Secrets, Lies, Betrayals How The Body Holds The Secrets Of A Life And How To Unlock Them

Chapter 1 Is It Fair To Go Ahead With This Wedding? It's still not clear how or why that strange misunderstanding occurred. The plan we'd made was pretty straightforward: Claudia Martinelli and I were to meet each other in the lobby of the Yale Club, which is just across the street from Grand Central Terminal. That waiting area isn't large, so it never occurred to me that we needed to describe ourselves, put carnations in our lapels, do anything of that sort. When I arrived, ten minutes late, out of breath, the lobby was unusually crowded and noisy. Clusters of people stood around talking, laughing; their high-pitched voices echoed off the marble walls, muffling phrases of the familiar carols being piped in from unseen speakers. The whole lobby was dressed up for the Christmas holiday: Huge red velvet bows festooned the high archways leading to the elevators on the right side of the lobby; and on the opposite side, the same red velvet bows graced the handrails of the wide stairway leading up to the cocktail lounge on the mezzanine. The sounds of a loud party floated down from up there. I looked around but didn't see the woman I was expecting. Very few people were actually sitting in the club's waiting section, which consists of several dark blue sofas and blue, comfortable-looking chairs arranged in an elongated oval. There was one person, actually, a strikingly attractive woman sitting by herself; but she surely didn't correspond to my image of the person I was meeting. Anyhow, this woman didn't seem to be on the lookout for me; her gaze slid right past without a flicker of interest and remained fixed upon the revolving door at the entrance. She's waiting for a date, I thought. Someone important to her, for she was sitting forward on her seat intently. At her feet was a striped pale green shopping bag that bore the label Emporio Armani. Behind me the front door went on swishing steadily, letting in blasts of cold air and new arrivals. I stood there, uncertain, feeling guilty about my perennial tardiness. The tall grandfather clock, which had been decorated with fragrant Christmas greens, suddenly emitted a loud, single chime. For a moment all the cheerful hubbub halted. It was actually six-fifteen, not ten after, so I'd arrived even later than I'd thought. Was it possible that my interviewee had gotten here on the dot of six, waited briefly, and then left because I was nowhere to be seen? Or was this a plain and simple no-show? Claudia Martinelli had sounded pretty agitated during our several preliminary phone calls; she might have gotten confused about the plans, which had been changed a couple of times, or even decided against participating in this projectan exploration of secrets and lies and how they affect us mentally and physically. Had I said anything that might have sounded overly intrusive or alarming? I sank into one of the deep armchairs with my back to the revolving door and soon found myself gazing covertly at the handsome woman sitting across from me. She had wide, pale blue eyes, fringed with black, unblinking as a bird's and focused on the entryway in back of me. Her hair was light coloredmasses of curls, which looked carefully disarrangedand she wore a very short dark wool dress, clockworked stockings, and polished boots with heels so tall and narrow that the whole effect was faintly pornographic. She wasn't merely good-looking, as I'd first thought; she was beautifulthe kind of woman whose mere existence eclipses every female around her. It was six twenty-five, and whoever she was meeting still hadn't arrived. In the meantime, a smattering of other people sitting in the area had linked up with their friends, and some new personnel had come to take up places on theScarf, Maggie is the author of 'Secrets, Lies, Betrayals How The Body Holds The Secrets Of A Life And How To Unlock Them', published 2004 under ISBN 9780679457039 and ISBN 0679457038.