Ess went into her room. She lay down on the bed, but it was hard and after five minutes she was bored with her own company. She checked her phone. Two of the guys from the plane had texted.
One was staying in a hotel. The other one was at his house, which wasn’t far away.
Ess texted him back and told him to pick her up at the gates of the spa and they’d go get a drink.
They went to a TGI Friday’s.
Ess had forgotten how good that food was, nachos with cheese and those fat canned jalapeños on top. She drank a few margaritas. She became drunk. It wasn’t necessarily a pleasant feeling.
She asked if the guy could drive her back to the spa.
He could. In fact, he seemed relieved to be rid of her. He dropped her by a side door.
Ess went up the outside stairs. She thought she was on the second floor, but it turned out she was on the third floor. She didn’t know that though until she tried to open what she thought was her door and a woman in a bathrobe with goop on her face answered and said, “Honey, you’re lost.” And then Ess, like a goat that has no idea where to go, went down an elevator and over a glassed-in bridge that bisected the lobby. The woman at the front desk saw her and waved frantically, but Ess found another set of stairs and began climbing. She went down a long hallway, turning left three times. The fourth time she ran right into Jen, who was standing in the hall. She was in her robe and hotel slippers with a security guard by her side. “I’ll take things from here,” she said, pushing open the door to Ess’s room after the security guard unlocked it.
“Oh sweetie,” Jen said. She pulled back the covers on the bed and shook her head. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I’m sorry,” Ess called out gaily and waved her hand. Flapped it rather, like a bird with a broken wing.
* * *
“How are you feeling?” asked the head therapist the next morning. She put her moisturized hand on top of Ess’s shoulder and leaned in. “If you need to talk about your problem, I’m here.”
“I’m fine,” Ess insisted.
She was fine. She was hungover. Big deal.
Except somehow, it was.
It was the spa itself that was to blame Ess decided. Who could feel better in this bleak temple of health?
No one. And so Ess came up with a plan.
All afternoon she went about recruiting other women, from the line in the cafeteria to the steam room to the yoga mats, where women like her, who hadn’t exercised in a million years, struggled to hold the positions. Like Ess, it turned out that they, too, wanted to have fun. Like Ess, they, too, wanted to relive those youthful days when friendship meant going out to eat, drink, and be merry.
Jen was a different story. It took a bit of work to convince her, but she finally relented, acknowledging that once upon a time she, too, had been one of those eat, drink, and be merry women.
And so a group of six women went to a local place where there was old-fashioned line dancing. In the center was a dance floor ringed with picnic tables. There were guys in authentic cowboy gear. It had the feel of a tourist spot except it was real.
They settled at an empty table. A harried server nodded her head at them as she spun away. “I’m going to order drinks at the bar,” Ess said, getting up.
“I’ll come with you.” Jennifer took Ess’s arm. She glanced back at the women they’d left at the table.
“What are we doing here?”
“What do you mean? It’s fun.”
“Well,” Jen said.
“Look at those guys,” Ess said, indicating two men straight ahead. They were large, good old boy types. “Hot,” Ess declared.
“Who?” Jen looked around then frowned in disbelief. “Them? Those guys? They are not hot.”
Ess went over and started talking to them.
In Jen’s telling, it just got worse from there. Ess started dancing. She got some woman to trade shoes with her. And then she might have found someone to give her some kind of drug.
And that’s when it happened. The incident.