The Eloise Chronicles: Diary of the Live-in Help

Monday, January 5, 2009

D.S. al Fine

to: ameryka@freecity.net
from: iamaseagull@aol.com

Om shanti…

I’m so sorry to hear about your second attack of giardia. India sounds like it's been...perspective-building. How was Dharamsala? It must have been so inspiring to hear the Dalai Lama… (Did you see Richard Gere? ;-) )

I am writing this backstage on the company computer at the playhouse; we are in tech for that job I auditioned for right after I returned from London. It is so wonderful to be in a play again, I can't really say enough about it without sounding corny, but I will say that it's a fine day when a theater job offers more stability (i.e., a contract, regular pay, etc.) than my "support job."

At the moment I am dressed as a Russian peasant – I’m wearing fake dirt on my face (since as we know peasants have dirt on their face when they get out of steerage) and my mic is taped to my forehead. Everyone is upstairs focusing the lights so that the drop doesn’t look like a shtetl when it’s supposed to look like Texas (yeah, this play is the true story of Jewish immigrants in Galveston… I swear my life is a lesson in cognitive dissonance).

So...you asked how everything finished up with what’s-her-nuts.

Well, I finally got paid in late October, and I was reimbursed for all my expenses in November; and I have finally, finally paid down my debt. I don't owe anything to anybody, not to Visa, not to my phone company, not to my voice teacher. And for that alone, I am grateful to Eloise.

I’ve suspended my other day job, teaching in that Pilates studio downtown -- the one that farmed me out to Eloise in the first place -- for the remainder of my contract at the theater. I continued to teach Eloise for a while when she came back from China, although it was tricky after rehearsals started. At first she wanted her Pilates like always at 7 am, but eventually she decided she preferred it at *6* am. This meant me waking up at 4:45 (5 if I skipped the shower ), and the days I did it I ended up having to go back to bed in the afternoon. I just couldn’t do everything else I needed to do if I was getting up that early. (Of course, I'd find a way to get out of bed early *happily* if it involved acting, but for Eloise...not so much.) That hour of the day is a valuable hour of sleep; so I asked for more money or at least for cab fare. But Virginie told me that Eloise said, "Either do it for the same money or find someone to replace you." (Notice how they think it is my job to replace myself. Nevertheless... she has been a "good" client -- as in, she's given me lots of employment, even if she is a terrible student -- so I didn't argue.) Eloise is back in Europe now for a bit, and when she comes back I’m giving at least half the sessions to my friend Vera, who's a great instructor and a more patient person than I.

Eloise now lives in that glass tower in the West Village — which is currently ruining my favorite neighborhood (all those old houses, cobblestones, quirk), because her building is a good 14 stories higher than all the buildings around her, so it pretty much blocks the river-light from the whole rest of the street. But I will say that teaching up there -- well, it is amazing to watch the sun rise over Manhattan, and over the water -- all the walls are windows so her views are panoramic -- which is I guess why one would pay $30 million (yup) for a triplex on the top three floors. Even if it is an over-designed glass box. And sloppily built -- you can see every nick in the floors, every smudge of badly-applied paint...but! she can look across the alley and see into her good friend C_____ K____'s living room (that's right, the fashion designer), which is really what's important, especially if you can block your neighbors' view of the water while you're doing it.

The one funny story is that Barney Cloverfiled was in an accident on his Vespa (well, I guess that's actually not funny at all). He hurt his ankle and his back. I read about it in the newspaper...and a few afternoons later, I got a call from Ivan in London. "Kyra, Mrs. Alcock has just phoned me from New York to ask you to be available to talk on the phone for the next twenty minutes. Mr. Cloverfield thinks he may wants a Pilates session, but he wants to speak to you first. He is going to call you shortly. Please stand by." And with that charming call-ahead, I actually sat by my phone (...pathetic...) and waited until it rang 40 minutes later. A voice on the other end said, "Is that Kyra? This is Barney Cloverfield. I got your number from a friend."

I wasn't in the mood. "Yes, Mrs. Alcock's butler said you were going to call." Was I meant to play like he hadn't pre-arranged the whole thing? He wants to be a puppet-master, he can be responsible for the strings he's pulling. "How can I help you?"

And he said, "Stupidly, I've hurt my back and my ankle, and my friend [!] seems to be under the impression that Pilates will help."

And I said, "It depends on how badly you've been hurt."

He wouldn't actually cop to his diagnosis. "Not bad. Not bad."

"Do you have chronic pain?"

"Well...I'm very tall, and besides this current stupidity sometimes my lower back hurts from sitting."

"OK...well, Pilates will definitely help you with that. We might have to wait a bit for the major injury to heal a little, but as long as nothing's torn or broken, and you're not in too much pain, we can probably start."

And he said, "I just don't understand how it works. How does it work? Why is it so special? What makes it different?"

And we were off. I spent 30 minutes on the phone with Barney Cloverfield during which he interviewed me on the minute details of Pilates, the history, the techniques, my background, the different methods of teacher-training, where I had gone to school, how it works for tall people, did I think I could help him, etc. At the end of it all, he said, "Thank you for your time. I will have my assistant call you to set up an appointment." Which she never did. So much the better...although every time I taught Eloise after that she'd ask me if Mr. Cloverfield had gotten in touch yet. I'd say no. Then she'd say, "He's so proud. It's hard for him to admit he needs help."

Anyway, Madame had calmed down a little bit after her return, even made occasional sweet gestures like — when she ordered her pear-carrot juice in the morning she'd have the chef make me a glass as well. Which didn't *reeeeeeally* make up for her inability to pay me in a timely fashion — in fact, at the moment, she still owes me $650 in back-pay — but at least the trip to the West Village was quicker than going to mid-town, and after her sessions I’d take myself out to breakfast at my favorite little coffee shop.

It did get a little weird when I started teaching an acting class once a week in a public school in Harlem. It was through this amazing company that sends artists into the schools a couple of afternoons a week. And it actually paid the same per hour as Eloise did (which makes me think either they pay too much, or Eloise was paying too little...). I would go from her gazillion dollar hideous glass box of an apatment (full of her hideous modern art, including Bad Spritzers silver boxes full of dung — yes, she bought them) up to a crumbling New York City school-building crammed with teachers yelling into megaphones and kids running all over the halls and classrooms on a sugar high. They were as difficult to teach as Eloise, but that’s beside the point: she has so much, and those kids have nothing. For all of her good intentions, all of her fine talk about philanthropy, and about the world-wide need for “culture” in order to promote world peace, her all her fine words are sadly toothless next to this Public School’s squalor. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

At any rate, I’m not teaching much of anything these days because, blissfully, I’ve booked this job. It is a huge relief to be acting again. I’m wearing the ugliest costume in the world, I look like a fat weirdo and I have this really thick accent, and have to sing some complicated, not-so-pretty music... but. It’s a play about hope, and about making your way when you’re a stranger in a strange land, and I’d rather tell this story than help Eloise — inside of whatever tiny purpose for which I was hired — make a muddle of world peace.

Anyway. They are calling me over the loudspeaker — have to get onstage now for the top of act two. I love and miss you.

Namaste yo mama,

KLoCho

<<"Inhale and think of heaven, exhale and think of your butt…">>

***

to: vera@pilates4ever.com
from: iamaseagull@aol.com

Hi Vera!

Hope all is well with you, and that things are going well at the studio.

I’m writing because I have a potentially lucrative gig for you. This is for Eloise Alcock, the woman I’ve been teaching all summer. She comes into the city for a week of every month (or so — it’s pretty irregular) and she likes to do Pilates daily when she's here. She has her own machine (and, I might add, a snazzy apartment in the West Village). The money is great — over the going rate and under the table. I have to warn you that it is very, very early, even for a morning person like yourself: she used to want me to come at 7 am, but recently she has decided she prefers 6, and I…can’t get up that early every day for a week and still do the rest of my life (which has a way of continuing whether Eloise is in town or not)... Anyway, I thought it would be manageable if you and I split the time (you do a week, I do a week; or we can trade days if that works better for you).

It would be great if I could send you to her; I know she’ll like you, and you’re so experienced -- she’ll appreciate that (this woman is obsessed with her teachers being “the best” — do with that what you will!! ☺). That said, her back is like a board and she won’t listen to a word you say, but if you ask nicely, maybe you’ll be able to get her to do Pilates without her Blackberry or television on, something I have failed to do. It may be frustrating, but it'll be relatively easy money.

Anyway, let me know.

Kyra L-C

to: iamaseagull@aol.com

from: vera@pilates4ever.com

Kyra!!

Thanks SO much for the gig — I think it actually went well. I can see what you mean about the whole situation, and I don’t know how you did that all summer, but I think she liked me. it was hard to tell. She’s not too friendly, is she. And you were totally right, she has no discipline or mind-body control, every time I gave her an adjustment she seemed insulted and pissed off, so I kept it really basic. She did try to put the television on at first, thanks for the warning, but when her blackberry rang, after she hung up, I just said, “Now, Eloise, Pilates is a mind-body method. You can’t concentrate properly if you’re paying attention to other things. There should be no disctractions from the television while you’re working out.” And she did say, “Kyra lets me,” but then she actually shut off the tv and put away the phone!

One thing I forgot to ask you — how do I get paid? Eloise ended the session really abruptly and was back on her phone before I could ask her for money, and the only other person in the apartment was her chef, who only spoke French.

Can you let me know? (Also — did you want a commission for this?)

Vera

to: vera@pilates4ever.com
from: iamaseagull@aol.com

Hey girl,

Well, you are a better woman than I — congrats on getting her to shut off her screens! Of course, the CNN was back on today when I taught her, and when I asked her to please turn it off, she said, “No, I need to see, this is really important, they’re having peace talks in the middle east, cleaning up the mess Clinton left.” (She's pissed at Bill, but I'm sure it's nothing personal. I wonder how her speech went over at the convention...)

Anyway, I'm digressing. Virginie will pay you. Keep a record of when you teach her, and of any cancelled appointments, and send an email to Virginie every month. You’ll be paid…sometimes slower than you’d like, but they’ve never stiffed me. And no, no commission. I’m not into that for a situation like this, it fell into my lap. And now I’m falling it into yours.

to: iamaseagull@aol.com
from: vera@pilates4ever.com

Hey K —

Thanks. Listen, any way to speed up that payment process? I have bills…

to: vera@pilates4ever.com
from: iamaseagull@aol.com

Vera —

Sorry, but nope, they’re European (well, Eloise is Canadian, but the offices are in London and Paris). I think part of it is that over there people get paid monthly instead of weekly or biweekly, so paying every six weeks — while still late — isn’t as late to them as it is to us. Plus the idea that people need regular money to live on doesn't really occur to Eloise. Sorry. I know it’s a pain, the irregularity, but…can you deal? If not, I can try to advance you part of what you're owed.

KLC

to: iamaseagull@aol.com
from: vera@pilates4ever.com

Hey, Kyra.

Listen, I think I really fucked up. I’ve tried to get through to you on your cell but your voicemail box is full and I really want to get this out. Please call me as soon as you can.

I’m sorry if this makes trouble for you with Eloise, but I don’t think I can do this job anymore.

Even though I appreciate the money, and I appreciate that you thought of me for it, Eloise’s behavior seems really, really disrespectful and I end up feeling just terrible when I leave. I hate being spoken to like this, like I’m a servant in her house, and she is pretty impossible to teach. Just wants lots of reps and hard springs, which — while I doubt this was your idea — is just not my idea of Pilates. I mean, I know it wasn’t your idea to teach her this way, she kept talking about her teacher in London. And she kept mentioning some guy named Didier (by the way, do you know anything about the whereabouts of a stick? She kept saying something about a wooden stick that Didier invented?)

