“Excuse me. Do you carry this?” Janie showed her the empty Luscious bottle, and the clerk gave a knowing smile, her eyes down to Janie’s sweatshirt as she mouthed the word
chocolate
. Janie tried to brush off the pieces of candy bar and explain her state, but the woman just headed down an aisle as if she completely understood, and Janie followed, trying not to walk too closely to the women’s heels in her excitement.
The clerk stopped, and Janie scanned the shelves for the pearly top of Luscious Bubbles. She spotted it and grabbed one with a rush of relief. She could make things work again. Then she noticed the bubble bath was surrounded by bath oils, fizzy bath balls, and an abundance of crystalline salts she’d never dreamed existed. They all wore the same shimmery blue label, the Abundance Bath Company. She looked at the clerk in wonder, and the woman sighed, checked her watch as if counting down her own release from work.
Janie began to fill her arms with the amazing scent of Abundance. “I’ll take one of each, just in case.”
Lavender and citrus and sweet musk perfumed the van. Janie peeked into the grocery bag of comfort. All she had to do was drive back to Seattle. It was already past midnight. It probably wouldn’t hurt to postpone joy a little longer.
She clicked her seatbelt and glanced in the rear view mirror. Hotel. It was a nice hotel sign, and it was green. Wasn’t green one of her favorite colors? Canada had a decent exchange rate, or at least it seemed that their money was nearly the same as American money. It had to be pretty close, and she did have to go to the bathroom. The hotel would provide a cup of complimentary coffee for her drive back, and a bath in Canada wouldn’t take any longer than a bath in Seattle.
She put the van in reverse, pulled out, and turned toward the vacancy sign.
The bedspread was plaid not the paisley of the Seattle hotel she was also checked into, but the bathtub was just as shiny and the water pressure was an awesome thing to see. She waited for the tub to fill to the brim and stood naked in the bathroom, looking down the length of her body. Her breasts looked perkier. She didn’t eat enough chocolate. It seemed to be working for her, although it could have been the two pounds she must have gained from the party-sized bag of chips. She checked to see if that bothered her, but it felt just fine.
She held the bottle of Luscious over the water and let it pour and pour. There was no reason to deny herself. She had an abundance. She watched the bubbles explode, some popping open, others dividing in froth the length of the tub. It was a sweet eddy of comfort just waiting for her. She turned off the water and lowered herself into the perfection of it, her head falling back against the still cool porcelain rim while her body relaxed into the heat. She cleared her mind of everything but the warmth and knew with just a little rest, responsibility would feel right again. She’d be able to go on, get back to the work of her life. But after a time the bath began to cool, and the only thing she wanted was more.
She sat up, drained half the tub out, and turned the hot water back on. Leaning out of the tub, she hooked a finger around the edge of the grocery sack and pulled it closer. She unwrapped the fizzy balls and dumped in the scented salts. The water frothed, and bits of rose petals floated around her knees, beautiful petals, regaining some of their loveliness as they plumped in the water. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She just needed more.
The cold water woke her, and she rubbed wet hands down the goose bumps on her arms. She’d never dozed off in the bath before. She rose out of the tub, wrapped herself with a thick towel, and felt some warmth return. How long did it take for hot water to get that cold?
She walked out of the bathroom, stepped around the heap of her sweats, and reached for her watch on the dresser. Seven a.m. Her body jerked and the towel fell to the floor. Seven in the morning, the next morning, the morning she had to be in a conference room with her power-point presentation in an hour. Hadn’t she dreamed that before? Maybe she was still dreaming.
She shook her head for clarity, but the only thing clear was that she was awake, naked, and two-and-a-half hours from Seattle. How could she get there in time? If she drove… If she flew… She couldn’t. She could not do it. She needed to call, to explain… she needed a phone book, but would a Canadian phone book even list a Seattle hotel where thirty-five middle-school teachers waited for a speaker who could not arrive in time? She reached for her cell phone but didn’t know if information would even work in another country. She
had
dreamed it all before… late for something important, unable to phone, naked. If a dozen high school cheerleaders showed up to mock her, she’d know she was still asleep.
