Page 53 of The Deepest Lake

“You definitely could be sisters,” the spa lady says. “Same coloring. Same skin.”

“Exactly,” Eva says, her voice sticky with pleasure. “But I was kidding. We’re mother and daughter.”

I freeze in my seat.

“Kidding!” Eva finally snorts. “We’re just friends.”

When the thick, sulfurous paste is added to the skin under my nose, I twitch.

“You don’t like it?” the woman asks.

“No, it’s fine.” My sinuses fill with the ancient, flat scent of ash. It smells like death.

I hear the door open, then startle as someone new pulls my feet into their lap. I didn’t ask for a foot massage, and I can’t exactly relax and enjoy it. I’m on the job.

From her purse on a corner chair, Eva’s phone dings repeatedly. “Looks like the house Wi-fi is working, at least.” No one silences it. The buzzing and dinging is making me tense. “Beya, tell May here about what Lake Atitlán means, like you told me last time.”

“‘At the water,’” the voice from near our feet answers. “Atl is water in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. The local Mayan people call it Choi Lake. That also means near the water.”

“But tell her the Nahuatl part. About purification? And a battle?”

“In the Aztec calendar, the day atl is about conflict. You purify by having conflict. No resting on the day for atl. It is a day for battle with yourself.”

Eva’s chair squeaks as she leans back into it, satisfied. “Battle with yourself. It sounds like writing memoir, doesn’t it? May, that’s the sort of thing you should write in your journal. You’re still keeping a journal, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“May, what would you think if we organized future workshops according to the Aztec calendar?”

I take a deep breath while the traffic director in my head sorts through all kinds of thoughts. I didn’t get a good look at her face when we came in, but Beya sounds Pakistani or Indian, not remotely Guatemalan or Mexican. Wasn’t she actually wearing a red bindi dot between her eyes? I’m not sure if her knowledge of the Aztec calendar is even correct.

“I think it would require some help from a local shaman or an anthropologist to get it planned properly. And isn’t the Mayan calendar a little different than the Aztec calendar?”

Eva isn’t listening. She tells me about another property she has, a mile from Casa Eva. There are a few old yurts there, an old bus that’s been turned into a tiny house, even if the roof leaks, and several adobe-walled huts.

“It was all part of some Mayan medicine ecolodge that went out of business before the main building was finished. The temazcal huts are great places to fast, sweat and cleanse. We could offer Beya’s tea.”

“I thought that tea was for Mercedes’s seizures.”

“It’s good for much more than that. Think of all the writers who come to us—with anxiety, depression, migraines, chronic pain. Think of the creativity that could be unleashed if we could make them healthier and more serene, first.”

Eva’s phone dings for the hundredth time. “That must be Barbara. She’s peeved I went out—”

My concern, exactly.

“—And she doesn’t like when I try to expand my brand in too many directions.”

“Well, she’s probably right,” I say, feigning disappointment.

“Still, I think people underestimate the power of natural rhythms. Cycles. The pulse of creation, both cosmological and personal.” Eva brightens. “Beya, in the Aztec calendar, are there any good fertility days coming up?”

“Day of the rabbit,” Beya says.

“And when’s that?”

“May twelfth. Two weeks from now.”

“Interesting. Don’t you think, May? Hello?”