On cue, the bracelet began speaking in a mechanical voice that bore more than a slight resemblance to Dame Judi Dench.
“You have only completed two hundred steps today.” How was that possible? She’d walked downtown to meet CJ. That had to be at least three thousand steps? She was walking everywhere these days. Ivy had kindly dropped off a pair of bright yellow SoarBarre-branded Nike sneakers. “Good deed for the day,” she’d said and rushed off. Without anything else to do each morning she just left the apartment and began walking. She must have walked the length of the High Line ten times already. There are few things more perfect than the High Line early in the morning, well before the tourists arrived. She’d dug up a book called City Walks of New York Lorna had sent her last year. Her mother had helpfully dog-eared the walks she thought Janey would find culturally interesting (The Museums of Fifth Avenue, A Ghost Walk of the Upper West Side). She’d placed it on her desk in a special Lorna pile, which also included interesting articles sent to her from the Charleston Dispatch, three cookbooks of Low Country cooking guaranteed to please your man, and photographs of Boo Radley from two months to fifteen years. Until now, she hadn’t bothered to crack the spine, but now, placing a check mark next to each of Lorna’s suggested walks was a satisfying way both to start the day and to remember her mother. She downloaded language apps to her phone and started learning rudimentary Chinese and French during her walks and slow jogs.
“How do I make it stop?” Janey asked CJ, tapping on the bracelet in search of an off button that didn’t exist.
CJ looked perplexed. “I’m not sure. Mine doesn’t talk. We’ll google it later and try to figure it out.”
“What kind of yoga are we doing tonight?”
CJ shrugged. “White person yoga.”
“You need to walk nine thousand more steps to reach today’s goal,” Janey’s bracelet reminded her.
As they got closer to the ZenRiot studio on Bank Street, Janey made a declaration. “I’m not taking my shirt off tonight.”
“They say it’s optional,” her friend replied matter-of-factly. “You do you. I’m personally excited for someone to look at my bare breasts and not try to suckle.”
“I don’t even see the point of topless yoga, except to allow creepy hippie men to ogle my breasts in downward dog,” Janey complained.
“No, no, no.” CJ shook her head. “Everyone is talking about it. This is the hottest yoga class in the city right now.”
“Of course everyone is talking about it. It’s filled with naked women. The only thing New Yorkers like to talk about more than naked women is brunch,” Janey said with confidence.
“I heard it’s so much more than that. It’s not about being naked. Well it is about being naked, but not in the way you’re saying. When you don’t wear a shirt the instructor can make sure you’re properly aligned and then adjust you correctly into the poses. They also turn the thermostat way, way up so you are sweating out all your toxins. If you sweat when you’re wearing cotton then every single chemical that has ever been used to clean your clothes sinks into your pores and poisons your nervous system. It makes so much sense when you actually think about it.”
“None of that is true,” Janey replied, rolling her eyes.
“It is. I read it on Goop.”
She wanted to ask when the editors at Goop had become experts in neurological toxicology but decided to change the subject instead. If CJ read something on Goop there was no changing her mind.
“You’re limping,” Janey said, staring down at her friend’s left foot as they sped up to beat a yellow light crossing Greenwich Avenue.
“I’m not.” CJ winced and stepped up her pace.
“Now you’re just limping fast. What’s going on?”
Her friend sighed. “I have SoarBarre foot.”
“Excuse me?”
“SoarBarre foot…it’s like tennis elbow, but from spinning too much. I went to the doctor last night. It’s the new normal. He says he’s seeing at least six cases a week. It’s not broken or anything, the nerves have just gone into stasis.”
“Stasis?”
CJ gave a resolute shrug. “Like a coma. The nerve endings go to sleep. The foot feels tingly. It’s hard to put weight on. Totally no big deal.”
Janey watched her carefully as CJ began making a concerted effort to put weight on the foot, grimacing with each step and finally grabbing the crook of Janey’s arm to steady herself.
“I don’t believe this is a thing.”
“It’s a thing! But it isn’t a big deal,” CJ said at the same time Janey blurted out, “You can’t feel your damn foot. You shouldn’t be walking, much less coming with me to yoga. Come on, let’s just go home. We can grab takeout and eat with the twins.”
CJ sped up again, her hobble more pronounced as she rounded the corner. “No! Absolutely not! We’ll be charged the motivation tax. This week they’re donating to Donald Trump’s next presidential campaign. I am so fine. And I need to bikini tone before Steven and I go to St. Barts next month. That’s not happening? just eating clay.”
The Naked Yogini’s class was on the second floor of a posh West Village townhouse. Janey allowed CJ to grasp her elbow so she could drag her immobile SoarBarre foot uselessly behind her as the two women climbed the staircase.
Elizabeth Madden, the yoga instructor, greeted the two women at the door, wearing dark brown leather booty shorts and no top. Her breasts were tiny and taut, her nipples alert. A thin gold band ran from her slender neck, down between her breasts, and then looped back around her skeletal midriff. Her exposed skin shimmered with some kind of gold glitter. A beaded headband held her blond curls off her high forehead.
Janey tried desperately to maintain eye contact. She couldn’t explain it, but these yoga instructors, gurus, and fitness mavens all intimidated her just a little bit. Anytime they approached her she felt an immediate and irrational sensation of desperately wanting them to like her.
“Welcome to Free the Nipple. I honor you,” the instructor said in a serene Australian accent. “Feel free to place your bags in the back. You may hang your coats and your shirts up on the rack in the corner. I have something for you.” The woman grasped Janey’s hand and opened her palm, placing a smooth white stone in it with no explanation.
Tall, willowy white curtains framed floor-to-ceiling windows. Janey looked at the rows of colorful mats, each one occupied by a topless human. There were more than thirty people sardined into the room, not a single speck of floor between the foam. A large mahogany Buddha with a fuchsia face and shiny bald head took up residence in the corner, his own bare chest and big belly set in a smile.