She hadn’t seen Dale in more than six months, and she honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone with him. It might even have been the warm January day of their divorce. After all the papers had been signed and she and he were officially free of each other, they’d gone to a diner near the courthouse and had a friendly, greasy lunch. They didn’t mention the past or indulge in embarrassingly sloppy nostalgia. Instead, they talked about their plans in an open, effortless way that was completely without ulterior motives or hidden agendas—and therefore without precedent in the history of their relationship. They’d sat in their cramped booth for hours, and by the time they got up, a new weather system had blown in; the sky had gone gray and snow was falling. Out on the sidewalk with fat papery flakes floating past them, Dale had put his arms around her and kissed her goodbye. The next thing either of them knew, they were making out in an alley, leaning against a rusty Dumpster, their bodies pressed together, their shoulders covered with snow. Jane had finally let herself cry in front of him. “I’m not going to miss you,” she’d said, her words slurred with emotion. “Janey,” he’d whispered in her ear, “I’m going to miss you.”

Now, all the doubts she’d had about this meeting melted away as she watched him make his entrance; she should have planned a get-together as soon as she felt the first stirrings of seriously icy discontent with Thomas. One look at Dale’s craggy face and she was ready to rush back to her husband and smother him with affection, just for being his lovable, unlovely self.

The Boylston was one of the city’s older hotels, but it had a convenient location and recently had become officially hip. Some ten-year-old entrepreneur had purchased it and turned the first three floors into a full-service day spa and health club where you could wallow in every form of self-improvement and body detoxification on the market. Salt rubs, high colonics, laser peels, sweatboxes—you name it. The entire health spa movement, with its mania for scrubbing the body, inside and out, was just a high-priced form of self-mutilation. The only thing left to implement was a treatment to gut the body completely and replace all those nasty internal organs with flax seeds soaked in perfumed almond oil. Self-improvement had become a matter of self-annihilation. Relaxation had become a competitive sport and inner peace a commodity.