Anyway, yesterday I showed up to teach her at six and she didn’t even let me up into the apartment. The doorman buzzed up and I could hear her say through the phone, “No, no Pilates today.” Virginie had canceled the previous day’s appointment the night before (still technically a late cancel). And the one before that, also the night before. And they still owe me money from last month. So today when I showed up, I just said to her, “Eloise, I need to talk to you about payments. You had three late-cancels this week,” and she just brushed me off and said to talk to Virginie, that she doesn’t deal with money, Virginie handles it. So I said I would certainly speak with Virginie; and I also said, “I’m sorry, but I just want to be really clear — I’m going to have to bill you for this week’s appointments.”

And she said, “I was sick, I shouldn’t have to pay.”

And I said, “I’m really sorry you were sick, but I need more notice than you gave me. Each of them was cancelled the night before.”

And she said, “Well, that should be enough time, how much time do you need to erase it from your calendar?”

And I said, “It’s not enough time, I’m sorry. I need 24-hours’ notice. It’s not a matter of erasing it from my calendar. It’s a matter of me having reserved the time for you.”

Then she said, “Well, I’ll pay you for yesterday because it was so sudden, but I don’t think I should have to pay for those other appointments. I had fever.”

And I apologized again and said “I should have been clearer, but I have an official 24-hour cancellation policy.”

And she said, “What policy? I don’t do policies.”

I said, “I think you’ll find that most teachers you’ll hire, especially the good ones, employ some kind of late cancel policy to protect their time from being disrespected.”

And she said, “How is it disrespect if I am sick? This may be fine for all the others, but not for me. Besides, Kyra doesn’t have a cancellation policy…”

And before I could even think about it, I said, “Yes she does!!!”

Because I know you wouldn’t teach her without one, you were the one who warned me that she cancels all the time and to bill Virginie for it. So I guess I should have known that Eloise doesn't pay attention to how much money she's spending, or wasting, and just gone through Virginie.

So I’m sorry if Eloise is grouchy with you next time.

And I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch, but it is just too early in the day to wake up for someone who doesn’t want to learn. Or respect my time. I hope you aren’t angry. The funny thing is I know I wouldn’t have been so strict with her on this point, if only she’d been a more cooperative student…which I feel sort of bad about. But not bad enough to not get paid. It’s about self-respect, at this point.

Anyway. I want to have a real conversation and catch up, outside of Pilates things. Please give me a call when you’ve gotten this.

Vera

to: iamaseagull@aol.com
From: eloise@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com

Kira

no longer requiring your services due to your late-cancel policy.
Eloise
<>

to: virginie@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
Cc: Jonas@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com, pierre@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com, ivan@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com, plascina@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com, anna@ emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com

Hello everyone,

I am forwarding you the above [rather short] email that just came to me from Eloise. I’m so sorry, but please don’t call me for any more appointments; Vera can't help you either. Apparently the idea of 24-hour cancellation policy is unacceptable to Eloise, but anyone else I could recommend for this position will have a similar policy. (And just so you know, the *really* good ones need 48 hours' notice...)

I’m sorry to be ending our work together in this abrupt manner, but as you can see this is Eloise’s doing. Thank you all so much for all your hard work. Good luck.

Kyra Lopez-Choi.

To: iamaseagull@aol.com
From: virginie@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com

Dear Kyra,

I am sure we all feel badly about the situation and this 24 hours cancellation policy is a standard in the profession.

Please send your invoice to Plascina in London and I am sure she will make sure that it is paid.
I wish you all the best.

Virginie

from: iamaseagull@aol.com

to:eloise@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
cc:pierre@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
virginie@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
ivan@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
anna@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
jean-luc@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
jonas@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
subject: RE:

Dear Eloise,

I am sorry that you felt the need to terminate my services after working together for so long.

As for the 24-hour cancellation policy -- which both Vera and I employ, as do most (if not all) high-caliber professional trainers -- it has been in effect since the very first week we worked together; I notified you of it at your first session; Jean-Luc knew about it, as did Jonas, Anna, and Roger, and as do Virginie, Pierre, Ivan and Virginie’s assistant Justin.

The policy is there to protect the instructor's time: if you cancel on short notice, the understanding is that that instructor has sacrificed giving that hour to another potential client; as it is, 24 hours is often too little time to reschedule another person, meaning the teacher has lost their potential earnings for that hour.

This is no concern of yours, obviously, and whether or not you choose to continue with me is your business.

However, while it has been a pleasure to teach you, the fact remains that I teach Pilates to support myself. You are terminating my service with an outstanding balance of $650 for past sessions, as well as a $50 set of hand-weights that you requested I purchase on your behalf. Technically speaking, your session on October 12th was cancelled on 12 hours notice, and I did in fact give up another client for you on that day, but somehow I doubt that I'll be paid for that. You also owe Vera $150.

I know it isn't like you to leave loose strings. I have sent more detailed invoices to your assistants.

Thank you very much for a prompt response.

best,
Kyra

To: iamaseagull@aol.com
From: eloise@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com

I guess I did not know about the policy
I was the last one to know
At 6 30 in the morning I would not think you had
many other clients but I guess that is not the issue
I was sick for a full
Week and trying to get up in the morning with fever if I would have known I just would have cancelled the week
And called when I would have gotten better
done the reverse
I respect your policy
But when I see someone
5 times a week
I would expect a little flexibility
each our own way
I am sure that it is fine
For all the others
Hope u r well

<>

CODA: Tallying up the Bits

to: virginie@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com
from: iamaseagull@aol.com

Dear Virginie,

I hope this message finds you well.

This email is very detailed so please read the whole thing. Please call me if you have any questions.

An unanticipated issue has crept up re: Mrs. Alcock’s trip to Barbados in August. I'm not sure if you know the details of our departure, but it was very hasty -- as I'm sure you can guess. Since there was no time to order a Pilates machine before we left in such a hurry (on a Sunday), a large part of my job in Barbados was talking on the phone to Anna in _____Hampton (she was the P.A. while you were on vacation), coordinating the purchase & delivery of a portable Pilates reformer. I also spent a lot of time speaking to the owner of the Pilates company we purchased from, located in Long Island City. And I spent a lot of time on the phone with Omega Jackson, the rooms manager at the Sandy Lane (the hotel where Mrs. Alcock stayed in Barbados) in order to arrange a private room for her to exercise in.

This added up to an extraordinary number of phone calls made and received while I was in the Caribbean -- and I ended up having to use my own cell phone, because the one Pierre gave me to use didn’t function.

A week ago, I got hit with an enormous bill from my cell phone company, charging me an astronomical "out of range" rate. I have an itemized bill that I’d like to fax to you; you’ll see there are a few lengthy incoming calls that were personal calls from my own friends, and obviously I don't expect to be reimbursed for those, but after subtracting my personal calls there is still $645 (USD) remaining that I do need to be reimbursed for, since these were calls made or taken entirely in the service of Mrs. Alcock. I ended up paying this bill on my credit card.

I can tell you that I had no idea my roaming charges would be so high; in fact there was nothing on my phone to indicate I was "roaming" (no little icon appeared), and my cell phone company got a piece of my mind when I got the bill. If it’s any help, I do know we wouldn’t necessarily have saved money by using the hotel phone to make those calls, since hotel charges are notoriously over-priced.

Please respond as soon as you can. I will fax you the itemized bill as soon as you send me the fax number for your office in Washington D.C.). I am really sorry about this, and I hesitated for a before letting you know this had happened; I cannot describe to you my own shock when I received the bill, but the company wouldn't budge when I asked them for a lower rate. I wish that I could just pay this and not have to ask you for a reimbursement, but I would not have gone to Barbados if I had thought it would cost me $645 in phone bills.

Speak to you soon,
Kyra

from: pierre@emgbalifeandartholdingco.ltd.com

to: iamaseagull@aol.com

Hello Kyra--

Below please find your tallied bits which we compiled based on your own accounting. Thank you for sending all those receipts and for doing your own addition. Looking forward to continuing to work with you in the fall.

Cheers.

Pierre

KYRA LOPEZ-CHOI EXPENSES AND FEES AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 2005

Barbadian $'s/GBP £ = USD $

16-Aug B$127.90 = US$63.95 Goggles & Pilates ball
18-Aug B$15.00 = US$7.50 The RotDen, St James (subsistence)
15-Aug B$50.85 = US$25.43 SuperCentre (food/subsistence)
20-Aug B$38.54 = US$19.27 SuperCentre (food/subsistence)
15-Aug B$7.55 = US$3.78 Esso Tigermarket, Paynes Bay (water)
15-Aug B$50.00 = US$25.00 food - juice & fruit
19-Aug B$62.45 = US$31.23 SuperCentre (food/subsistence)
19-Aug B$6.99 = US$3.50 food
Aug-05 B$530.00 = US$265.00 taxis & buses, 14th-28th Aug., to and from Sandy Lane
Aug-05 B$192.00 =$96.00 tips as recorded
30--Aug £10.00 =$18.43 Journey's Friend, Kensington Hilton (food)
30-Aug £5.34 =$9.84 breakfast fruit
30-Aug £29.99 =$55.27 Carphone Warehouse (mobile phone)
30-Aug £8.49 $ =$15.65 Journey's Friend, Kensington Hilton (food)
2-Sep £60.00 =$110.58 taxi to Heathrow airport

PILATES INVOICE
2-Sep $1,000.00 pilates additional days in London Sept. 2005

LESS PAYMENTS RECEIVED
-$400.00 cash received from Pierre M_______
-£40.00 -$73.72 cash received from Ivan P_______

$1,276.69 BALANCE DUE TO KYRA LOPEZ-CHOI

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Chapter 25: Post-Script

To: ameryka@freecity.net
From: iamaseagull@aol.com
subj: post-Salzburg, post-London, post-Adventure

Hi lovey,

We seem to have switched places; I am back in New York, at last. I hope Prague is as beautiful as you remembered. Where are you living? And when will you be coming back home?

(BTW…Thanks for the language tips for Austria. I’m sorry to say that they did not come in handy, having had no occasion to yell “scheisse” out loud, and I just don’t believe that “dickmilk” is how they say “yogurt.” Sorry. ;-) But thanks anyway…)

So you asked how it all finished up, so here it all is. The best I can say is, not with a bang... but with my dignity restored. And I am out of debt as soon as Eloise signs the checks (that’s right, she hasn’t done it yet. And I don’t know when she will. So the story isn’t over, even though I’m back home).

Anyway, this is what happened last week.

We took off from Barbados in the evening. (If you’re curious, yes, I had on a skirt and a full face of makeup.) Omega Jackson had helped me hoist the folding reformer into the car and kissed my hand, and the car with the luggage whisked Gerry and me off to the Bajan airport; Madame Eloise followed in a separate vehicle.

Gerry the now-shiny-toothed ass-kisser carried Eloise’s “hand luggage.” We boarded the plane late; Eloise was nowhere to be seen. Gerry was in the middle of telling me the story of how his flat in London was burgled (I’ve heard it four times) when the flight attendant rescued me from death by boredom by introducing herself. “I’m Lori,” she started. “Um, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but – ah, could I talk to you for a minute?” She looked terrified and pulled me aside. “Have you been working for her for a long time?” she asked me.

“About nine months. What’s the problem?”

And Lori handed me printout that truly took the cake, maybe all the cake from the whole summer. It was written by Virginie.

List of Protocols for Eloise Gewurztraminer Bourgeois Alcock:
for staff of Private Aviation

Mme. Alcock is an extremely high-profile client. Please keep in mind that she values her time and privacy and keep communication to a minimum. She will probably rest in the back of the plane for the duration of the flight. If it is nighttime, she is not to be disturbed except in cases of extreme emergency. If a meal is to be served, there should be wine and several options to choose from; she generally prefers classic French cuisine but butter should not be used in the preparation.

