Cult Classic(59)

“I’ve been dying to tour Clive’s wellness center! This is exactly what this neighborhood needs. You would not believe how many clients I have who live around here, who have to go to SoHo just to get cupped.”

“The wellness center,” I said, meeting Errol’s pleading eyes.

“Gwyneth Paltrow is going to shoot jade eggs out her eyeballs when she sees this,” Chantal continued. “Do you realize how thirsty this city is for a natural integration and intersection of spirituality and creativity? Why should we leave Burning Man in the desert?”

“Because of the sand?” Errol asked.

“Clive’s a genius,” Chantal decided, no qualifiers for him.

Vadis emerged from the interrogation room, immersed in a text until she saw Chantal. She forced a smile, screwing the corners of her lips into her cheeks. Chantal was to Vadis as Amos was to Zach, a souped-up version of her most cherished powers. In Vadis’s case, this was a combination of urban bedouinism and a six-figure follower count across four social media platforms. But right now, it was panic, not jealousy, that I saw flash across Vadis’s face. Chantal asked who was going to give her an impromptu tour. She promised not to post any photos.

“Top secret,” she said. “Roll out social during the soft open. I get it. Clive keeps saying it’s a wreck. It doesn’t look like a wreck!”

I stared up at the chandeliers long enough for the bulbs to leave imprints behind my eyelids, floaters that drifted up and to the left.

“I’m just concerned about time,” said Errol. “What time’s the play?”

“That’s true,” said Vadis. “There’s no time.”

Her tone was gratingly deferential.

“No worries,” Chantal said. “You do your thing, girl. Lola will show me around.”

Chantal linked her arm around mine, sliding it in there like an eel. She didn’t know I was the subject of an experiment. She also assumed the endgame went something like “clear your pores, stabilize your mood.” Vadis tried to crush me with her eyes but I ignored her. Chantal assumed I had the run of the place, and who was I to correct her?

“It would be my honor,” I said, walking toward the garden with Errol trailing closely behind us.

“We’re not gonna shoplift,” I assured him. “Your hundred-pound geode is safe.”

“There’s a crystalarium in here?” Chantal asked brightly.

“Where did you get that shirt?” I asked, turning my attention to her. “I’m obsessed with it.”

Errol skipped ahead of us and offered to take over. His explanation of a garden rang true enough. Here is where the Golconda grew flora with “ayurvedic properties” to be used for everything from “olfactory assists” to, well, garnish. He tacked on that the garden was a physical demonstration of how the natural could be filtered through the man-made and come out natural again. A living demonstration of the laundering of energy. It all sounded very wellness-forward indeed. Chantal must’ve thought so too because she kept closing her eyes, letting the words refresh her like a hydrating mist.

“Is that true?” I whispered to Errol as Chantal paced around the birds of paradise.

“It’s a garden,” Errol hissed, “with plants.”

“You’re good.”

His explanation of the interrogation room was equally convincing. Chantal came from a world of Reiki healers and chakra realignments, so explaining that the equipment was there to achieve some kind of higher physical state was an easy sell. She picked up one of Jin’s suction cups and stroked her face with it. I wondered if it had been cleaned since last I’d licked it.

“Sweet map,” she said, pointing at the wall and spinning back out the door.

We heard the phrase “chic sculpture” and followed her into the atrium.

“It’s an elevator,” I said.

“Does it work?”

“No,” said Errol, surprising even himself.

I looked at him. He mouthed, “I don’t know.”

A few more members—two women and a man—exited from behind the garden. No one I recognized this time. They were like Oompa Loompas, these people.

I decided to throw in a few questions of my own, just to make Errol squirm. Like, say, what the fuck was the point of a full coffee bar before the “soft opening”? And was it not wasteful to hire not one but two baristas? Errol deftly pinned this on Clive’s attention to detail. Chantal put her hand on her heart as if compulsion and consideration were the same thing.

“And what’s the room behind the garden?” she asked, pointing.

“Huh?”

“I heard a door slam behind the garden.”

“Supply closet,” Errol spat out.

“I have to pee,” I said, raising my hand. “May I be excused to pee?”

“No, you may not.”

“I have to go too,” Chantal said, pressing my arm to her side. “Harold, can we have the hall pass?”

“Oh, can we, Harold? Please?”

She pouted. Then I pouted.

Errol begrudgingly gestured down the hall opposite the meditation room. But he couldn’t very well follow us into the stalls. Instead, he watched for as long as he could, like a parent waiting to give his children over to a yellow bus. I heard him dart back into the interrogation room when our backs were turned, presumably to find Vadis. Or hide any open files on my exes. It was sloppy for Clive to have brought Chantal here, having lied to her about what this place was, and then leave her unattended.