“What happened?”
“Char threw a fit. Of course. It was ugly. But she got off in the end. She had no choice. I told you, you have to be firm with her. You have to put her in her place.”
I picture putting Char in her place. What that would entail. Her frantic pedaling. Me prying her off the handlebars bone by bone.
“I don’t know. I feel bad about it, though. I do. It all feels so . . . petty.”
Ruth looks at me for a moment, then sets down her chopsticks.
“Remember that period you went through a little while ago when you were signing your name up for cardio machines but then not showing up in the morning?”
I color when Ruth says this. “Yeah.”
“Well,” Ruth says, leaning in, “she was the one writing NO SHOW beside your name.”
“She didn’t!”
“She did.”
I remember those terrible block letters. Underlined three times. Surrounded by exclamations. That accusing arrow pointing to my scrawled name. I remember thinking, Who in their right mind would do such a thing? I remember now they were in ink.
“Jesus. Who does that?”
“Of course,” Ruth says, “she didn’t act alone. She was spurred on by certain parties. After all, she’s got her allies too.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” I say. “How did my not showing up inconvenience her? Or anyone? Anyone can claim the machine after the five-minute default period.” It’s true. That anyone can do so is a well-placarded rule.
Ruth picks at the dregs of her Warrior Bowl and says nothing. I remember that people signing up for machines and then not showing up is a serious pet peeve of hers too. It’s awkward, this moment. Despite having known each other for two years, we’re not that close.
“I’m angry now,” I say.
“You should be. I would be.”
“That’s just so . . . sick. She’s sick.”
We discuss how sick she is, a favorite topic. How her bones have grown more visible lately. How her T-shirts hang on her like oversize sacks with armholes.
“What does she even eat, do you think?”
“Tea fungus,” Ruth says. “Unsweetened. From an eyedropper. Is what I picture. Either that or some sort of sea vegetable.”
“Sad,” I say.
“It is,” Ruth muses.
We decide to order two skim milk cappuccinos and split a gluten-free carrot cake cupcake.
“Do you think that scale in the Malibu Club is accurate?” I ask, watching Ruth saw the cupcake in two with a chopstick.
“I think so. I don’t know. It might be a bit wonky. Why?”
“Oh, just lately I’ve been weighing myself every day on it and that number just won’t budge. It’s, like, stuck. Or something. Do you find that too? That it’s stuck?”
Ruth assesses the cupcake halves to make certain they’re even, then hands me my half. I stare at it, think of the treat dinners I used to have with Tom. We’d go for ice cream and he would always eat his very slowly, so that after I’d inhaled mine and was sad that it was gone, he could pass me his unfinished bowl. I can’t eat all that, I’d say. Sure you can, he’d say without looking at me because he knew that if he looked at me I wouldn’t take it. Take it. You deserve it. It’s your night off. Anyway, you know I don’t care about this stuff. I took it, feeling bad about myself because I couldn’t resist it. I hated feeling like even after all the positive changes I’d made, I wasn’t above this need and he was. I resented him for it, even though I knew that all there was behind his gesture was kindness. Love for me that made him look away while I ate.
We still send each other songs sometimes. Mostly he’ll send them to me. New songs by old bands we loved. New songs by new bands he thinks I might love now. Most of the time, I can’t listen to them. Sometimes I’ll listen to them and a wave in me will break briefly and then I’ll have to turn it off.
“I used to weigh myself every day but these days I’m trying to get away from the scale,” Ruth says. “I’m through attaching myself to a certain number, you know? I find I’m healthier that way, mentally speaking.”
“Right,” I say.
I watch her take tiny bites of her cupcake half to make it last. After each bite, she raises her eyebrows and nods like she is receiving surprising but not unwelcome news. She does look healthy. Her skin glows and her hair shines and she seems genuinely content.
“You know when you’re on Treadmill Three? Do you ever feel like a gerbil?”
Ruth frowns, licks a bit of icing from the corner of her mouth. “A gerbil?”
“Any rodent, really. You know, on a wheel? You know,” I continue. “Sort of like the joke’s on us?”
She sits back in her chair, making it squeak. She stares at me for a moment. “The joke’s on us? What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how some people? They go to the gym regularly and they don’t look any different? Like, at all?” When I say this, I feel her gaze flit over my frame.