Icing On The Cake

Working for the No-Bagel Emporium isn’t usually an ego issue for Celia. But when a girlfriend from her “firmest” years is a partner in some disgustingly attractive IPO stock-optioned company, it’s hard to say “cheese specialist” in the same top that fashion. According to Celia, Jenna was one of those friends who would steal your boyfriend and then still manage to keep your friendship by making you feel she’s done you a service by freeing you up to find “someone worthy of you.” Now, that’s just Machiavellian. No wonder the upcoming wedding has Celia feeling the need to measure up to the world she left behind. She has, by my count, bought and taken back five outfits.

“Why don’t we knock off early?” Celia waggles her perfectly arched brows at me. “Shemar can take care of the lunch crowd. Let’s go get manicures and pedicures. My treat.”

I don’t hesitate on the issue of if she can afford it. But I’m in debt up to my no-longer-waxed eyebrows.

I duck my head. “You go. I really need to stay and help out.”

“It’s not a pity bribe,” she says, reading my mind. “Think of it as girlfriend therapy. You’re doing it not to embarrass me.”

And just like that, we’re out the door, after a quick reminder to Shemar, my baker and right hand. “Don’t forget to bag up the leftovers for pickup by the soup kitchens.”

One thing a bakery like ours simply can’t do is compete with itself by selling day-old bread. It’s quite frightening the number of customers who can’t tell the difference.

“What do you mean, let’s get tanned, too?”

Celia offers me a glib smile as she maneuvers her SUV into a parking space before a strip mall tanning salon in West Orange.

“The entire time I was trying to decide between dresses the salesgirls kept saying any of the dresses would look hot if I had a tan.”

“You have to be able to tan to tan, Celia. You don’t tan.”

Her Irish porcelain skin turns strawberry. “Spray tanning doesn’t activate a body’s melanin, just changes the outmost layer of skin, so even I can tan. If I start now, I will be able to squeeze in several sessions before the wedding. Let’s try it. With your olive skin tone, you’d turn JLo honey-gold.”

“Not me. I don’t do chemical things to my body unless under a doctor’s orders.”

Celia gives me her mommy’s-disappointed-in-baby glance. “Liz, life is about the decisions we make to live passionately or passively. Where’s your passion?”

Okay, I know what this is about. Celia is like Noah, and thinks the world should be paired up. “I’m seeing someone, remember?”

“You are, to put it in your own words, nondating Harrison Buckley.”

She’s right. That relationship could be said to be living passively. Really should do something about that. When I have time.

I glance down at my feet and smile. We’ve had our toes and nails done. Celia got tips and a French manicure and pedicure. I work in dough and prefer natural short nails. However, my toes are the color of watermelon slices. The glue-on “seeds” were optional. If that’s not living dangerously I don’t know what is.

“A-hem!”

“What?”

“Tan? Now?” Celia points to a banner in the window of the tanning salon.

Change your outside to love your inside.

“I hope no one paid money for that slogan.”

One minute later Celia and I are standing in the reception area of the South Beach Day Spa and Tanning Salon. Nearby a row of girls who look young enough to be cutting class flip through teen magazines and chat. Behind the wall of glass bricks flanking the reception area, colorful shapes move through a fogged kaleidoscope.

“Did you say Mrs. Tal-bot?” The receptionist’s eyes couldn’t be wider.

I nod.

She cuts her eyes to a young woman standing nearby, who is also openly staring at me, then says, “O-kaaaay.” She pushes a button and announces, “There are a Mrs. Talbot and a Mrs. Duffy here for spray tanning appointments.”

I wonder only briefly what that was about. Too nervous to sit I survey the menu of services on the wall that includes manicures, pedicures, facials and wraps. And, of course, tanning options.

I’m just wondering what sort of “options” there are to tanning when Celia says, “Oh, that’s what I want.” She points to a menu item: Double Hot-Action Dark Tanning.

“You’re a beginner, Celia. Think Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore.”

But she’s not listening. She’s picks up a flyer and reads. “Hot Action, also known as Tropical Heat, Skin Stimulation and Tingle, uses a combination of ingredients to increase the microcirculation of the skin, which increases blood flow. The hot-action lotion uses tan-extending walnut oil to produce an instant, Intense glow.”

“Intense glow? That doesn’t even sound normal, let alone safe.”

She flashes me a grin. “We’re not here for safe. We’re here for that outside to match our adventurous insides.”

“You obviously haven’t seen the unadventurous inside of my wallet.”

“My treat!”

Before I can form another way to say N-O, a young woman, this one in a shrink-to-fit tropical-blue smock that barely covers the tops of her bronzed thighs says to me, “I’m your hostess, Lili. Follow me, please.”

She pauses in a hallway of doors and says to Celia, “Did you bring a swimsuit?”

Celia nods and produces one from the depths of a purse the size of Pennsylvania. Since the twins were born, all her purses are the size of Pennsylvania.

“You may change out of your day clothing in here into a robe and shower cap. In the shower stalls you’ll find exfoliating cleanser to use to help prepare your skin. Dry yourself really well before you put on your suit and goggles.”

When she turns to me a big fat grin stretches my face. “I can’t tan because I didn’t bring a swimsuit. Or goggles.”

“We provide goggles. You have the option of going into the spray booth in the nude.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

She gives me a quick up and down. Her expression says she agrees that my shelf life for public nudity has expired. “We have disposable paper suits available, for a small fee.”

“She’ll take it.” Celia dares me to contradict her.

In spite of my anxiety about the paint job to come, I’m enjoying the idea of more pampering. Ask any woman of any age from any walk of life: self-affirmation can be most easily accomplished by a pampered hour consumed by such things as toenail length and shades of polish.

Five minutes later Celia and I are standing in a mint-green dressing room area, having exfoliated from chin to heels, putting on our suits. The locker room is a room away, and the cubbies provided for dressing don’t have curtains for privacy. I guess the thinking is if you’re vain/proud enough to tan it, you’d want to show off what you’re working with.

“What do you think?” Celia’s swimsuit bra top is a good fit. The low-waist boxer briefs make the most of her ample hips but hold in only part of her tummy. She puts a hand on the pooched-out leftovers. “Baby-making fat. I’m thinking lipo next year, after I lose another ten pounds. Good idea?”

“Maybe.” At the moment I have worse problems.

Who decided a halter top made from what seems to be quilted paper towels could contain a real woman? One breast keeps sliding out of its triangle section while the weight of the other tests the elastic bandeau meant to stop it from slipping out underneath. The panties? It barely covers the lawful essentials. My cheeks are on their own.

Our hostess sticks her head in the door. “Okay, first one ready?”