Please stock the following:
Cashmere blankets
A salmon option
Espresso
Dark chocolates
An assortment of dried fruits and nuts (NO CASHEWS)
Tisanes (fresh leaves only please NO TEA BAGS)
Lavender aromatherapy oil

Please keep in mind that discretion is paramount. Mrs. Alcock is very busy with her work and prefers to be addressed by her personal staff, so messages should be relayed through them. She doesn’t like to be looked at so please avoid eye contact.”

Thank you very much

Virginie Graziani, P.A.

There was really nothing to say. If this were a memo for someone truly important with who had real work to do, like the President of the United States, I could *maybe* understand the tone, if not the content. One could argue that Eloise owns art magazines and speaks at events about world peace and creativity, all of which (in theory) I think are important; but the fact is that the real work -- running her companies, or writing the speeches she reads out loud in front of a tele-prompter -- is farmed out to people she pays. She has no attention span, no ability to memorize, no knowledge about art or ability to absorb and contextualize the information she takes in from her own publications. There was nothing, nothing important that was going to be done on that plane, with or without poor Lori daring to inquire if Mrs. Alcock would prefer steak or chicken.

I rolled my eyes at Lori and told her to just do her best. I said that it was the most retarded thing I had ever heard. That I make eye-contact with Eloise all the time.

She was about to give me a hug when Eloise’s voice was heard at the bottom of the rolling staircase to the plane, “I don’t care, it’s not my problem, these bags should have been loaded long ago, we are very very late.” And she swooshed on.

I have no idea if it was because Barney Cloverfield had ended up leaving Barbados a day earlier than planned, but Eloise was cranky. She had Lori serve her dinner right away. Lori was nervous and asked (as per her asinine instruction manual) if Eloise would like salmon or beef, to which Eloise snapped, “Don’t you have grilled chicken salad? Didn’t you receive instructions to have options on board?” And Lori just yes ma’amed and somehow produced a grilled chicken salad.

It was a night flight and I was exhausted from running back and forth from the Sandy Lane to Treasure Beach, and all I wanted was to go to sleep. As covertly as possible, I asked Lori if there was any way to make my seat recline. Understandably, she looked down the plane at where Eloise sat picking at her salad. “I promise I’ll help you as soon as Mrs. Alcock is asleep behind that curtain,” she whispered, perhaps unaware that Eloise could potentially be up for hours. But there was nothing to be done, and Lori tiptoed down the aisle to ask Eloise if she wanted a glass of wine.

“This food is inedible,” I heard Eloise snap. “Really, there is no excuse for this.”

Lori took it back to the front of the plane. I thought I saw her lip wobble.

As soon as Alcock had disappeared behind the curtain, I grabbed a blanket and my earphones (in case Gerry was tempted to try to talk to me again) and fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later. My seat was still upright, so I crept up to the front of the plane again to find Lori, my new best friend, to ask for help. She tried to find the release to make the thing recline, but neither one of us could figure it out.

“WHAT IS GOING ON UP THERE??” Eloise hissed from behind her curtain. “This is ridiculous, Kyra, I need quiet if I’m to get any rest.”

Lori didn’t even look at me but scurried back to the front of the plane where she remained for the rest of the flight.

Gerry was asleep, having figured out how to recline his chair. Nevertheless, I knew I couldn’t sleep sitting up any more, so I climbed onto one of the couches in the middle of the plane. Eloise had spread out her stacks of papers on both couches. As stealthily as possible, I picked up a stack and moved it to the other couch so I could lie down. But somehow, even though I was as silent as I know how to be, Eloise heard that too and said “WHO IS MAKING ALL THAT NOISE??” I froze. Then I thought, well, she can send me home from London, and I moved the papers and laid myself down to sleep on a couch, completely ignoring her.

“This is unacceptable, Kyra, I have had to ask you twice to be quiet.” Let the record show that I had not uttered a word since Eloise had gotten on the plane. The amount of noise she was objecting to would not have awakened a napping baby. But her amazing radar had picked up some movement – some human being moving about, alive, while she was resting! Someone daring to attend to a need that wasn’t one of Eloise's! – and there I was, awake and vulnerable. I decided to give notice as soon as we landed in London, but by morning, when the plane had touched down in Salzburg, Eloise appeared to have forgotten the whole thing.

*

Salzburg was beautiful. Eloise was staying with a friend, Chad Roland*, the French gallery owner who represents Bad Spritzer* (the Israeli abstract sculptor whose work Eloise had flown here to see). M. Roland lives in the Villa E_____, near the H_______ Palace, on the outskirts of the city. Gerry and I were driven to a charming hotel that was some count’s former country house.

Disconcertingly, as soon as we got to the hotel, I realized that Eloise had neglected to give Gerry or me any Euros; and without money there would be no dinner, and without dinner I was sure to pass out. Of course I had what was left of the petty cash Pierre had given me, but I had converted everything into Bajan money in Barbados, and had had no time to convert it into Euros at the Sandy Lane because I had been too busy organizing Eloise’s things for departure. With some difficulty -- and sign language (because I speak no German) -- the hotel’s hausfrau directed me to a bank, a short walk down the road. It was about to close. They had an ATM, but when I put in my own card, I discovered that Eloise had not paid me (she was four weeks late); and since I have been diligently paying off my bills as money comes in, there was $19 in my account. So much for direct deposit.

I dug around in my pocket for the rest of my Bajan money. The bank clerk – who I’m sure just wanted to go home to have dinner -- had no idea what it was, and I had to wait an hour for him to find a supervisor who converted it first into pounds, then euros. I was grateful to them for staying open on my behalf, but I was also hungry and cranky enough to be annoyed at them: they were a bank, for god’s sake, couldn’t they just change my fucking money? (And then I realized that that was an Eloise-y thought and made myself stop.)

Upon returning to the hotel, who should I see but Gerry, happily eating dinner, on the hotel-restaurant’s porch. The sun was getting ready to go down, and the light was beautiful. There was a stream nearby and huge trees swaying in the breeze; and freshly-caught trout was on the menu. I looked sideways at Gerry. “Um, I’m sorry, Gerry, but did Eloise give you some money for us?” I asked, incredulous at how he had managed to find cash.

He didn’t look up at me. He has finally registered that I find him odious. “No, dear, I had Euros of my own.” I nodded and walked away despondently. From my window, I could see when he had finished, and when the coast was clear I went to the porch myself and ordered trout. It was the most delicious thing I had eaten since the truck lady in Barbados.

Eloise called my cell phone while I was still eating. She wanted a session before heading to Bad Spritzer’s art exhibit. To get to her villa near the palace I had to walk through a little forest next to the babbling brook. I arrived at a castle with a gate. A maid in a uniform led me into a flagstone-paved hallway. The floor was warped; this villa had been built in 1619. And the walls of the entryway were covered in unfortunate modern art, including a couple of huge photographs of naked young girls, with pre-Raphaelite hair and enormous boobs, playing flutes.

I found Eloise in a little room off the front hall. She appeared to have forgiven me for annoying her on the flight, even if I hadn’t forgiven her for snapping at me. We started the session and she was super-chatty, wanted me to go to Bad Spritzer’s art opening (“I can’t remember the name of the gallery, we’ll have to get it from Anna,” which meant a long-distance call on my cell...). Ten minutes into it, a beautiful European woman, pregnant, wandered into the room. “Ah! Jessamine,” cried Eloise.

A long conversation in French ensued. Jessamine*, it seemed, was the pregnant recently-ex girlfriend to Henri Bledel-Bentley*, a famous artist who had just a few days before committed suicide by throwing himself into the Seine. Jessamine was understandably inconsolable. It seems that the art world had been completely shocked by his death (even though the man had been severely depressed and also had a long history of doing heroin) and Eloise had asked Jessamine to meet her in Salzburg because she felt that Jessamine shouldn’t be alone in Paris, where she was subject to a feeding frenzy by the rapacious press. And Eloise’s buddy Bad Spritzer shared a gallery with the late Henri Bledel-Bentley, so Eloise had commandeered his bereft girlfriend.

It seemed like a political move on Eloise’s part, because these two women were not close, and Eloise needs as much art-world cred as she can find; but she was the kindest to this woman I’ve ever seen her be with anyone. I tried to find a graceful way to leave the room so they could talk by themselves, but Eloise said, “No, Kyra, it’s fine, don’t go anywhere.” As I listened, it became apparent that Eloise had sent Jessamine to a voyante, or psychic, for advice and solace following the suicide. The psychic had told pauvre Jessamine that her boyfriend was watching her from beyond the grave, and that he hadn’t meant to kill himself. Eloise said, isn’t that comforting, and Jessamine sighed a big French sigh.

And then it was time for her to dress and leave for the gallery. I flew me all that way for ten minutes of Pilates and an hour-long discussion about the Other Side. (We left Salzburg the following day; less than 24 hours, all told.)

I had the evening free, and couldn’t bear another night alone in a hotel, so I called a cab and went to the gallery in the middle of the city, by myself. Now, you and I have had this argument many times, I know conceptual art is legitimate and important, but I find it impossibly upsetting. The first piece I saw upon entering was an “installation” of three silver cubes, each about ten square inches. They were filled (according to the little card on the wall, handily printed in German, French and English) with cow-dung from a desert in Arizona. I wondered if it was legal to carry the dung of a mojave bovine through international customs. And I also wondered if it was really true that the boxes were full of shit; and if not, what Bad Spritzer was trying to give his audience by making them think that those boxes were full of shit; and whether it was true or not, I wondered what possible concept Bad Spritzer could be exploring that would warrant all of these fancy people buying fancy clothes and flying in on fancy planes to see something that looked like decorator touches from IKEA. Filled with the purported fecal matter of a desert cow.

(And if you tell me that since I wondered about all that stuff that means the art must be working, I will never, ever speak to you again. This does not count as a stimulated imagination. This is me in a kerfuffle over the injustice of misapplied attention on the part of art-buyers. Seriously, *this* guy has an audience?)

….and I also thought that if I were a bad-boy Israeli with lots of money, I too could buy a studio, hang out my shingle, call myself an “artist,” buy my way into lots of society parties with other rich people and make myself famous by schmoozing idiots like Eloise. It’s not art, it’s a PR campaign with manure.

I mean, let's say for argument's sake that the boxes really are full of shit and the shit really did come from Arizona. What poor minion did Bad Spritzer pay to fly out to the desert to smuggle dung back to Tel Aviv, so that Mr. Spritzer could put it in a silver box? Because there's no way that playboy with the loafers and the studied stubble and the shiny sunglasses did it himself. And I thought the whole point of "sculpting" was that you made the thing yourself. Otherwise isn’t it…architecture? And don't architects *need* other people to execute their design because buildings are huge and complicated, whereas three silver 10" boxes...are not?

I also thought of Alexander Calder drawing a picture of a sculpture and having someone else build it. I thought of Matthew Barney. In theory, I don't disrespect either one.

I thought most of all of my parents slaving away in their studios, completely unknown. Both of them employ meticulous, labor-intensive, time-consuming methods, and they do it by themselves.

It’s true my anger might be irrational; it's certainly illogical. I mean, let's say a playwright does "design" what happens onstage when he (or she) writes a play. Other people execute that design, and I seem not to have a problem with that. I sing songs other people have written. But it is a little different. In performance, the executors (the director and actors) get credit. I have no idea who actually painted the Sistine chapel.

