“Of course,” Lemon said. “Get some rest and come in here to whip some chubby bitches into shape Monday morning.” Lemon bowed to her. “Namaste, Ivy. Namaste.”
She should just quit on the spot, but she didn’t have the energy. And who was she kidding; she wanted the check to clear in her bank account before she did anything rash. Thirty thousand dollars was nothing to these women, but it was a lot of money for her. It was enough to maybe invest in something real and good and secure a future for herself that didn’t involve screaming at overweight women with postpartum depression.
“Yeah. Monday. Have a good weekend, guys.”
Ivy could hardly walk through the lobby. She’d come in through the back door of the studio and had missed this enormous crowd in the front. She recognized some of her regulars, but it was hard to tell who was who, since everyone was dressed in costume. Was that colonial garb? Ivy vaguely remembered seeing something similar on her eighth-grade field trip to Williamsburg, Virginia.
She dodged a woman wearing a tall white wig and carrying a musket.
“What the hell is going on?” Ivy asked Kimberly, who was wearing a long navy soldier’s uniform with shiny brass buttons.
Kimberly sighed. “It’s the Hamilton karaoke ride. Don’t you remember, Ivy? We have the original Broadway cast in today—well, Leslie Odom, Jr., is apparently under the weather. But Lin-Manuel is in the locker room right now. It’s a fund-raiser for Lemon’s kid’s school. How could you forget?”
Of course Ivy had heard of the wildly successful Broadway show. Who hadn’t? But she’d been so preoccupied with her crazy mission that she’d blocked out the big day.
“We’ve raised like half a million dollars,” Kimberly said.
“And who are you dressed as?” Ivy eyed her warily.
Kimberly stood up behind the desk and saluted her. “Hercules Mulligan at your service.”
At a loss for words, Ivy ducked back down the staff hallway and into the alley behind SoarBarre.
This day was filled with things Ivy didn’t feel like doing. Training Kate Wells was the second thing on that list, but Ivy reluctantly rode her bike to the Upper East Side and locked it outside of Kate Wells’s enormous townhouse. The tax bill on this place was probably thirty thousand a year. Maybe more.
Kate once again answered the door all ready to work out in a pair of black shorts that stopped just below the perfect curve of her backside, revealing a set of pale white thighs without a speck of cellulite, an achievement for a woman of any age, particularly one with two children. A large white-and-caramel-colored dog perched on his haunches behind his owner.
“This is Bernardo DiCaprio. I didn’t name him. The kids went gaga for Leo when we were on location in Namibia for that movie where he and I fall in love after being trapped on Mars together.” Kate grabbed the scruff of the dog’s neck affectionately. “Bernardo was out with his dog walker last time you were here.” The massive Saint Bernard must have weighed twice what Kate Wells did. She couldn’t possibly walk this dog herself. A fine line of drool began to fall from the edge of Bernardo’s mouth as he turned his droopy eyes to his owner to ask if it was all right to investigate the stranger.
“It’s okay, Bernardo,” she said and turned to Ivy. “He’s been working with Cesar Millan. Amazing progress. He used to just knock guests flat on their back when I opened the door.” Kate confirmed something Ivy had long guessed at, that all famous people knew one another and were hanging out together, singing karaoke and training one another’s dogs, all of the time. Bernardo immediately put his nose directly into Ivy’s crotch.
Kate gave her a warm smile and offered to let Ivy bring the bike inside the foyer instead of keeping it locked outside.
“This neighborhood is going straight to hell,” she said as Ivy undid the lock. “We had a peeping Tom the other night just staring in Dusty’s window. I had to call the police. And you can’t imagine how impossible it is for someone like me to call the police. The papers find out about it the next day. Thankfully there was bigger news today with that whole Miranda Mills story. Did you see that? Wasn’t it awful?”
“Awful,” Ivy agreed, hoisting her bike to her shoulder and carrying it up the small set of stairs leading into the townhouse.
“Did you read about it?” Kate pressed. Ivy would have loved nothing more than getting Kate Wells to talk about The Workout just five days ago. Now she wanted to put it all out of her mind.
“I did. It’s terrible.” How was it possible that this whole house smelled of freshly washed laundry?
Kate’s taut backside led the way down the hallway and into the kitchen, where she opened the fridge and pulled out a pitcher of fluorescent orange liquid. Ivy looked past her into a small backyard garden where two Asian gardeners furiously clipped the hedges into neat rectangles.
“Turmeric smoothie?”
Ivy shook her head. “But you have one. I had my turmeric with breakfast,” she lied. She hated turmeric. It tasted like rubber and turned your mouth the color of a hunting jacket for at least three days.
“I didn’t know Miranda well or anything. But I did have some involvement with The Workout back in the early days. And believe it or not I helped organize their first retreat. Of course nothing happened like this. My god. No.” Kate poured herself a glass of turmeric and a second smaller glass of a yellow viscous oil and settled into a large wicker chair, clearly not ready for exercise just yet.
“Have you tried mustard oil yet? I try to have at least five tablespoons a day. It creates warmth in your bones and your nervous system to generate natural energy. Since I started on it, I haven’t had a single cup of coffee.” Kate’s perfectly pouty lips took on a sultry sheen from the oil. “Do you want some?” She offered the glass to Ivy.
Ivy shook her head. “Not yet. I think I read about it on Goop. Gwyneth was raving about it.” The stuff smelled like a sweaty gym sock.
Kate made a face. “You probably read about it on Lovely first. We do everything before Gwyneth.”
“So you organized the first Workout retreat?” Ivy asked.
“I was one of Sara’s very first clients, and I helped her create the idea for The Workout,” Kate said, her register lowering. “It’s so sad. She was so good at what she did. But so desperate for money.”
Ivy began to look around the kitchen. It was perfect. No cabinets, just basic wood shelves with white china stacked in serene columns. One of those retro Smeg refrigerators custom painted with the British flag occupied one corner, a stainless steel Bosch range in the other.
“Desperate for money?”
Kate took a long sip of her drink and placed the glass down on the butcher block countertop with a supremely satisfied sigh. “She’d do anything to get rich quick. Anything.” This woman wasn’t an Oscar-winner for nothing. Kate Wells knew how to build a sense of drama, how to let it linger in the air and then, just when you wanted more, pull away from it.
“Shall we get started? I have everything we need downstairs in the basement.”