You are only pretending, I told myself as I stepped into my pants, slid into the cheap black blazer I’d found at T.J.Maxx. Pretending to live at home for a few months. Pretending to care about this receptionist job. Pretending that New York and everyone in it didn’t exist for now. Yet before I left I slipped on a little freshwater pearl bracelet that my grandmother had given me when I graduated from high school. I hadn’t worn it in years but maybe it would bring me luck. Even if I was just pretending, I had, for better or worse, inherited my father’s penchant for superstition, and with the way my thoughts were tilting, I needed all the help I could get.

I EXPECTED to see Emily at the desk again, but instead I was greeted by Deidre. She told me she usually took it upon herself to oversee training personally, as she liked to instill the spa’s values into new hires. Though the things I learned from her couldn’t be called values, exactly: more like dictums, or threats. Never cross your arms in front of your chest. Never say “hi” instead of “hello.” Never say “you’re welcome”—it’s always “my pleasure.”

At the spa, there was no hint that beauty could be dangerous, could be seen as a prize ripe to be seized. Instead, as Deidre toured me through the space, I saw that everything about the spa had the air of the sacrosanct, of mystery and ritual. The wall of little glass vials of serums, which were dispensed with droppers, like medicine or poison. The sauna, with its cedary smell and hard, bare benches that seemed built for prayer or penitence, the vaguely threatening glow of the red coals in the corner. The bar of teas and glass jars full of trail mix, banana chips round and pale, like communion wafers.