If Eloise's life is her work of art, aren't I "helping" to create it in some small way? Isn't that where her butlers are taking their pride? They work for someone who backs world peace and culture. Does that make her any easier to take? (They could make the same money working for someone who deals guns...)

Anyway. I didn't see Eloise at the gallery, thank god. I spent fifteen minutes looking at more of the work, but everything pissed me off in equal measure, its lack of imagination making me depressed. The Mozart festival was going on, so I found my way back to the old center of town, ate a sausage and bought a ticket on my credit card (no comments) for the symphony, which was playing Ives, Schoenberg and (indeedy) Mozart. And then I fell asleep as soon as the lights went down, the most expensive nap in the history of mankind. Cabbed it back to the hotel. The next day we flew to London.

**

London was a comfort and I did in fact go to the theater every night. There’s not much to tell; I was really, really tired of being alone all the time. I had to buy a cell phone because my trusty brick, which had worked fine in Austria and Barbados, couldn’t get a signal in the U.K., and Madame had to be able to get in touch with me at a moment's notice. More credit card purchases, though I’m told I will be reimbursed. They put me up in a Hilton (terribly corporate after all that euro-rustic charm) a few blocks from Eloise.

Ivan (the mean second head butler), not Roger, was my point person. The night I arrived in London, he drew me a map of where Eloise’s house was, but I got lost anyway. Her appointment was for seven in the morning – vacation’s over. However, I was staying on Holland Park Avenue, which is parallel to but not the same as Holland Park Road or Holland Park Mews, and there are TWO Holland Park Roads, because Holland Park Road is basically a rectangle, with the house numbers going up on one side of the street, and down on the other, and I of course ended up going up and down the various Holland Parks looking for which house might be the one I was meant to find. I arrived 15 minutes late, and Ivan answered the door with a curt, “She’s not pleased.”

Eloise kept me waiting anyway, for twenty minutes. When she did emerge, it was to berate me for being late (“Really, Kyra, you and time…you don’t have that many responsibilities.” The sickening truth.). We did twenty minutes of Pilates. Her own machines are built by a Canadian company that seems more concerned with slick design than Mr. Pilates’ original intents, and they have many flaws. At the end of the session, she looked dissatisfied. “Have you found Didier’s stick?” I didn’t want to tell her I knew it was back in _____Hampton. I said nothing. She tsked again. “See if you can make one,” she said as she swept out of the room.

I don’t have to tell you that I did not spend my next two days in London locating a hardware store so I could buy a broom and have the broom portion sawn off. I blew off the assignment entirely. I didn’t even tell Ivan. In fact I went shopping in the Portobello Road flea market and bought a skirt for myself. I went to TopShop and bought shoes and a winter coat. I bought an expensive dinner and another theater ticket. I did not feel guilty. I was broke, and my credit card was seeming like my only means of self-expression, all alone as I was in London.

Eloise had forgotten about the stick the next day. (I knew she would.) She was in a snit about Clinton. She was instead ranting about how it was his terrible policies that had gotten us into trouble in Afghanistan. And how Israeli aggression had been allowed to go on for too long, that they should be helping the Palestinians build infrastructure. And how that was really Clinton’s fault too. And how Richard Gere was going to save Tibet and she was going to help him…

All of which sounded like standard Euro-leftist stuff. I might even agree with some of it. I just...hate it coming out of her mouth.

The next day she brought up China again. I have no idea why she's going, but as you know I long to travel, especially in Asia, and would so love to go to China. And of course the lack of funds is what has stopped me from going in the past... and here would be a free trip to China….

So after her session, which consisted largely of me waiting and then getting berated again for not knowing how to work the digital remote control in her personal gym (I mean….really, you’d think I’d have learned that this was part of my job, but isn’t that what the twenty other people who actually work in her house are for?) she said, “I am going to China for two weeks. Can you come with us?” And I found myself saying no. Not maybe, not I’ll think about it, just no.

No, I don’t want to go to China with Eloise. No, I don’t want to go to China without anyone on staff thinking to give me the correct money to live on. With no language or preparation. No, I don’t want to go to China and not be able to see any of it because I have to wait around in a hotel room for Eloise to call me. So I can teach her bad Pilates. No.

I would rather go back to New York and go on auditions and teach people who might want to learn. I would rather be in a play. I would rather play with my friends. I would rather be at home alone and enjoy my solitude without thinking about what thing I had done wrong by attending to my own needs. I would like to go to China when I can take myself there and enjoy it instead of hating myself. I would rather create my own life (or fuck it up, as the case may be) rather than be a detail in anyone else's, least of all the fabulous life of Eloise Gewurtztraminer Bourgeois Alcock.

But she clearly needed an explanation, so I said, “I have an audition on September 8th,” which I had made up. Eloise raised an eyebrow. “So you don’t have a job, but you think you want to go back to try and get one? That doesn’t sound very bright, Kyra,” she said with a raised eyebrow. And I said, “Well, I'm sorry, and I appreciate the invitation, it's just -- you know, I'm -- but -- I’m an actress. That’s what I really do.”

And she said, “Oh! I didn’t know that.”

Now…I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with Eloise about theater. About acting. About me going to drama school. About her daughter wanting to be a director. About Lou Roeberson. I genuinely think she forgot. I really, really think she has early-onset Alzheimers’. This experience is sort of like dating a severe alcoholic: you have these important foundational conversations and the next day they remember nothing…thank god I’m not dating her…oh, never mind, you know what I mean.

After Eloise’s last session, I had to go down to the kitchen to hand over the English cell phone (which I had paid for) to the butler Ivan – surely he would find a use for it before I would – and to say goodbye to Pierre. Pierre seemed a little sad without Roger; it turns out that Roger was, in fact, fired. But not for bitching about Madame behind her back or for getting into a fight with Didier; he apparently had been fudging on his “bits:” all the butlers get petty cash like I did, for tipping waiters and drivers and for picking up items Madame asks for en passante, and there’s a lot of that to track, they call it “tallying their bits” and it gets done whenever they return to London from wherever they’ve been. The problem is that one doesn’t always write down everything on the spot — like when one slips a twenty to a maitre d’ or tips a bellhop in a hurry — and as someone who finds itemizing for her tax returns odious, I understand that that is a huge chore. And like with tax returns, there’s a large margin for error, and although they strive for accuracy, it’s all on the honor system. Anyway, Plascina in the accounting office discovered that Roger had fudged some $30,000 worth of petty cash. And was totally unrepentant. I have no idea where he is now. Back on the QE2, I suppose.

I didn’t expect to see Jonas, but Pierre and Ivan and I were mid-gossip when he suddenly popped his head in and started to say something about Madame — and stopped when he saw me in the kitchen. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said. He seemed totally subdued, all trace of the flirt was gone. Gravely, he looked me up and down, like a doctor making a diagnosis. I was wearing makeup and new fancy jeans and felt so happy to be going home; Jonas has only seen me miserable and sleepy in sweats and zits.

“You clean up nicely, luv,” he said.

I smiled at him like a person. “Please don’t be so surprised. How was China?”

He shrugged. “Edwin’s bollocks. How was Barbados?”

“Madame’s bollocks. The apple didn’t fall far.”

“Ah, Madame’s all right. Her intentions are good.”

I sighed. “Yes, yes, they are. You really can’t fault her on content, it’s annoying, but it’s true. And she did go to Harvard, after all, so she must be smart. Somewhere underneath all that dyslexia…”

“What are you talking about, luv?”

“Madame. Harvard. It says in her press kit that she’s ‘Harvard trained.’ And her ex-husband is a Rhodes scholar. He wouldn’t have put up with her if she’d been as dumb as she seems.”

And Ivan started smirking and Jonas looked at me with those dimples starting to show -- and those sparkly, sparkly eyes -- and he said the most beautiful thing I had heard all summer: “Her ex-husband the fucking Rhodes scholar wouldn’t have cared if she couldn’t spell cat. She had a lot of money and access and in case you hadn’t noticed she is a very, very pretty blond with big tits, not that I should be talking that way about her. But I promise you Madame didn’t go to Harvard. She did some crap nine-week summer course for business executives sponsored by the Harvard Business School that’s nothing but a two-month cocktail party for other people like her. So they can all get pissed together and lick each other’s arses.” His walkie-talkie crackled. “Balls. Must go.” He kissed me on the cheek. “Wish I didn’t have to run. Here’s my card, stay in touch, have a safe flight back.” And he was gone, almost flustered, for once not making porny jokes about my bottom.

“He’s not the same since his woman left him,” muttered Ivan.

“Really?” I said. “What happened?”

“She got tired of being his mum.”

*

And… when I got back to my hotel and checked my email, I discovered that my agents had in fact emailed me, and I do have an audition, on September 10th. Which I am looking forward to. It’s a four-character play, a great part, I get to age twenty years and use a Russian dialect, the music is difficult and it’s at a small-but-classy theater in New England with an illustrious background. Wish me luck.

I flew back to New York in coach.

☺

The day after I landed back in NY, I called Virginie to arrange the retrieval of the rest of my belongings. My parents drove me to _________Hampton in their car, curious to see this crazy house where I’d spent my summer; Domingo was expecting me. I gave my folks a quick peek at Eloise’s side of the house – everything draped in white canvas, eerie – and my garret; and, underwhelmed by boring architecture, they went to sit on the beach while I gathered my stuff.

Curiously, though, none of my things were in the garret where I'd left it all. I checked all the nursery rooms, and, finding nothing, decided to head to the guest house, to my temporary second room in the back hall, the one I’d lived in prior to the arrival of the Principessa del’ [Major European Country].

On my way there, I wandered through the remnants of the vegetable garden and discovered that no one had picked the peaches off the peach tree in a while (oh, did I neglect to mention the single peach tree that bore the most delicious fruit and that I was forbidden to pick…?). I denuded the branches of as many as I could carry and bit into a juicy one, and went into the silent, empty guest house. I entered through the kitchen, where only a few weeks ago Pierre had scrambled to serve lunch for eighteen. I wandered through the living room, full of the overstuffed Pottery Barn couches, now covered in sheets, into through the front hall with the ming vases and the plaques with the Chinese mug-lids glued to them, through the library with the revolving bookshelf, into the secret back hallway, into my old chintz-covered domain.

I don’t know what I was expecting — I mean, I certainly didn’t think Luisa and Rosaura would have neatly packed my things into a suitcase and left it there for me — but I certainly didn’t expect to find that everything had been haphazardly stuffed into a corner on the floor of a linen closet. The books were mixed in with the shoes and the clothes, everything heaped in a messy, dusty tangle. For some reason, this practically made me cry, which may have been a disproportionate response, but I knelt down anyway and folded everything up with as much care as I thought Eloise would want her things to be treated. I was about to put everything I had left in the bathroom into plastic baggies, when I remembered something… and a mean little knot in my chest dissolved…

Down the stairs I skittered, into the guest house basement, past the screening room and the bar and the billiard room, into the exercise room. None of the Pilates equipment had been put away properly, so for form’s sake I fixed it. And I found Didier’s stupid stick, sitting in a corner. I was going to take it with me to mail to Eloise back in London, but then thought better of it. I would call Virginie and let her dispatch the order to Domingo.

And then I padded into the sauna room next door and peeked on the towel-shelf. There were the stacks of big fluffy robes…and way, way back into the back of the shelf, I stretched my hot little hand...

…and found the red makeup bag. And pulled it to me.

I was, frankly, amazed that no one had thought to pack it for Madame in Barbados. I unzipped it and there was the same treasure-trove of unopened, unused makeup. And the jar of La Prairie Crème de la Mer, which I knew would just spoil if left there all year until Madame’s return next summer. Edwin’s skin cream had long since been rubbed into my face, and my skin had been thirsty and acting up since leaving the Caribbean, so without one tiny bit of maybe I shouldn’t-ness, I broke the seal and spread a layer of the cool, smooth, buttery stuff into my cheekbones.

