Page 24 of Mistaken
“Seriously! I bet he carbo-loads so he can just aggressively service you ‘till-”
“Goodnight Tania.”
Throwing my phone on the bed, I run my hands through my hair and groan. Tania really wasn’t perving after my sociopathic soon-to-be spouse, she’s just some kind of tangent bloodhound. Once she thinks of some random offshoot in the conversation, she’ll just keep yapping about it until I leave the room or hang up.
Sex. With that lunatic? He’s probably one of those freaks who has tried everything once, and all the really weird stuff twice. A billionaire mob boss and an unmitigated villain. He’s the type who has memberships to horrifying sex clubs and probably has a dungeon behind some mysterious sliding wall. Like a panic room. But for sex so bizarre and unnatural, he has to lock the room down on a timer so his victims can’t escape.
“This isn’t helping your state of mind.“ Great. I’m talking to myself. “So what?” I say, “There’s no one else to lecture me, so I’ll just have to do it.” That realization was even more depressing. I had friends, good office buddies, and most importantly a best friend who would do anything for me, and I for her. In this new and extremely unwelcome world, I had no one.
“Go to bed,” I sighed, pulling off the expensive dress and deliberately leaving it scrunched on the floor. Hissing as the cool sheets touched my sore and heated ass, I eyed the cream Maksim left me suspiciously. I put some on my fingertips, it was cooling, and I rubbed some on my right cheek. “Oh, mygodthatissomuchbetter,” I mumbled. I finished half the tube but with my poor rear finally not feeling blistering hot, I fell asleep.
Two days to the wedding. And then one.
I remember the playground at my elementary school, the old, rusting iron roundabout that was popular back when school districts didn’t really care if you lost an arm or got tetanus. My friends and I would spin it and then race around and around, trying to grab one of the metal handles and jumping on. I was always the last one to come aboard, the handles slipping out of my grasp just as I thought I’d managed to climb aboard. This feels like that; everything moving faster and faster and no way for me to hold on.
“Time for your spa day!” Kardia trills, and I just want to crack her over the head with her ever-present tablet.
“You know, I really don’t need it,” I plead.
“Don’t you want to bepampered?”She seems genuinely shocked and all the other girls are clustered by the elevator in Maksim’s penthouse and I force a weak smile. Surely, I can’t be the only woman in North America who doesn’t like ‘spa day.’ I always have things to do. Important stuff. Things I would be thinking about while getting my toes done or enduring a massage that I know I will come out of even more stressed than when I went in.
I get my toes and nails done in a soft neutral polish. My feet are viciously attacked to scrape away callouses and the three top layers of skin. There are things rubbed on me and scraped off of me. I am given a massage that’s pretty good until I feel something warm spread over my pelvis. I have cucumber slices on my eyes and they go flying as I sit up with a scream.
“What the hell did-Ow!What is wrong with you!”
This woman looks a lot like someone who would play the Stern German Dominatrix in a porn film. “You’re being a big baby,” she scolds, “you were the one who ordered a Brazilian.”
“No!” I shouted, cupping my stinging lady garden protectively, “I did not!”
“It’s right here on your chart.” She’s rolling her eyes. Yep, sure enough, a “full Brazilian” is cheerfully circled. Twice. In red ink.
Karida. That spiteful cow. And now the Stern German Dominatrix has to finish the job because I have this godawful bare strip.
I threaten the hair stylist with death when he picks up his scissors. “You are not cutting my hair. Not a single quarter inch.”
He gasps, clutching his non-existent pearls. “It’s very clear on your chart that-”
Yep, I’m going to push Karida in front of a bus the minute we step out of this hell-spa. “I don’t care what the chart says. I didn’t order it. You people have already ripped out every hair follicle below my neck. You’re not getting anything on top. Is that clear?”
He looks frightened and agrees, doing some conditioning thing with a “nourishing mask” and a “gloss protectant” like I’m the paint on Maksim’s Maserati.
Thank god he’s not the Stern German Dominatrix who xeriscaped my girl parts. I’m pretty sure she would have just stabbed me with the scissors and kept cutting.
“Wasn’t that great?” Karida chirped adorably, making me examine the street for a vehicle big enough to push her under. Some really heavy. Like a tank.
Mariya, who is as tiny and precious as a fairy princess, does a dainty little pirouette. “It was! I feel so relaxed.”
Maksim’s mother is eyeing me. “You don’t look as refreshed as I’d expected, dear.”
I offer a huge and uncomfortably fake smile. “Oh, I’m just absorbing it all.”
Checking her watch, Satan’s Wedding Planner says, “Oh! We have to get going! We need to get you all to the Four Seasons to get ready.”
Groaning, I realize I must have left my messenger bag by the hair stylist’s station. “I have run back in and grab my bag-”
“No problem,” Karida bundles the female contingent of the Morozov clan in one of Maksim’s ubiquitous black SUVs. That car heads off and she points to the one drawing up to the curb. “I’m going to make sure the bill is settled. Do you want to grab your purse and meet me back here?”
“No need.”
