to back off?”

“Don’t you think I have? I’ve said I’ve got a boyfriend back home. That I’m not interested. He doesn’t listen. Before I was
sitting on a lounge chair. He sent me a mojito. So I moved chairs. A while later, what do you know? Another mojito.”

A mojito sounded heavenly. I was parched, dehydrated. I looked toward the bar, craving anything liquid. Took a step in that direction. Melanie matched my step, stayed with me, too close. I smelled pool chlorine and sunblock. How had I acquired this woman? Why did she think her unwanted suitor was my problem? “Go to management. Complain.”

“Then he’d lose his job. I can’t do that to him.”

“Why? If he’s a lunatic stalker, he probably shouldn’t have that job.”

“You’re right. I just don’t feel right getting him fired. And if he found out I was the reason, I’d be afraid of what he might do.”

“Are you really afraid? Do you think he’s dangerous?” I saw him up ahead on the platform above the pool, doing a salsa dance demo for an elderly couple. Grinning and wagging his hips.

Melanie pouted, thinking. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Well, if you do, don’t mess with him. I saw you playing volleyball before. Just keep away from him. Don’t give him a message he might misinterpret.”

“Wait, you think he thinks that if I play volleyball, it’s because of him?”

How dense was this woman? “Yes, Melanie. If he’s looking for encouragement, he’ll probably find it in anything you do that involves him.”

She was wearing a scanty bikini and huge sunglasses and was so thin that her ribs stuck out. She kept so close to me as we walked that my arms brushed her skin, and she practically stumbled over my feet. As we neared the bar and its promise of water and ice, I quickened my pace. Thought of sangria. Grapefruit juice. Beer—anything wet.

As soon as we got there, I hopped onto a stool, welcoming the shade of the bar’s thatched roof. “
Por favor
—” I called out. “
Agua
? Can I have some water?” My voice was ragged.

Melanie perched on the stool beside mine, twisting a wisp of hair, whining. “What should I do, Elle?”

Ice water came. I grabbed it, chugged it. Felt it slither down my gullet, quenching and relieving. And blinding me with its frigid cold. I sat for a moment, letting the freeze fade.

Melanie was still talking. “But you’re right. I’ll tell him one more time, and if he doesn’t back off, I’ll go to his boss.”

She squeezed my arm as she left. I ordered a mojito on the rocks and was halfway through it before I realized that I’d pretty much brushed Melanie off. Hadn’t taken her seriously because she was so cloying. But maybe I should have. After all, a woman had died there the night before. Again, I saw Claudia fall, heard her land on the concrete. Someone at the resort had likely murdered her. What if that someone now had his eyes on Melanie? What if the killer was Luis? How would I feel if, tomorrow, Melanie’s body was found lying by the pool?

I looked around for Melanie, didn’t see her. Well, I’d told her to go to management. That was the best I could do, wasn’t it? I gulped my mojito, ordered another. Thought about Charlie kissing Claudia Madison on the beach, right in front of me. Except that it hadn’t been him. My mind had been playing tricks again, nothing more. The mojitos were delicious. I kept drinking, stopping only when I saw Charlie sitting at the other end of the bar.

Because of her surgery, Jen couldn’t eat after midnight. So Susan prepared a mini-fiesta to celebrate Jen’s last night with her natural God-given body. As she sliced onions and peppers for kabobs, the rest of us sat at the table beside the kitchenette, drinking room-service sangria.

“It’s not too late, Jen,” Susan stopped chopping to push a lock of hair behind her ear. “You can still change your mind.”

Jen rolled her eyes, turned away. Dipped a tortilla chip in Susan’s fresh guacamole. “You got burned today, Elle. Does it hurt?”

“I’m okay.”

“You need to use sunscreen,” Becky scolded. She’d taken leave of Chichi long enough to join us for dinner.

“Are you effing kidding?” Jen stopped chewing, gaped at Becky. “She didn’t use sunscreen?”