The hotel phone looked useful with all kinds of numbers printed neatly on its face. She picked it up and dialed the desk.
“How may I help you?”
Every phone should have a reassuring male voice to talk a woman off the roof. Janie felt the edge of something hysterical and tearful building and took a deep breath. “I need the phone number of the Hendrickson Hotel in Seattle.” The tears began to form and took her breath away. “I just came to Vancouver last night for some bubble bath, and now I’m not in Seattle to present Strategic Reading to thirty-five middle-school teachers.” There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and she used the pause to reach for a tissue and hold it over her eyes.
“I’ll have that number for you in just a minute.” The male voice was old enough to have a calming Dad effect and there was a sincerity to Canadian speech patterns that let her open her eyes again. “Here it is. (206)555-7542. Would you like me to connect you?”
“Yes!” Janie took another deep breath. Her yes had sounded too desperate. She needed to calm down if she was going to sound at all professional when she made her excuse. Excuse? She didn’t know how to make an excuse. She never needed to because she was a damned responsible person. She heard the ringing, pictured the front desk at the Hendrickson. She’d simply explain that she’d driven through the night to another country for bubble bath and fallen asleep in the tub. Her eyes filled with tears again. She couldn’t say that, but she wouldn’t lie either. That would be —
“Hendrickson Hotel. How may I help you?”
“I…” I what? The pause was too long. The man at the Seattle hotel didn’t have Canadian sincerity. He’d think she was crazy or drunk or… She couldn’t imagine more ors. “I have had a, uh, situation come up, and I need someone to post a notice on a conference room.”
Post a notice
sounded very professional. “The eight a.m. Strategic Reader presentation is cancelled. Thank you.” She hung up and watched the phone as if it might ring and someone American and disapproving would be on the other end to berate her. When it didn’t, she realized she was hungry. She was hungry and maybe a little relieved, but mostly she felt there was something more she needed. What it was, she couldn’t name, but she’d get dressed, check-out, and it would surely come to her on the drive back.
There was a moment of discomfort with the desk clerk when she wondered if she should be embarrassed about her near-breakdown on the phone just asking for a number, but he was a gentleman, and all felt well. She watched him in the next room as he waited for the printer to chug out the bill. Good thing they didn’t charge for hot water usage. She thought of the all night Luscious bath that should have been enough. While she waited, the sounds of the city bled through the lobby walls. It had a white-noise quality like a thousand fans droning on, only punctuated by the occasional horn or shout or the deep shifting of a large bus. She turned to the windows to watch the flow of human traffic and felt herself being watched. Across the street, a high-rise held all empty windows but one. She squinted and could make out a cat. It seemed to paw the window as if on the hunt. What would a pent up cat hunt? A near dead fly? A dried-up lady bug? What adventure did that hold for the poor cat?
The clerk appeared, set the bill on the counter, and smiled in the nice way only a silver-haired man could get away with, and she handed over her credit card. He compared the name with her paperwork from the night before. “Mulligan.”
“Yes.” She signed the credit slip.
“That’s a do-over.”
She looked at her signature. M. Jane Mulligan. “You want me to sign again?”
“No. Your name.”
She pointed to the raised M on her card. “I go by Janie but Mara’s my first name.”
The nice Canadian smiled. “You’re not a golfer.”
Was there a professional golfer out there with her name? An M. Jane Mulligan who got her picture on the sports page swinging with style? It was kind of exciting to think someone with her name was out there living. That M. Jane Mulligan probably didn’t have to drive to another country for a bath either. She probably lived in a bathtub, when she wasn’t winning trophies.
“A mulligan’s a do-over. In golf if you get another shot at it, it’s called a mulligan.”
She tucked her card back in her wallet. A do-over. Maybe she could be that other M. Jane Mulligan, the regularly bathing one. She didn’t know how to golf, but she did possess something miraculous. She had a whole day with nothing required of her. There wasn’t any reason to rush back to Seattle. Maybe she’d… “Could you look up one more thing for me?”