Also in the bag were some very good-quality makeup brushes that I thought would come in handy. And some concealer. A powder blush from a company I couldn’t afford. The eyeshadows and lip-glosses were all the wrong colors for me, and my goal was only to help myself to what I might need, not to rob her blind; but I knew I had in front of me at least $300 worth of cosmetics. While there really is no excuse for stealing, at this point in time she owed me four weeks of pay (even as I write this, she hasn’t paid it all) and so I decided to think of it as a sort of… collateral. It wasn’t jewelry, after all. And the little red bag was still plenty full. I re-zipped it and slid it to the back of the shelf where I’d found it.

Then I wrapped my loot in a hand towel (just in case), and went back upstairs, and packed everything into my bag; found Domingo and said goodbye, and joined my parents in the car.

We ate late summer peaches all the way back to Brooklyn.

**

SO. This job isn’t over until I get paid and pay off my debt, and while I know Eloise will be back from China pretty soon, I have no idea when she'll get around to signing checks. I’ll be teaching her in the mornings again when she’s in NYC. But I won’t be on-call, which will be a huge relief. She’ll be moving out of the Hotel des Beaux-Arts in midtown; she paid $30 million for a triplex in that brand new R______ M____ building, those glass towers going up in the West Village along the West Side Highway. Which is a shorter early-morning commute for yours truly. I’ll let you know how that goes…

In the meantime, I’m delighted to be home. My audition is in a few days. Wish me luck.

I hope the American ex-pat community is keeping you employed at the bookstore, and that your upcoming sojourn in India doesn’t tax your tummy too terribly. I miss you - please write as often as you can.

Much, much love.
KLC, Thief in the Night

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Chapter 24: Exit, Chased by a Bear

Monday, December 29, 2008

Chapter 23: endgame

from: iamaseagull@aol.com

to: momlopez-choi@aol.com, poplopez-choi@aol.com, talktthhand@juno.com, soundengineer@theatrco.org, youngcomposer@mymusic.com, pilatesqueen@pilatesqueen.com, lop-cho@nyc.bb.ss.com, ameryka@freecity.net,
jennifer@bff.org

subj: act 3 of an existential crisis

Nearly finished...

Two days ago, Gerry bit into a caramel custard at Daphne’s Restaurant and one of his top front teeth came loose, as in, it almost got pulled right out of his gum. (It turns out that he has not been frugal for its own sake; he has been using his petty cash to eat solo dinners at very fancy restaurants because, he says, he is quite the "gourmet" [sic].) Daphne’s is a famous tourist destination and he had been very excited about his dinner there. I could barely look at him while he told me about it, his tooth was hanging halfway down his front lip, flapping around every time he spoke. He kept making incessant jokes about getting "long in the toof" and had to stop every few minutes to push it back into his mouth. (Really.) He actually was going to wait until he got back home to get it fixed, but Eloise must have said something to him (it *was* distracting). She gave him the afternoon off and he finally visited a Bajan dentist (“Oh yes, Kyra, didn’t you know that Barbados is famed for it’s dentistry?”) and got a bridge. Now he has a sparkling set of fake front teeth that stay put when he talks.

Last night he and I had dinner together – he's my least favorite person, even with teeth, but I joined him for Thursday night cocktails and barbecue here at the no-tell motel – and he got so drunk on rum punch that he told me what everyone on Eloise's staff gets paid (hint: unsurprisingly, I'm the low end), and that Eloise is seriously considering firing her formerly-angelic butler Roger. "Why?" I asked, truly disgruntled.

"Because he told Didier to fuck off one night."

To which I almost said out loud, "Yes, well, Didier is annoying, he probably deserved it for telling bad puns that don't work in translation, or for asking for too many bottles of wine from the cellar," but what I said was, "I'm sure that was a cultural misunderstanding." (Though "Fuck off" seems to be universally understood.) I’d have thought that if she was going to fire Roger, she’d have done it long ago when she caught him sniping about her on walkie-talkie…

The adventures of Sandy Lane continue…I had an admirer, albeit briefly. His name is Paul, and he is maybe 20 years old -- or possibly younger -- and he is a bellhop at the Sandy Lane Hotel. The first day we met, he was assigned to accompany me to Madame Louise's chambers, because I am not allowed to walk there alone; and in the course of conversation he got out of me which hotel I was staying at, and my room number (clearly all my street smarts have fallen by the wayside this summer). He then proceeded to call me three times in two days (I know, kind of stalk-y), wanting me to go to a pub with him. Touristically speaking, it probably would have been great to see a local hangout, but this felt a little inappropriate. And I frankly wasn't interested in fending off the advances of young, young Paul. (I must be really, really old…this guy had the most amazing skin and such a beautiful accent, like everyone here. But he also said things on the phone like, "Why is it that whenever you speak I can feel my toes tingle," which made me gag a little, thinking of the legions of American girls who must have actually gone for lines like that.) I finally had to tell him that my boyfriend back home (yeah, made him up) wouldn't be pleased if he knew Paul was saying things like that to me. Paul sounded disappointed and got off the phone quickly.

**

Then, four days ago, Eloise's new folding machine finally arrived (ten days into our trip). I had been very, very worried about getting the thing through customs. Rhiannon at the desk had told me that it takes all day, you need all kinds of documentation, and most people hire a broker to stand in all the various lines you have to stand in… which can cost over $300 (a.k.a. the rest of petty cash). When the call came to tell me the machine had arrived, I called my trusted ally Omega Jackson, hotel manager at the Sandy Lane, and told him my troubles – to which he said, “Do not worry, Miss Kyra, we will take care of Mrs. Alcock’s table.” And it was magically delivered to her hotel that afternoon.

Even though Eloise hadn't called me for an appointment, I showed up to unpack the thing, and to try again to arrange a room for her to work out in: Mr. Cloverfield has arrived, so we couldn't work out in her room anymore because he "needs his privacy." And since Shannon, the spa director, had basically stonewalled me, once again I looked for an ally in Omega. He arranged for a meeting room for Eloise’s exclusive use, upstairs in the spa, effectively reserving it for a hypothetical ongoing, 24-hour, four day meeting. Until we leave.

Then I tried to carry the machine, in its enormous box, from the lobby to the meeting room, and immediately discovered that, while 90 pounds may be lift-able if one is lifting weights in a gym, when it’s spread out over a large piece of equipment that needs to be picked up and carried several hundred meters…well, I am not very big, and I need to talk to the manufacturers about the definition of "portable." I asked for a dolly on wheels, which confused Omega, and he left me alone in the lobby, with the box, and returned five minutes later…with Paul. “Paul will help you carry it to the meeting room.” Paul was sullen and barely spoke to me – flashbacks to high school, and it occurs to me that he was probably recently-graduated…. He hauled the box up to the room and then looked at me expectantly. I dug through my pocket to tip him, but when I produced some money, he looked terribly insulted (woops) and stalked off without a word.

I was in the middle of trying to assemble this miracle of design, when in stomped Shannon, the spa-director with the cankles and the bad suit. “Excuse me, Kyra, but this is outrageous. I am very, very, very upset. Who told you that you could be in here?"

Expecting to spend the night in Bajan court for trespassing, and tired of this woman who seemed to be trying to make me disappear, I did my best impression of Eloise – cool demeanor, blank stare – and explained that Mrs. Alcock had reserved the meeting room and that we were paying for it, that Omega had set it up, and that if she had any questions, to please talk to him. This all infuriated her further. "Look, this is still the spa, and I have asked you not to be here, and I am the spa director! He should not have gone over my head!” I smiled and picked up an allen wrench. And she was gone in a puff of smoke.

It took me an hour to set up the machine. I really had done my best to buy her the best machine I could find, but I had thought we were getting something that snapped open and shut in two minutes. When I was done, my hands were covered in WD-40 or whatever they’d used to grease the joints, but I was so proud of myself (the first "work" I had done all summer!) that I called Eloise right then, at her Swiss cell phone number (which is the only one that seems to work here). Except that Barney Cloverfield answered the phone, with such a gruff "HELLO!" that I stammered a few times before I got out, “Um, could I please speak with Mrs. Alcock?” Eloise came on the line and I told her the machine looked beautiful. She got excited and said, "I'll come to you after lunch!"

Three hours later (I worked out on the new machine, took a nap and then spent an hour reading “The Natural History of the Rich”), she showed up and we had a session. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she was really disappointed by it. “It’s so industrial-looking!” The thing is made of “lightweight” (ha) aluminum, kind of matte and un-coated with silicone or anything to make it slick. I love it, it looks exactly like it’s supposed to look, but she was dismayed. At a loss, I told her it was a G______* machine, made to Mr. Pilates' original specifications, to which she said, "Oh…I didn't know there was a Mr. Pilates!" This is after two years of lessons, and I know I've told her the story at least three times [ed. note: see Brief History of Pilates sidebar]. I think she has early-onset Alzheimers' – isn’t it hereditary? And then I told her it was made by the same company that had fabricated Alexander Calder's sculptures (which is true). Being the astute art historian that she is, this was sufficiently impressive.

During her session, she said, “I could tell you were surprised when Mr. Cloverfield answered my phone.” I didn’t know what to say to that. He was indeed totally rude on the phone; but you never expect a cell phone to be answered by anyone but its owner. She went on: "…because I am, how do you say, a little bit of clairvoyant, so I can feel these things. It comes from being dyslexic like I am, so I am you see very sensitive. My senses are in three dimensions." While I am, of course, unfortunate enough to be non-dyslexic and only see things in two dimensions, I do get the feeling that Mr. Cloverfield is maybe just a little bit prick-y. She's told me again and again that he waits for no one and despite a sore back has refused to get a massage in the spa because when he did make an appointment, his therapist committed the mortal sin of being five minutes late.

Eloise has tried to get him to try Pilates, but he has refused. Thank god.

**

But all of this is folderol: I am trapped in an endless, endless summer. I know I told you all I was coming home on the 29th and although I meant it at the time, plans have changed yet again, and it seems that instead, I am going to be in London for a few days.

So I was teaching Eloise this evening when she suddenly stopped the lesson to grab her blackberry (as she will sometimes do) to make some flight arrangements. I asked her, as cagily as possible, "Oh, are we still leaving Monday?" and she said, "No, no, who told you that? I’m leaving tomorrow or maybe Sunday…" to which I could only say "Oh!" and mentally start to pack... hallelujah, going home. And THEN she said, "…do you want to stay in London and teach for a few days? My London Pilates instructor is on vacation." I started to make an excuse, but she cut me off, "Didn't we initially reserve you until the 30th anyway? Do you have something important to get back for?" I was about to say, "I miss having my own life, and I miss my friends,” but since Eloise has no friends this would never seem like a credible response. And then the kicker: she goes, “I am going to China in the middle of the month. Are you available?” What was I to say? I said the only thing that popped into my mind, which was, “I would love to go to China,” and I meant it. But right then her blackberry rang and the conversation ended. No matter; I’m going to have a few days (how many? No one knows…) in London with my evenings free to go to the theater.

**
On an unrelated note…I think I have to take a moment to extol the power of positive thinking, which you all know is not something I like to do. But it’s impossible for me to ignore that, back in the winter, I bemoaned my debt and my monthly payments and wished, wished, wished for a job that would make me enough money to pay it all off quickly, without back-breaking labor, and which would leave me with enough money to take a little vacation, maybe in Europe. It's true that this is not exactly a vacation, this upcoming sojourn; and it’s also true that I had envisioned paying down my debt by, say, booking a national commercial, or a national tour, or a national tv show. Something national. Something involving acting. It doesn’t matter; as of tomorrow, I will have clocked enough weeks to be out of debt, so as soon as Eloise can be persuaded to sign her staff’s checks, I’ll be free and clear. So *while* I have God's ear… I think I’m going to be in a Broadway show some time in the very near future. And next year I'm going to be taking a trip to Italy with my new boyfriend. He's a miracle of a man. We're going to move in together soon.