Becky shrugged. “I gave her some. Number thirty.”

“Well, did she put it on?”

Again, they talked about me as if I weren’t there.

“I used the sunscreen,” I told them. But in fact, I was toasted. Too much sun, too many mojitos.

“You’ll get wrinkles,” Jen double dipped her tortilla chip.

“Forget wrinkles, you can get skin cancer.” Susan’s knife punctuated her words. Chop. Chop. “Don’t mess with the sun, Elle.”

Why was I the focus of conversation? Becky was sunburned, too. “So, Jen,” I changed the subject, “you ready for tomorrow?”

“WTF?” she snapped. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because,” Susan answered from the kitchen, “somewhere in your dim but already beautiful head, you must know that you are about to take unnecessary risks for no good reason—”

“Will you stop, Susan?”

“—because all surgery is risky. And it’s obviously foolish for someone as full-out gorgeous as you are to undergo potentially life-threatening procedures to alter what is already a naturally strikingly beautiful body.” As she spoke, her vegetable slicing became hacking.

“Susan, back the fuck off.” Jen’s jaw tightened. She poured more sangria, took a drink. The only sound was the knife slamming the cutting board. It cut onions, but not tension.

“Susan’s only saying that because she loves you, Jen.” Becky put a hand on Jen’s arm.

“That, and because Jen’s a superficial, impulsive idiot,” Susan said.

“This was not impulsive. I did research. I thought it through.
You’re just pissed because you had to work all day. Don’t take it out on me.”

I scooped a wad of guacamole onto a chip. Took a bite. Man, it was good. Fresh avocado, garlic, cilantro, lime. Creamy texture. I thought about avocado. No other food resembled it in texture or flavor. Or color. The argument went on around me like the chirping of birds or the hum of traffic. White noise, isn’t that what they called it? Comforting and familiar background sounds, the bickering of old friends.

I couldn’t imagine what Jen would look like after the surgery. Would her belly skin stretch taut and her breasts stand up even when she lay on her back? Would her nose be too small for her face? I’d seen some terrible nose jobs. Noses molded to a triangular point, or to an upward curve at the tip. Noses that seemed plugged into the wrong faces. I looked at Jen, her exotic features. Of all of us, she was by far the most glamorous. Slender, busty, blonde. Long, dense eyelashes, extreme cheekbones. Why would she want to mess with what she already had? Maybe it wasn’t about appearances, but about something deeper. Maybe self-esteem.

“So, Jen, you think a flatter tummy will make you feel better about yourself?”

Silence. Three faces stared at me.

Oh Lord. I’d blurted out the question. Should have listened first, waited for an appropriate time. Instead, I’d jumped into the middle of their conversation. Probably they’d say I’d pulled an Elle again.

“Actually, that’s a good question, Elle.” Susan skewered chunks of chicken.

Jen sank back against the sofa, wide-eyed and pale. Had I hit a nerve?

“I’m just asking. Because I think you’re perfect the way you are. So it doesn’t make sense that you’d change anything. Unless, deep down, you don’t like yourself—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Elle,” Jen cut me off. “I like myself just fine.”

“Then why do you want to change—”

“You know what I think?” Susan interrupted. “I think you kids are getting close to forty. And Jen’s scared about getting old.”

“OM effing G,” Jen slammed her drink onto the coffee table. “Will you get off my case?”

“It’s just that we love you,” Becky offered.

“Okay. Here’s the effing deal. I like myself just fine. But I’d like myself even better with a flatter tummy. Can any of you say that you wouldn’t like to change something? Becky, you arrive places a full minute after your boobs. Tell me you wouldn’t want to reduce them? And Susan, you’ve had three fucking kids. You must want a tighter—”

“What I want isn’t the issue. I’m not the one risking my life to make superficial cosmetic changes instead of looking deep within myself and confronting what’s really bothering me.”