“Certainly.”
“Could you find the address for The Abundance Bath Company?”
He reached for a phone book then flirted in a way only a silver-haired man could get away with. “Mara’s a lovely name…”
She probably wouldn’t go there anyway. Janie reached for the McDonald’s bag that the teenage girl, all plumpness and promise, held out the drive-through window. Abundance was in
historic
Gastown, and historic probably meant loaded with seedy warehouses and Canadians on crack. Okay, crack seemed unlikely, she considered, as she pulled into the nearest parking spot to eat her breakfast in the blessed quiet of the van. Canadians on whisky. She could picture that.
She unwrapped the warm processed cheesy biscuit and took the biggest bite she could fit in her mouth. The girl had said
pro
cessed cheese. It sounded healthier than
praw
cessed cheese, which everyone knew you just shouldn’t eat. She shifted in her seat. Her butt was definitely shapelier, like she was filling in some missing youth. Junk food might be the body’s natural Botox. The night before chips and chocolate had perked her breasts up, maybe dyed cheese would enhance her tush.
When had she last even thought about her body? Besides feeding it balanced meals and walking it occasionally, she’d just been ignoring it. Well, attention must be paid. She looked down at the hand drawn map and decided she would stop by and stock up on Abundance for the middle years ahead.
And later, on the drive back to Seattle, she’d swing through McDonald’s again because in Canada they served MacPoulet sandwiches, and she just knew that they’d be far superior to a McChicken back home.
Gateway to Historic Gastown, the aged copper letters set in the cement arch possessed the right somber tone, and she took advantage of a red light to glance down at her map. For Abundance she could do this. The light changed and blinked green a dozen times. She felt herself speed uncharacteristically through the intersection. Green may say
go
, but a green light that flashed like it was having a seizure said
go like hell
.
She could feel her heart pound, a heightened beat she still didn’t know the count of, but it felt exciting and right as she zipped along. The green lights urged her forward, moved her into the world, and for the moment she didn’t have to be responsible for moving the world.
Up ahead she saw the road split because a triangle of a building stopped the flow. She had to decide and veered right. She parked in the first spot she found and peered out the window, oddly pleased that she’d made it to Gastown. There weren’t any empty crack vials. She assumed it would come in vials but like a bunch crows were called a murder, maybe crack in quantity was named something unusual. A plethora. A stank. A widget. Outside the window there weren’t any whisky bottles either, so she studied the map again. A couple of blocks. She ventured out of the car and headed down the street, checking out Gastown. Despite being named after the least respected of the utilities, it was delightful. Well,
delightful
might be too suburban a word to describe a vintage clothing store, some retro-furniture places, and a couple of edgy looking restaurants. Funky maybe. Different. Different from what she saw every day.
She spotted the Abundance sign and walked beneath it, looking up at the silvery blue promise of it. She paused with her hand on the doorknob. It felt a little like prolonging Christmas by unwrapping the presents as slowly as possible, but she pushed open the door and closed her eyes to the smell she’d come to think of as Luscious, as if it had an actual rosy lavender musk, and she could breathe it in at will.
“You must be Mara.”
Janie opened her eyes to a woman whose slightly rounded face and mass of straight blonde hair both glowed with youth. And, Janie shifted, the youth looked back at her like she knew her and called her Mara?
“When we got the call this morning for directions, we couldn’t believe it. You came all the way last night just for our bubble bath? That’s amazing.”
Pathetic. Irresponsible. Unhinged. Those might be better words. Janie wanted to tuck her head all the way down into her rumpled sweatshirt and disappear like a pathetic, irresponsible, unhinged turtle. But the girl smiled and kept talking like it was a great thing to be the woman who drove to Canada for bubble bath. “I’m Celia, come on back. Everybody wants to meet you.” Celia rounded the counter, and Janie automatically walked behind her. She cursed the day she’d learned to follow directions. She couldn’t be an aurally challenged learner who wouldn’t be walking to her own public humiliation unless she’d received written instructions, no, her brain had to just jump right on it.