☺

It's so hot in this computer room that I have prickly heat on my arm.
Off to pack. More private planes tomorrow…

See you in September. Maybe.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Chapter 22:...another happy day!

from: iamaseagull@aol.com

to: momlopez-choi@aol.com, poplopez-choi@aol.com, talktthhand@juno.com, soundengineer@theatrco.org, youngcomposer@mymusic.com, pilatesqueen@pilatesqueen.com, lop-cho@nyc.bb.ss.com, ameryka@freecity.net,
jennifer@bff.org

subj: act 2 of an existential crisis

O my dears,

I've succumbed: I'm taking Propolis. Gerry told me it would clear up my skin, but so far all I can see is that it's making me smell funny, like a gamy bee-hive.

The only cure is to swim a lot. Salt and sun are also very good for the complexion. It goes without saying that, what with so much idling in the sun with nothing, literally nothing to do, I am now very tan. (“...so little to do, and the fear so great, certain days, of finding oneself…left, with hours still to run before the bell for sleep…”)

And…the summer just keeps on coming. While I know you were all anxiously anticipating my return the day after tomorrow (well, I was anxiously anticipating my return the day after tomorrow, also known as Monday the 22nd) it is with heavy heart and sweaty brow that I report the following: yesterday, when I called downstairs to order a taxi to take me to work, Rhiannon (the front desk girl), said, "So, I hear you're staying with us until the 29th!" To which I could only say, "ExCUSE me?" Apparently no one in Mrs. Alcock's employ, not even my buddy Anna, thought it was necessary to tell ME that my vacation – woops, work-week – had been extended; they just assumed I didn't have anything else to do.

In fact, I have nothing to do when I go home, except my day job and maybe, if I am lucky, auditions; nothing for which it might be worth giving up free sunshine and almost-free money – but the fact remains thatI had *so* been looking forward to coming home, to seeing my friends (um, you), and to going to a couple of goodbye parties, a birthday, an opening for a new theater company, a friend's fringe show – and mostly, I miss the ability to decide what to do with my own day…nevertheless, I am not coming home until the 29th. If I had plans with any of you before August 30th, I'm terribly sorry, but I have to cancel. I do love you all, but even though I am almost out of debt (!!!!!!!) I am still cash-poor and, when it all comes down to it, one more week on the beach, bored or not, may not be such a bad thing.

And I'm sorry to be doing this via email, but the local Bajan cell-phone tower has fallen and my phone isn't working today. I am, in fact, waiting for Eloise to summon me via the land-line at the front desk to the hotel while I type this in the muggy guest lounge.

Maybe it's a blessing, since the Pilates machine we ordered has been delayed once again, and we would have missed it entirely if we'd left on schedule.

In addition to the fact that I am indentured here a little while longer, this morning on our daily phone call, Anna told me that the house in ______Hampton is being packed up; she and Pierre the butler are going back to England. Only Domingo is left, and he will remain there alone with the dogs until October.

Anna also revealed that Mrs. Alcock's plane will fly back to London from Barbados on the 29th WITH ME ON IT. This means I will then have to get from the private-plane airport in London to the regular-people airport (Heathrow), and then fly back to NY the same day on a separate flight, crossing the Atlantic twice in 24 hours. I've already emailed Anna to say, as politely as possible, how preposterous an idea this is, and is there any way for me to take a separate flight home directly from Barbados. Since it's just a few hours to the north. And Anna has emailed me back to say that this is impossible (no explanation).

I was also idly wondering about the things I left behind in the house when I refugeed in such a hurry – the things I felt free to leave behind because they told me I'd be coming back. But now that the house is empty I have no idea how to get my stuff back. I have emailed Anna; there has been no response. Perhaps everything has been thrown away: six pairs of shoes, a wardrobe of sweatpants, sixteen books….

Maybe I can itemize, and send Eloise the bill.

**
A few days into our trip, Gerry of the Rotten Teeth saw me debarking from a cab in the parking lot of our pensione and has been giving me a hard time ever since. It’s true that $15 Barbados ($7 American) is a ridiculous amount of money to go one little mile in a cab, and Gerry refuses to pay it. He has been very good about taking the bus to work at Eloise’s. Last night at dinner (he is, unfortunately, unavoidable at dinnertime) he said to me in his prissy, buck-toothed lisp, "I mean, really, Kyra, I hate wasting money. And your petty cash is supposed to last you the whole trip," which is true – and since our trip has now doubled in length but petty cash hasn’t reflected this change, I would be wise to be frugal. (Of course, Gerry is so thrifty that he won’t even take a $100 trip to the dentist when he can drink a $5 gallon of milk and hope the calcium reaches his teeth…)

But I am being needlessly snarky; it’s thanks to Gerry that my inner Rick Steeves has kicked in. Now I take the bus if I'm not walking -- and I'm so, so glad, because the Bajan bus is really fun. (And you must know that it is really, really difficult for me to give Gerry credit for anything.) The bus here is like a miniature open-air trolley, but it’s also a dance club on wheels. The drivers all blast reggae from the speakers with extra bass, and they all drive too fast, people hanging onto their straps to avoid being chucked from side to side, and this is how regular Bajan people get to work. One of my fellow pensioners told me the buses used to be even louder but recent regulations have forced drivers to turn down the volume. It's still way louder than a party.

A few days after my first bus adventure, emboldened and encouraged, I tried coconut water for the first time. There's this man the bus drives past almost every day; he hangs out on the road on the way to the Sandy Lane hotel with a wheelbarrow full of big green coconuts for sale -- and a machete. After my lesson with Eloise a few days ago, I paid him a visit. He is the tallest person I think I have ever seen, wears nothing but a frayed pair of cutoffs, and has dreads past his shoulders. His skin looks like velvet. He barely took me in as I shyly handed over a dollar. He raised his machete (literally, it is about 20" long) over a huge green cocomut and carelessly, swiftly, easily gave the top a big whack, with little-to-no regard for the safety of his fingertips -- sort of like a more-violent way to slice off the top of a soft-boiled egg -- leaving this big triangular well full of coconut water where the "yolk" would be, with coconut-flesh "whites" two inches thick along the sides. Wordlessly, he handed it to me. It was bigger than a football.

So fucking dainty, I asked him how to drink it – did I expect him to hand me a straw??? -- and he grabbed his own hacked-off coconut and tipped back, pouring the contents over his enormous mouth, miraculously spilling nothing. Then he tossed the empty onto a growing pile of hollow coconut shells sitting at his feet, like big green skulls. And he looked down the road for his next customer, as if I did not exist. Chastened, I took my enormous coconut on the walk back to my hotel, trying to sip but of course getting it all over my front. (I was totally disappointed, I'd wanted it to be delicious, but it tasted like salty Gatorade.)

**

This morning I took the bus in the rain to Eloise; she’d wanted Pilates at 10:30 today; I waited around for her in the hotel lobby until Omega took pity on me and set me up in the glossy Sandy Lane guest lounge, where I spent a glorious hour making myself homesick by reading a rare copy of the New York Times.

Eloise’s session lasted until 12:30, but only because she insisted on reading me the speech she's going to be delivering at Bill Clinton's convention, something about creativity and science ("...I have a mission to help people become better in their lives...we live in a wonderful global world that God gave us, with amazing steps taken in recent years in geo-technology, geo-economics and geo-politics and because of this we need a new geo-mind..." blah blah I stopped listening). And something about moving away from religious fanaticism ("I have to put that in," she confided, "because of the Muslim Heads of State in the audience," and I’m sure the they will be thrilled to be given advice by the sanctimonious Eloise). She kept using that phrase, "the Heads of State." When I finally asked whom exactly she would be addressing, she said, like I hadn't been listening, "The Heads of State!" A new body politic who don't have names. Clearly she has no idea herself, but instead of saying "I don't know" she clings to the only information she can retain with the stubbornness of a four-year old. (Of course, if pressed, I probably couldn’t name three Muslim heads-of-state either, but I’m not delivering an address to them about how religious fundamentalism is wrong.)

Anyway, after our session I went to the shop in the lobby of the Sandy Lane spa because I only have one swim-suit and it won't dry when I hang it up because it's so humid here. And since we’re going to be here another week it might be nice to have something else to wear. But the average price of three petite triangles of lycra was 325 USD, so I packed it in and hailed a cab.

Well. It *was* raining.

**

So Eloise had got it into her head that she wanted to eat where locals eat, and she made it my job to find a place. I knew we would be hard-pressed to find a restaurant that wasn’t geared towards wealthy tourists; but Gerry kept telling me I was wrong, that there were places intended for people he kept referring to the “Barbadian aristocracy” (in his “Oh yes, dear, don’t you know the local aristocrats?” voice). I’m sure it’s possible there’s an elite class somewhere on the island, but it’s probably very, very small; everyone from here seems to support themselves by working in the service industry that caters to rich Europeans. I’ve seen no evidence of anyone with money like Eloise, except at her hotel.

Anyway, every cab driver I asked about local places told me to go to a place called Oistins. In fact, so many of them told me to go there that I was starting to suspect that cabbies are instructed to refer people to Oistins, in order to focus tourist dollars towards something other than high-end hotels, and to keep the white folks out of the genuinely cool places. But Rhiannon at the desk and Omega Jackson both said that the whole Island congregates there on Friday nights, that it’s the only game in town. To my surprise, Eloise was totally into the idea, and wanted Gerry and I to come with her (well, Mr. Cloverfield hasn’t arrived yet. And she has no friends. And her children are with their father and stepmother...)

So my nemesis Gerry and I went with Eloise in her rented SUV (rrgrghrh) -- although Eloise being Eloise, she of course also hired a cab driver... who drove his own car in front of us, so that we could tail him all the way there. Because Madame didn’t want to be given directions, she just wanted to follow him. Printing something out from mapquest would just be too, you know, déclassé. (Although it occurs to me that this is just a very expensive way of managing her dyslexia, which makes it difficult for her to read maps.)

Oistins, as it turned out, is a fish market. Every Friday is Fish Fry night, with a locally-sponsored dance party, and a fair with games and prizes and colored lights and music… and of course, tons of freshly-caught fish. Truly it did seem like the whole island was there, it was packed.

There were these long sheds with huge tables where the fishermen were slicing up their catch, snapper and flying fish and marlin and barracuda. The fish tent was fascinating, but kind of bloody. There were also stands with grills where you could buy a plate of cooked fish (I had the flying fish, Eloise had the barracuda) with macaroni pie and rice and breadfruit [like a potato] for very little money, plus sweet rum punch. We all got a little tipsy, even Eloise -- and next thing you know she said to Gerry, "Don't you know anybody nice for Kyra here?"

And Gerry, lisping away, goes, "Why, yes, I know a wonderful guy, never married, 44, he lives in Tribeca with a poodle and a Porsche.” “Wonderful,” Eloise piped up. “See, it’s not so hard to meet people! Tell him to email me a picture!" Gerry pulled out his cell phone as if he was actually prepared to call my Tribeca-dwelling future husband right there from a Caribbean picnic table. He looked at me. "I should tell you he's quite Republican, but that is just a detail." I made a face, memories of my ______Hampton blind date (the Republican avid Fox-"news" watching dog-beater) still fresh. I said to Gerry, trying very hard to keep the edge off, “Do I look like someone who would date a Republican?” (I mean, do I?) But Eloise, punch-drunk, informed me I was being too picky.

