“So, like, maybe Selecta knows, from, like, all their data about social networks and salons and day spas and whatever… they know that young brides having their first Brazilians will squirm a lot, and they know that makes it harder… so they tell New You, which is obviously part of Selecta just like the New Modesty itself is…”
I hadn’t closed my eyes. I couldn’t. I watched Reba fasten the strap around my left knee. In the mirror, I could see her back in the blue aesthetician’s uniform apron thing. In front of me, I could see the pleasant-faced woman herself, just past where the terrycloth robe still managed to cover me. The fabric had ridden high up onto my thigh but the loosely knotted belt around my waist had kept the robe from opening completely and showing everything to Reba, April, and—worst of all, it suddenly seemed to me—the mirror.
Reba rose from her stool, her hands reaching to either side of me. I felt my eyes go wide in confusion. Instinctively—and absurdly—my body tried to escape, my backside pushing against the chair to attempt to stand up despite the fact that my knees were going nowhere. Reba took the two straps to either side of my waist and brought them across my belly.
“Just sit back and relax, Mrs. Williams,” she said, and fastened the stout straps with enough force to enforce the command to sit back, if not the one to relax.
“Anyway,” April continued, as if her new friend hadn’t just been strapped down to have her pussy bared for her husband’s pleasure, “they knowus—Scott says they know us, like, you and me, better than anyone else.”
“What?” I asked, letting April’s story provide an apparently sane point of focus for my reeling mind. “Who?”
Reba sat down. She turned to the cart that stood between the chairs, where I had seen what the waxing equipment must be: a heated pot with an applicator stick in the warm liquid and the strips of cloth that would, I knew, remove my pubic curls. She wheeled the cart out a little and started to stir the wax in the pot.
“Selecta,” April answered me. “The New Modesty… New You. I mean, I’m not the kind of person who says, you know,trust the government,but… well, Scott says that the one thing you can trust is the profit motive, and that’s why he trusts Selecta, and…”
I had watched Reba like a hawk through this last part of April’s tale, fascinated despite myself as the aesthetician prepared the tools of her trade. She turned to me, her hands reaching to the place where my robe still preserved a tiny shred of my modesty.
“Alright, Mrs. Williams,” she said. “Let’s have a look.”
“Well,” April said, “the thing is… even though they had to carry me in here and strap me down, and even though Scott had to punish me so often in the beginning…”
I raised my hands in a futilestopgesture. Reba paid not the slightest attention to it; she pulled the robe up and pushed it up my thighs to my waist.
“Oh, honey,” Reba said, looking up at me. “You were a naughty girl, weren’t you?”
I couldn’t stop myself. My forehead creased hard, and tears sprang to the corners of my eyes. My mind continued April’s thought without her saying it:even though my husband had to punish me, it felt… right.
I nodded. My eyes went from Reba’s to April’s, in the mirror.
“I got a whipping,” I whispered. “For lying.”
CHAPTER28
Rick
In the locker room at the country club, after one of the best rounds of my life, Scott introduced me to Joe Stevens.
“Joe’s the president of GreenMe,” Scott told me.
“Scott told me you were coming,” Joe said as he shook my hand. “He thinks you’d be a great match for GreenMe, and from what he said I think I agree.”
“GreenMe?” I asked. “The lawncare company?”
Joe smiled. “That’s the one. You’ve got some experience, Scott said?” The older man’s pleasant face told me that thanks to Scott—or maybe even the New Modesty office—he knew I actually had a great deal of experience in lawncare. I felt a little foolish, but I kind of felt like I had just met a rockstar and the rockstar had asked me to jam with him.
A patrician, older rockstar who looked like fifty percent of his body weight consisted of old money—the kind that never made a big deal about being rich. The kind who, just to know, raised your chances of living happily ever after several hundred percent, especially in these days of dwindling economic opportunity.
“Well, yeah,” I said, returning the smile and putting all the chill I had into the handshake while still displaying my eagerness to make a future boss feel he had discovered a diamond in the rough. “A little.” I laughed, letting go of Joe’s hand. “I mean, I only apply a few hundred gallons of your products every day.”
Joe looked at Scott. “Amazing how Rocky Falls attracts good people, isn’t it?”
Scott laughed. “Which is the chicken and which the egg?” He turned to me. “What do you think, Rick? Does being a go-getter help you have the good sense to marry a younger woman, or is it the other way round?”
I couldn’t do anything but shrug and say, “I think that’s above my pay grade—especially if you gentlemen haven’t figured it out.”
Both the other men laughed.
“Why don’t we go to the grill and have a bite?” Scott asked. “Joe, I think Ella is having lunch with April and Rick’s wife Mandy—as well as the amazing Mrs. Purdy, of course.”