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The next morning, I finally have it out with her. I feel it in the air all the way to the Malibu Club that today will be the day of our inevitable confrontation. Finding her still bone-flogging the Lifecycle when I come into the gym at 7:00:00, I stride right up to her and I ahem. And when she turns her awful sweaty visage toward me, I do not clam up, I do not cower. I tell her point-blank that I am on this machine next, as she well knows. And when she says, “Just give me a few minutes,” like I’m a fly that just needs to be swatted, I remind her, loudly, within earshot of every ineffectually working-out woman, that she cut into my time yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, and that’s when she cuts me off and shouts, “Fine! Fine! Fine! Relax!” And though a red fog burns the back of my neck, I do not waver. I remain standing there, my arms folded over my faded JUST DO IT T-shirt, silently supervising her cleaning of the seat and handlebars. I even point out the splotches of skull sweat she missed on the pedal straps. When I do this, I think she’s going to smack me, but she just turns away and wipes those down too. When she’s finished, she runs toward the stretching mats, swearing, and I hear, under her breath, her name for me. It is worse than mine for her. It is worse than any name I have ever hurled at myself in the mirror like a rock. It is worse than anything I could have ever imagined.
To work out in the wake of her all, the humid wake of her all, is always a disorienting experience. Today, it is like working out in the aftermath of a war, like treading bone-and blood-and skull-strewn earth. The handlebars are still poker hot from where she gripped them, seemingly for dear life. The monitor is still damp from her hasty wipe down. Her sweat splotches still ghost the pedal straps. And from the corner I feel the pointed blade of her anger aimed at the back of my neck as she matrix-lunges, as she farmer-walks and hip-wiggles and abducts. One angry, pared-down leg, then the other. As I mount the still-smoking machine, I feel the truth of what her outraged eyes are etching into my back, that these minutes will make no difference to what Harold delicately refers to as my problem areas. Then I see Ruth mouth, Good for you, and nod from where she is doing isometric shoulder holds in the mirror. And I propel one ludicrous foot in front of the other, even though it’s like that nightmare where I’m running on terribly soft earth, running even as the ground gives way beneath me.
To distract myself, I watch the Aquafit women, who, I observe, once more have no teacher. One of the class members is leading them now. I watch them go through the motions of their absurd water dance, knowing they are doomed to inhabit their masses of hanging flesh forever.
And it’s too much. I get off. I get off three minutes earlier than my time. I expect Char to chide me for this with her eyes but when I turn to look at the mats, I see she’s gone. No trace of her but a dent in the mat, speckled with a few of her sweat driblets. I wipe the machine down for the hungry-looking flight attendant, who has been behind me all this time, circling inside my field of vision, pointedly stretching. Seeing me get off early, she gives me a skull-like grin in gratitude. What a boon, these extra minutes, her eyes say. I can feel her patting herself on her shoulder tendons for all those days when she came in earlier, in the name of You never know. Maybe the fat girl will finally throw in the towel, give up. Well, that day has come. All yours, I tell her. And watching her gleefully tether the ropes of herself to the machine makes me so exhausted, I do not even do my post-cardio cobra. Or plank. Or those leg lifts and scissor kicks and thigh abductions that I’m fairly certain do not work anyway. It is all, I am convinced now, a terrible trick.
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I do not go to the gym the next morning. Or the next. Or the next. In short, I relinquish my precarious grip on the 7:00 a.m. time slot. I give in to the abyss. There follows another bout of darkness, in which nothing is measured or counted or weighed, in which I dress before the mirror not seeing myself. A period during which the Malibu Club, observed from six floors up, becomes a strange and distant aquarium full of curious fish and Char its saddest specimen. I watch her each morning from above, glutted on my abdicated minutes, and under my breath, I say, You win. Happy? But she does not look happy. She looks as angry as ever.
Evenings, I eat large quantities of the Foods I Should Avoid with my father. We have an unspoken agreement that if he doesn’t mention Tom, my divorce, my mother, or how I currently live, then he can come over from time to time and we can sit on opposite ends of my mother’s white couch with the pale blue flowers on it and watch Absolutely Fabulous. In this way, we’ve gradually grown closer in the years since I moved back home.
“Friday night,” my father says, turning to me. “No plans?”