So much for holding out until it feels right.

Then we located the dance floor. There was a big circle of people watching a few truly great dancers dodging and twisting to loud reggae, all of whom were gorgeous men, very tall, very stoned. Eloise and I both noticed that none of the women were dancing, they were indeed standing around the men -- just watching, the way Rhiannon back at my hotel said they would. We watched them watching the men, watched the men having an amazing time on the otherwise-empty dance floor; and then I saw Eloise start to do a sort of early-eighties hip roll, so I said, "Go join them, I dare you," and she gave me a smug little laugh and said, "You don't know me at all," and she pranced out onto the dance floor with her blond head and her tight white jeans glaring, boogying right up to the tallest man with the longest dreads, like Céline Dion in among the clutch of Peter Toshes.

And then I got so, so annoyed at myself for hesitating where she felt so bold. I judge her all the time for being a dingbat, but the fact is that she has more moxie than I do. It might be her money that gives her the illusion that she’s safe and protected and free to do as she pleases anywhere in the world; but I have equally irrational illusions about being in constant danger. So I joined her. The men were mildly surprised and amused but really too high to care.

But I stopped after a few minutes. Because we did seem to be violating some invisible protocol. It wasn’t just that literally no one else was dancing; no one was even inclined to dance, they all seemed content to watch, and no one in the “audience” was amused by the two white women who had thrust themselves onto the dance floor. Eloise remained oblivious and kept dancing… until one of the men got a little too close and started dancing a little too suggestively. She shimmied away from him and then stalked off the dance floor saying, “Come on.” Gerry and I had no choice but to scurry after her.

The cab driver had waited for us. Eloise charged the taxi to her room bill -- $140 American plus tip. Cheaper than a bikini.

**

Anyway. Before I sign off, I need your advice. Gerry has informed me, smarm practically dripping from his teeth, that I'm responsible for tipping the maids back in _______Hampton. I have no idea how I’ll even be able to give a tip to the maids (certified check??), but it’s awkward anyway: I'm staff just like they are -- except that I lived in that house all summer. (Unlike Gerry, who lived down the road and so owes no one a gratuity.) How much do you tip a servant? Is it like tipping a dresser backstage? Do they really expect this from me? Any advice? This is a real question, no one actually waited on me – I did my own laundry, changed my own sheets, etc. – so I have no idea what the protocol is.

Which seems to be my permanent condition.

Missing you all, praying for rain, waiting and waiting and waiting.

KLC

Friday, December 26, 2008

Chapter 21: Waiting for Eloise

from: iamaseagull@aol.com

to: momlopez-choi@aol.com, poplopez-choi@aol.com, talktthhand@juno.com, soundengineer@theatrco.org, youngcomposer@mymusic.com, pilatesqueen@pilatesqueen.com, lop-cho@nyc.bb.ss.com, ameryka@freecity.net,
jennifer@bff.org

subj: an existential crisis

It's finally raining, so I'm finally writing, and I apologize for the long silence – if you were worried, I haven't drowned in the Caribbean or been stung by a scorpion or been hit by a fast-moving vehicle. My laptop can't pick up a signal, so here I am in the "Lounge" of my little pensione, the "ecologically friendly" (and blessedly un-upscale) Treasure Beach Hotel, typing on the ancient guest computer, which is so old that the cursor is green.

It seems that the job I have been hired to perform is that of a professional wait-er, interspersed with brief bouts of teaching: until today, it has been nothing but me waiting in the sunshiny weather for Eloise's summons from down the road at the swankier-than-thou 17-star hotel where she’s staying. I teach her every day, but I never know when she’s going to call; I am expected to just hang out at my hotel next to the phone -- and since the international cell phone Pierre gave me doesn't work – but mine, inexplicably, does – my own ancient Nokia brick has become my de facto walkie-talkie. But it's either that or wait inside by a land-line, and I’d rather wait down by the ocean…

(Unless, of course, it’s raining. And it is really, really raining, rather monsoon-like.)

This whole week has been unbelievably leisurely; I wake up late, charge breakfast to my bill, which Eloise will pay, and then (assuming it isn't raining) mosey down the 10 meters to the water where I sit on a plastic chaise and read, or sleep in the sun until the phone rings. Sometimes I'll get up and swim in the sparkly blue water, which feels like a delicious warm bath; but never for more than 20 minutes at a time, because it would be really bad for me to miss the phone. I can make no plans to (for example) go on a day trip to the jungle – Eloise could call at any time, and I never know when the mood will strike her for Pilates (she was so interested in keeping to a scheduled programme des sports back at the ranch, but now that she's "on vacation" she doesn't want to have to schedule a thing. Which I get, I really, really do).

It is certainly a relief to know that, *while* I’m waiting, at least I cannot be seen from the Big House like in ______Hampton, so no one is spying on me; and I don’t have to stay out of anyone’s sight. I don't have to teach Bertrand, there are no butlers commenting on my relative lassitude. And it’s been remarkably easy to avoid Gerry during the day: Eloise summons us at different times, and he never comes to the beach because he claims he is allergic to the sun (it didn’t bother him in _______Hampton…). If he does show up by the water, I put my book over my face and pretend to be asleep. So I don't really expect anyone to feel sorry for me. The beach could not be prettier or the water blue-er, the food free-er or the people lovelier, but….but you know, a leash is a leash is a leash. She has reserved the right to summon me, and I need to be ready to go at a moment's notice; without saying a word, this is what I have agreed to.

Nothing to be done.

*

Actually, pre-breakfast, my first duty of the day, every day, is to spend an hour on the phone with Anna back in ______Hampton (which I do from my third-floor balcony overlooking the beach…). We have been trying to complete our order (one portable folding Pilates reformer) with the Pilates-machine company in Long Island City. There have been complications. I call the factory; I call Anna; she calls the factory; she calls me back. Etc. So we speak several times a day; sometimes she just calls me when she's bored, and I have sometimes reciprocated while I wait on the beach for Eloise's call. The Pilates machine guys have indeed built the thing in record time, but the shipping takes awhile, and apparently the latest is that I will have to go back to the airport to pick up the machine and get it through customs myself, and then take it back to the hotel. Folding Pilates table, weighing 90 lbs., $4,000, a week of frantic phone calls. It will arrive on Monday, five days after our arrival; and we will be preparing for a Wednesday departure.

Whatever; mine is not to wonder why we bothered. But I do wonder. Often. Because I have nothing to do, but wait and read and wonder why she wanted me to come all this way.

I know there are personal trainers and massage therapists at her hotel.

We are a mile down the road from Eloise's hotel, the palatial Sandy Lane, located on Sandy Lane Way (I initially thought that was sort of like shopping on Madison Avenue Street, but then I learned that Sandy Lane is the name of the hotelier, it's not a porn star or a street address). The Sandy Lane Hotel is famed for its golf course, which is ostensibly why we are here: so Eloise can work on her golf swing.

**

It takes me twenty minutes to walk from here to her hotel, but walking is actually a little treacherous, because there is very little here in the way of sidewalk; and the people drive like Italians on a cliff-side highway. Barbados' economy is supported by tourism, and its oceanfront perimeter is lined with hotels, so the road has been built to make it easy for cars to pull in and out of sea-side hotel parking lots. I do walk when I'm feeling venturesome, but I will confess that having cars swerve thisclose to my person is unnerving, so more often than not this week… I've been putting Pierre's wad of petty cash to good use by taking cabs to work. I've tried to make myself feel guilty, but frankly I just DON'T FEEL BAD about spending it. I can't save it and pocket it; a) that would be stealing, and b) everything, from tips to bottles of water, must be accounted for in a detailed report that I'll submit to Virginie at the end of the trip. It costs about $15 ($7 in American money) to take the cab that one single mile down the road, which I realize is a criminal expense. I justify it by telling myself that, not only is it safer, but this way Eloise doesn't have to wait as long for me to show up. And I'm stimulating the local economy. And I’ve become a lavish tipper. The waiters at my hotel love me.

But my first day, determined to be frugal, and to get some exercise, I did walk. The route took me past the famed Sandy Lane golf course, which is protected from the road with a big black fence, kind of like a graveyard. I marched past it to the security gate at the hotel parking lot and told the guy I was there for Eloise Alcock. He wouldn't let me in, because it was so obvious I was not a guest. And I hadn't arrived in a vehicle; there are so few pedestrians that if you're walking you're already exhibiting suspicious behavior. Also I wasn't wearing, you know, a white golf outfit, I was wearing the same sun-faded sweats I’ve been wearing in ______Hampton all summer, having lacked the time or money (or, you know, the inclination) to shop for more “appropriate attire” before we left. I’m sure to the security guy I looked like a vagrant. We had to call up to Eloise's room; she sounded extremely irritated.

Now, I’m annoyed by this detail, but the hotel she is staying at is really amazing. It looks like…a James Bond movie. The lobby is marble, and has a balcony overlooking the sea. The people staying here are like Sasquatch: obviously I’d heard they existed, but I never really believed… The men really do wear white linen and slipper-like shoes with no socks. Everyone is very, very tan (the denizens of Treasure Beach are all notably pasty by comparison, probably because when they are not on vacation, which is most of the year, they work. Indoors. Wearing clothes. Unlike *these* strange creatures, who seem to be perpetually en vacances). The women wear huge gold jewelry, huge sunglasses, tiny bathing suits. Everything about them is brazenly, unabashedly luxe. I can't tell where anyone's from, no one sounds German or Italian or English, but strangely pan-Euro. Maybe they're all from Monaco. I have gathered (from Anna and Gerry) that a room for a single night at the Sandy Lane is $1,000 (that’s for a small room, and Eloise, bien sur, is staying in a large suite); a single round of golf is $700. Eloise plays daily.

My point-person at the hotel is a lovely, polite, tall man with the sweetest Caribbean accent, named Omega Jackson*, one of the hotel managers. We liked each other immediately. He grew up in St. Lucia, and it was he who patiently explained to me that someone from Barbados, contrary to what Gerry had told me, does not call himself a “Barbadian,” but a Bajan. (So ashamed I didn’t know that, more ashamed that I relied on *anything* Gerry has ever said…)

Omega also patiently explained that, while Anna had called ahead and told him to expect me, and that even though the Sandy Lane hotel has Pilates machines in the gym (a-ha!!!!!), I am not permitted to teach Eloise on them. I am not to go into the fitness area. Understandable, I suppose, because they want guests to make use of the hotel's own instructors. And also because I do not have a work permit. Nor am I a guest, which means that technically I am not allowed on the premises. He apologized so beautifully, but told me that as far as he is concerned, I am a “friend” of Madame’s, not her employee. I am welcome to teach Madame in her room.

I told Eloise all of this and she scoffed, "Kyra, you cannot take no for an answer," and she marched me over to the spa area. (The spa area has a huge fake grotto and a waterfall spilling into a giant fava-bean-shaped pool. Why, why, why would you go to the Caribbean to swim in a pool? I will never, never, never understand rich people.) Anyway, we located an empty workout room with a shiny hard floor and a mirror, and we rolled out the yoga mat, and I started to give Eloise a mat session, when suddenly…

…the door flew open to reveal a pissed-off British woman with fat calves wearing a bad skirt-suit. "I'm Shannon. I'm the spa-director," she said through lots of teeth. She clomped over and shook my hand.

"Nice to meet you, Shannon, I'm Ky—"

She continued, "Didn't Omega tell you explicitly that you were not to be in the spa?"

Eloise pretended this wasn't going on. I took a huge lungful of air and said, "He did tell me that, and I'm terribly sorry for the misunderstanding." I looked at Eloise. "We can do this just as easily in your room."

