======================
“Seriously, Star, you suck.”
Star laughed her perfect sparkling perfect laugh. “Not as much as you blow, cuz!” I wallowed deeper into the bubbly hot tub. It wasn’t fair. I know it isn’t her fault that she has perfect creamy skin, red curly hair, and is shaped like the porn version of a Disney mermaid. (Though, arguably Ariel IS the porn version of a mermaid.) It’s also not her fault that I’m dumpy, grumpy, and have skin the color of a haddock. Oh, and insecure. And whiney. The whining is all me.
“Still, it’s not fair that your skin doesn’t change colors.” Go team whine! “If I could just find the right cream for those extra scaly patches….” I could feel Star roll her eyes.
“Mar, you know perfectly well that a salt scrub and soak makes those patches go away. That’s why we are here, right? At the Imperial Spa? At 3am on a Tuesday? Which, by the way, is ridiculous. If we had come before midnight it would have been ten bucks cheaper. Ten bucks to avoid two little Korean ladies while you salt scrub your gills.”
“Shhh… Don’t talk about them!”
“What, your gills? Gills? I can’t say the word gills while naked in a Korean bath house at 3am? Really? Gills. Gills, gills, gills! My cousin Rosemarie has gills!” She stopped and cupped a perfectly maincured hand around a shell like ear. “What? No screaming humans? No panic in the street? Wow! I can say the word gill and ninjas havn’t dropped from the ceiling! Amazing!”
Star turned to see how her scarcasm was doing. I had only my eyes out of the water and was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Star sighed. “C’mon Mar, stop hiding. I’m sorry. It’s okay.” I started to slowly ease out of the water. “Just don’t sulk.” I tried to rise up in the least sulky way possible. I was unsuccessful.
“You just don’t get it, Star.”
“I know, I know, I don’t have to shop for swimsuits which hide my gills like you do. I’m only half [amphibious breed/race name] and therefore can’t really know what you are going through. But still, you can breathe underwater! It’s so cool! You get to do all sorts of cool things! You can go shipwreck diving with Uncle Roy, or help Nanna Boatman when she gathers herbs in the swamp, or even go native like Uncle Bobo and just hang out with a wad of moss on your head all day and chew on crawfish. You officially have a superpower and that gives you choices. It’s way better than my lame superpower. Being able to hold my breath for ten minutes qualifies me to be a pool cleaner.”
“Or be a mermaid at the Silverton.” We both snorted. “I love that you have that gig, Star. Who else gets paid to float around in a giant fish tank while wearing a sparkly outfit and wave to little kids and drunk dudes like you do? Seriously, best job ever.”
“Well, they certainly pay me better than those bitches at Disney. Chasing fish and blowing bubble rings for kids is more fun that that stupid princess wave I had to do.”
“Hey, let’s go in the herbal steam room, ’k? I still have an itchy patch on my left side.” We got out of the hot tub and walked toward the sauna. “It is a sweet gig even with the drunks tapping on the glass and all the creepy backwoods guys eyeballing you as they stroll out of the Bass Pro Shops. I’m also really glad you don’t live in L.A. anymore. I know we are small town but L.A. is dirty and spendy and -- HOLY CRAP IT’S HOT IN HERE!”
We eased down onto the benches, our breathing shallow gasps of hot herbal scented steam. “Stop complaining,” Star gasped, “You always….” breath…” say that. It’s so…” gasp..” wet in here that you could …” pant…” breathe through your flaps…” wheeze…” anyway. I’m the one..” huff….” dying.”
She was right, as always, so I eased open my gills. They are conveniently placed on my rib cage in order to always look like a fat roll under my boobs. Sexy, right? I flared them a bit and “ Hot! Still hot! HOT!! Why are we in here again? How long do we have to stay? Boiling herbal flavored pain!” I bolted for the door. Star was right behind me. “Super cold pool?”
“Super cold pool.” We practically jumped into the sunken tub filled to the brim with cold blue still water. “Aaah… Let‘s never go in that room again.”
“Yes, let’s never.”
“We always say that don’t we.”
“Yup. We always do.”
A few minutes pass. “So, Star, do you think it’s time to start drying off?”
“What? Not until that white stuff is gone. We are gonna clear that mess up if I gotta sit you down on one of those little weird Korean stools over there and scrub at you myself! That patchy scratchy stuff would give Nanna and Mam-maw a fit if they saw it and you know it. I don’t get why you gotta be so dry all the time, anyway. You’re swamp people. Water is GOOD.”
“Um, hello, I turn green? When I’m not shiny and iridescent? And I smell like a fish? Hello?”
“You only smell when you haven’t been IN the water.” Star grinned. “There are these newfangled things called BATHS and while you might be too backwoods to know it but they use this neato new stuff called SOAP! It’s smells reeeeal purdy!” Star’s accent had grown increasingly more Texan as she went on.
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up. Your accent sucks. You sound like someone from San Marcos, not a respectable woman from Bridge City, Texas. Don’t splash water at me! They make you get out of the pool for that!”
“Oh, please, at this time of night? That kid up front is too busy reading her manga porn to come back here and see if we are following the unposted rules.”
“Well, still. Anyway, let’s get out. I’ll let you look at the white patches and then we can start drying out. Those red terra cotta ovens upstairs are calling my name!”
" Fine. Those patches really aren't changing all that much anyway."
We got out and began the process of drying off and getting the spa issued pink clothing out of the lockers. The second floor of the spa is co-ed and clothing is required. All the hot dry rooms are upstairs. I am a big fan of hot dry places. It’s why Vegas is so fantastic.
I was pulling my shirt on when Star said “Are you sure it’s not gill rot?’
“No! It’s not gill rot!”
“Athlete’s foot?”
“On my elbows? No.”
“SARS?”
“No.”
“The HIV?” She pronounced it “hiv” to rhyme with liv, as in Liv Tyler.
“I don’t have the HIV. Or the Herpes. Or the Clap. Or any other communicable sexual disease. You have to have sex to get those, generally.”
“Right. Right. I keep forgetting.” She snorted as she pulled her t shirt on. “But, those patches are weird looking. Have you called Mam-maw?”
“I’m not gonna call Mam-maw. She’ll just tell me to rub mud on it.”
“Well, maybe you should rub some mud on it.”
“I’m not gonna rub mud on it! It’s just a dry patch. I’m probably just molting. Perhaps I’m developing new less scaly skin. I’ll just wait it out.”
“Molting? Birds molt.”
“Snakes molt.”
“You’re not a snake.”
“And it’s not the HIV so I think your medical knowledge is somewhat questionable at this point.” We had made our way upstairs and faced an area full of black leather recliners with doorways around the room. “Terra cotta ovens or terra cotta bead beds?”
“Mmm… well, it’s about 4am so both sound like great places to sleep. You pick.”
“Ovens. The bead beds are too comfy.”
“Okay. Dachau it is. “
We opened the door to be greeted with a dark room and blast of heated air. We quickly shuffled through the ridiculously hot marble surface of the first room into the back room where eight small clay huts offered up open coffins of red lighted heat. Each little dome had a bamboo mat and a small block pillow. We crawled inside and looked up at the tiny red bulbs inside the low ceilings. I heard a muffled “ What is the point of this again?” coming from the neighboring oven.
“I dunno. Something about the amazing radiant properties of scalding hot marble and terra cotta clay.”
“And the teensy heat lamp? What does that do?”
“Make it cute? I don’t know. Ask someone who works here. Or better yet, be quiet and enjoy the skin tightening heat. I’ll set the alarm on my phone in case you fall asleep.”
“Right, like I could sleep in an oven…” Star trailed off and after a moment I heard her snore.
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