“I am so terribly sorry,” said the woman in a black blazer and leopard-print heels, hovering over Grace Jones. “There’s no way that I can have you keep doing this interview here.”

Ms. Jones looked up incredulously and said, “What?” She was in the lounge room of the spa at the Mandarin Oriental, New York, wearing a towel wrapped around her head and a terry robe, a half-drunk mimosa in one hand.

Smiling a frozen smile, the hotel employee continued, “This area is for spa guests who are having ——”

“I am a spa guest!”

“Of course, Ms. Jones, I know. But people who are having treatments ——”

“So can we put a robe on him and get him a treatment?” Ms. Jones said, referring to her interviewer, whom she had ushered into the spa 15 minutes earlier, having checked out of her room upstairs.