"See that you do," said the suit, and off she marched.

"You really should have fixed this with Anna before I arrived," Eloise chided me as we wended our way to her room, "Otherwise, what's the point of your being here?"

My question exactly, what am I DOING here? I know it's a waste of her money to have flown me all the way out here just to teach her mat sessions. Obviously money is no object for her, but she could have saved the cost of a hotel room, flights to and from, meals, $600 petty cash and a cell phone -- not to mention the fancy $4,000 machine she expressly bought for the purpose of having me teach her on it – and I know she doesn’t really like me (and HOW could she like Gerry?) so it wasn’t like she was treating her favorite staff members. Did no one think to call the Sandy Lane to find out if they had machines and instructors of their own? Why didn't I? I was ready to cry from futility. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, "Well, I'm sure their own Pilates instructors are just great, why don't you send me home?" but I didn't. I could see there was no point in explaining that frankly Anna and I had been so concerned with ordering her fancy fucking machine that it never occurred to us to solve the problem of where we were going to work out, because it never occurred to either of us that Eloise wouldn't have wanted her lessons in the privacy of her own room, just like she did back in New York at the Hotel des Beaux Arts*, which seems like a thousand years ago now.

But we did end up back in her suite, which was indeed enormous and quiet and cool, with a television bigger than my entire apartment back home. It was much more comfortable than the spa, but I soon discovered why she didn’t want me teaching in the room: "You'll just have to work something out with the hotel staff, for when Mr. Cloverfield arrives," casually letting me know her man-friend the Famous Talk-Show host was going to be joining us in a few days. "He won't want us working out in his space."

I skipped over the heinous anti-feminism inherent in referring to a room she had paid for as "his space" and instead asked her, "Will he want Pilates lessons?"

*

That first day, I found some weights and stretchy bands and an air pump in her exercise duffel bag that Roger must have packed. I blew up a big exercise ball, and we began again. The session was an utter disaster; the large television came with yet another dazzling remote-control, and she told me to put in a DVD of her boyfriend’s talk show so “we” could watch while doing Pilates. Utterly flummoxed by how the thing worked (I swear it was broken), Eloise grabbed it from me (“Really, Kyra, your job isn’t very hard, I’d have thought you’d be able to do this,” not kidding) and spent the better part of an hour trying to get the controls to work herself.

But she failed (oooo sometimes the schadenfreude is really too much to bear). She then called the front desk and was rude; she handed me the phone and told me to work it out. Which I did: I asked for someone to come and fix the television, said please and thank you like a normal human being, and five minutes later a young porter came to the door (Eloise hid in her bedroom until he was gone) and confirmed that it was indeed broken. He apologized profusely and arranged for a repair for the next day. And then I actually taught her 15 minutes of Pilates.

Mid-trudge back to Treasure Beach (my middle-class haven of a pensione), it suddenly occurred to me why Eloise had bothered to have me and Gerry travel with her. She didn’t care about the money or the inconvenience. She doesn’t actually care about Pilates (as evidenced by her behavior during her sessions) or she would have just used the teachers and equipment at the hotel. No, Gerry and I are valuable to her because we know her, and because we know who’s Boss, and we therefore won’t try anything that would flip the power dynamic (like hold her to an appointment-time, or make her turn off the TV, or ask that she speak to us with respect). It's a status thing: she values me simply because I am on her payroll, and not on the hotel’s. She is too special to avail herself of the same amenities as an ordinary 17-star-hotel-guest. Money protects her from having to deal with strangers. She literally lives in a bubble of her own making.

I suddenly felt very free.

In the middle of my walk back, I encountered a group of people clustered in a little clearing just off the road. It was a woman in an apron and a headscarf, standing behind a parked van, the doors open. Something smelled so delicious that I slowed my New York-y pace and took a look. Resting on the back of her truck was a steam table, and she was ladling out food into Styrofoam takeout containers for a bunch of workmen crowding the clearing, cab drivers and construction workers, and a few golf caddies wearing white. They were lined up like little boys, clutching money. A few of them were sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, hunched over, eating. And eating. The woman looked me up and down and then decided I was benign enough. "Would you like a little lunch, honey?" and of course I did. There was some kind of chicken stew, and something that looked like goat, and every refined carbohydrate known to man -- rice with gravy, "macaroni pie," noodles they were calling "chow mein," "creamed" poatoes, something else that looked yam-like... Four Bajan dollars bought me enough food to last me for two meals. It was not necessarily food that fit the sweltering heat wave that is a Bajan afternoon, but it was my favorite thing I’ve eaten here, way better than the Frenchified stuff at the hotel, and I’ve gone back to the Truck Lady twice this week).

**

A few days later, upon returning to my room from Madame's lesson, there was a spooky little card propped on the bureau, saying, "Ian and Tara Peterson* request the company of Kyra Lopez-Choi* tonight at 6:30 for cocktails in the bar." I had no idea who Ian and Tara Peterson were; but I had eaten a rather forlorn dinner in the hotel restaurant alone on the patio the night before, and I decided that the invitation must be from some couple who had seen me and thought I’d looked lonely, had asked for my name and issued this rather over-formal invitation; I invented this whole scenario in about two seconds while reading the invite, and the whole thing made me uncomfortable.

But I supposed it was sort of sweet, and I couldn't envision ignoring the invitation and then hiding from this mystery couple for the remainder of our stay. And really, I had nothing to do except eat left-over macaroni pie and watch Bajan television in my room, so I put on a skirt and went to meet these strangers in the bar.

Except that when I got to the hotel bar (which is outdoors on a patio), there was only a very short, fat man with a slick dovetail hairdo and a glittery black shirt, so I snuck around the back to the front desk and casually asked the desk person (who according to her name tag is named Rhiannon), "Um…who are Ian and Tara Peterson?" And she looked at me like I was very stupid and said, "The general manager and his wife. They're hosting the party in the bar."

Of *course* I wasn’t being stalked, or targeted for the sin of being a solitary female; no one prints up formal drinks invitations for sad women alone in bars to bring with them on vacation to Barbados.

I have completely lost touch with reality.

Eventually a gathering did materialize in the bar, all couples (and certainly no one under the age of 40), which would have been unbearable except that my new beach-friends Sarah and John were there. They are lovely and down-to-earth and British. She is a former actress and he is a computer programmer. They are the first real people I have met all summer – as in, not connected in any way to Eloise's milieu, either by being a butler or a famous friend-of. We bonded because Sarah saw me finishing up Vanity Fair [finally!] on the beach and said something snarky about Reese Witherspoon's acting. (Ahhhh…..) Their daughter Iris is a snotty blond kid who hogs the guest-computer and hasn't left the TV lounge since their arrival in Barbados; she doesn't like the sun. (In fact, I’m only able to finish writing this at the moment because it is way past Iris’s bedtime. Just me and the mosquitoes now…)

At the party, blond homely pre-teen Iris sat on a bar stool with a Shirley Temple and talked to the fat man with the dovetail while Sarah and I talked to an amazing Italian couple who are taking their first vacation without their children since they became parents 20 years ago. Gianni is very skinny and handsome and has the whitest, most beautiful smile, and Elisabetta is his Roberto Benigni-like wife. This is how she introduced herself to me: "I am Elisabetta! but Pucci is my short-name! Ah- no - NICKname, that is my nickname!!! A Pucci is something you put your little cat or dog in! Is not right?"

Sarah asked her, "So do you prefer to be called Pucci or Elisabetta?" And the Signora rolled her huge eyes and said "But of course, I prefer Pucci!!! I am Pucci!" And laughed her huge generous laugh. She asked me what I was doing in Barbados, and I said was teaching Pilates ("Ah, WONDAFUL!!!”) but that really I was an actress, and her whole face lit up and she said, "AHHHHHHHH!!! That is my DREAM! In my next life that is ESSATLY what I want, to be an actress!!! I am a lawyer," making it sound being an attorney was both disgusting and inconvenient; but then she immediately brightened. "….but you know, to be a lawyer, that is ESSSATLY LIKE being an actress, except I am NOT supposed to be acting when I am being a lawyer!!!" And here I was starting to think that being a lawyer would at least feel more useful than an actress or a Pilates instructor; it seems either way, I have to sit and wait for the phone to ring…

It's hot, and it's late. Across the street at the local Chinese restaurant, it's karaoke night. Someone is murdering "Brown Eyed Girl." Karaoke is a local hobby, people really get into it, but Rhiannon, the Bajan front desk-girl of Treasure Beach told me that only the men actually sing. John and Sarah and I, post-cocktails, were chatting with all six of the hotel staff this evening; Rhiannon (who is not Irish in the slightest) was explaining to us that the women go to things like karaoke or concerts or dances only to watch the men. And to check each other out, cockblocker-style: "What's she wearing, is she hotter than me?" One of the three the desk guys, Lou, concurred, and he pointed to John's tattoo, which is his wife Sarah's name rather romantically etched into his pasty-pale British bicep: "You would never see that on a man here. Maybe on a woman…" And one of the other desk girls piped up, "No, a man would have a couple of pieces of masking tape with the names of his various girlfriends written on them, taped up and down his arm, hiding the wife-tattoo." The Caribbean all women seemed to find this hilarious, but the men got all huffy and pouffed out their chests and didn't laugh at all. Apparently all Caribbean men have one or two (or three) on the side; it's completely expected, and a woman's only recourse is to laugh at the men because they think they're so clever and original.

**

After that first disastrous Pilates session, it’s been getting better. Eloise is very excited about Barney “The Man In My Life” Cloverfield’s imminent arrival. It goes without saying that, what with the DVD player fixed, we watch his shows daily, usually of his most-recent, yet-to-be-aired "episodes". And she just never shuts up, it’s a continual run-on of ever-more-reverential tones of voice,"…he's just so handsome, so intelligent, and you know, Kyra, he really cares so deeply about the subjects he interviews, and he does all of his own research," which is categorically not true, I know he employs a team of researchers who write out those little cards for him…

Today Eloise actually told me the story of how she and Barney Cloverfield met (it wasn't hard to make her talk, I asked her about it when she was mid-coo). She told me that after her divorce six or seven years ago (Mr. Cloverfield is a fairly recent addition to her circle; in the time since her parting-of-the-ways from the father of her children, she has dated several crown-princes, plus the auction-house-owner-who-dumped-her), as soon as she was separated, a good friend introduced her to 6 or 7 men. None of them seemed right. Mr. Cloverfield is the 7th. Eloise nattered on abbout how she "knew right away," that they "just connected,” that she knew they were "soulmates" [that word is painful to me, but I'm quoting her], they share so much blah blah blah, every cliché you can think of. Eloise is not terribly deep, so I doubt her relationships are, but she believes every word she says. (And I also wonder what kind of a friend acts like a yenta for a seven-year period…)

Then I asked her, "Did you ever, in that time that you were meeting all these men and not liking them enough to seriously consider them, did you EVER have a moment of self-doubt where you thought to yourself, 'God, maybe it's me, maybe I'm just too choosy'?" And she looked a little surprised and said, "No, Kyra, never. You absolutely cannot do that to yourself, if you don't feel it you don't feel it." Right; I swear that's what I thought, but it sounds much more authoritative coming from the 15th richest woman in Britain.

Maybe self-doubt exists in proportional ratio to muscle tone in one’s butt, which would explain her still-mushy rear and indestructible self-confidence (as well as my own copious self-doubt and...well, never mind).

So. Holding out for chemistry, on the advice of Eloise Alcock, and hoping it comes in the shape of a man without the names of four other women taped to his arm. Praying for patience.

Bedtime for Bajans. xo