Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy) (7 page)

Rachael Whitmore was kind enough to meet him when he first
arrived and to show him the place she had arranged for him to stay. She had
instructed him to call her just as he was passing a particular gas station,
five minutes outside of town. Then she would meet him in the parking lot of the
college, and they would go from there.

He thought he might remember her after seeing her again, but
he didn’t. She was wee. Her hair, almost purple in color, was cut sharp against
her jaw line. Her lips were matte and mulberry, as though she had been binging
on pomegranates. Everything about her was tight and coiled—even her voice,
which burst and cracked out of her tiny frame.  

 From there, Rachael had shown him the home she had rented
on his behalf, within walking distance of the college. It was grandly appointed
with plenty of rustic and glazed logs, imposing furniture, plush rugs, and
massive fireplaces, one in the great room and another in the master bedroom.
She led him around, standing for perhaps too long in the master bath, presenting
the jetted tub and the perfectly transparent glass shower doors. Caleb caught
her eyes once, and then made his way down the hall toward the kitchen.  

“I have taken the liberty of stocking the Subzero with a
selection of the finest microbrews from the area’s award-winning brewpubs, as
well as an assortment of cheeses, gourmet mustards, meats, fruits, and
vegetables,” Rachael said. When Caleb crossed his arms in response, she
continued, “I have a particularly light class-load this summer. Two afternoons
a week, in which I will teach painting to students who have no interest in art.
You will soon discover that the only activities our students truly care much
about are skiing and smoking weed. I do try to scare the shit out of them on
the first day, and this usually helps.” She raised her hands to her hips. “Don’t
you despise it when students fail to take your class seriously?”

Caleb gave a little grunt. This was one intense chick. She
held his gaze and beat her eyelashes. Were those lashes real? They couldn’t
possibly be. And who wore false eyelashes to meet someone in a parking lot?

“And that means I can show you around. At your will,” she
continued. “What would you like to do now?” She rubbed one of her calves
against the other. Was she wearing hosiery? And were those boobs real? They
were like torpedoes, and her waist so tiny. He recoiled inside. This place was
just as he imagined Hollywood to be: Everyone weighed forty-eight pounds and
had twenty-six-pound tits. He shook his head.

 “I need some time to get settled,” Caleb said, “To call my
wife, who is in town, too, visiting her sister.”

“Oh.” She looked away for a moment, then set her jaw and
squinted. “Her sister. Who might that be?”

His mind went blank for a moment. “Amari.” It finally came
to him. “Fiona Amari.”  

“Amari as in Kamal Amari?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think that’s it. Do you know him?”

“He owns half the damn town.” A weird expression came over
her face. Spite, anger, vengefulness.

Wow. Where had he landed, exactly? He rubbed his palms on
his thighs. “Well, thanks for helping me get set up here.”

She sighed, examined his face, and then whipped a business
card from the pocket of her skirt. “If you need anything, here’s my card. My
home number is on there, too. And my Skype. And my cell.”

“Okay,” he chuckled. “Well. I guess I’m in good hands.”

“You could be.”

He lowered his eyes then, to study his shoes.

“I am available any time of the day or the night,” she
continued. “And I am discreet.”

He felt a sudden empty space all around him. When could he
see Charlotte?

 “Time to start The Transformation Project, Mama.” It was
half-past four the following morning, and Gracie was whispering in her ear.

Charlotte took the covers with her as she rolled away from
the sound. Gracie spoke again and Charlotte buried her head.

“I’m not going away until you get up.”

Charlotte rolled again and blinked her eyes open. She could
just make out Gracie’s form, in the darkness, looming over her bed. That
familiar posture. That sweet, feathery voice.

“Did you set your alarm, Gracie, just to help me get up?”

“I did.”

“I guess that’s a good thing, since mine never went off.”

“I already turned it off for you. Before it rang. I figured
you would rather wake up to a human voice than that horrible buzz.”

Charlotte swung her legs out of bed. “Thanks, honey, I’m
up.”

Gracie turned to leave.

“You can stay while I get ready, if you want,” Charlotte
said.

Gracie grinned and plopped on the bed. “How long do you
think you’ll be there?”

 “I have no idea. But I think Slicky told me.”

“Slicky?”

“My name for the guy at the front desk.”

“Ah.”

“I think he said two hours. But that sounds like an awfully
long time for a first session. It will probably be only an hour. I mean, he has
lots of clients, so, yeah, no more than an hour.”

Gracie smoothed at the duvet with her palm. “I wish I could
come with you.”

“I wish that, too, Gracie. More than you know.”

“Is that what you’re going to wear?”

Charlotte had slept in the new workout gear that Fiona had
picked out for her the day before…partly to get used to it and partly to save
time. A pair of gray tights with a matching teal racer back sports bra and
t-shirt. The whole ensemble was great at wicking, whatever that meant.  It was also
tremendously constrictive and smelled like sleep. Charlotte suddenly wished she
hadn’t worn it to bed.

“They say this five a.m. spot is the best one. The one
reserved for the VIP clients,” Charlotte said.

“
They
say? Who is
they?”
 

“Okay, Slicky says. But he seems to know.”

Gracie giggled then. “Fiona showed us his headshot.
Leopold’s.”

“Yeah. What kind of personal trainer has professional
headshots?”

There was a pause then, and they both enjoyed the sound of
morning. The way their words hung ripe in the air. The fuzzy, hushed spaces
between them.

“Aunt Fiona really wants this to work out, Mom.”

“I know she does.”

“You’ll do your best.”

“Of course.” Charlotte folded a towel into her duffel bag. “You
sound like the mom here.”

“I just know it’s not going to be easy. I do understand
that, you know.”

“You are wise beyond your years, honey pie.” Charlotte said,
leaning to kiss her daughter on the top of the head and then straightening to
swing her bag to her shoulder.

“I just know that, if I were in your shoes…”

“God forbid,” Charlotte said, without thinking.

Gracie ignored it. “Like, if Hannah were trying to…”

“Rub her success in your face all the time?”

“Exactly. She does, sometimes, like if she gets a better
grade in a class I’ve already taken, or if she runs the mile faster than I did in
gym class. She does that. And it drives me mad.”

It drives me mad.
This was one of Fiona’s expressions,
Charlotte thought, and something turned inside her. “I suppose you do know a
little something about competitive sisters,” she said.

“Maybe you need this, though, Mom. Really.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together.

“And don’t worry about making your bed. I’m up for the day.
I’ll take care of it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. Now go. I want to hear all about it when you get
back.”

And so Charlotte padded out the front door in her new
running shoes, which perfectly pushed up her arches and made her feel powerful
and bouncy.

The minivan smelled moist, like soggy French fries. A wave
of nausea flared through her. This always happened when she got up too early.
She could sometimes stomach coffee, but no food for awhile.  She rolled down
her window. This was going to be brutal. But Leopold probably wouldn’t even do
anything today. Just weigh her. Maybe figure out a plan for her.

At the health club, the parking lot was empty but for two
cars, a Toyota pickup and some itsy sports car she should probably know the
name of but didn’t. Which belonged to Slicky and which to Leopold? She
practiced saying his name. “Lee-AH-pawlt. Lee-AH-pawlt.” The lights blinked on,
just inside the club, all at once, like a new shimmering world had come to life
and was beckoning her forward.  

She charged through the revolving door and put a hand on her
stomach. These early mornings were going to take some getting used to. Behind
the reception desk, Slicky raised his to-go cup toward her. Starbucks. What she
wouldn’t do for just a sip of that. And where was there a Starbucks open this
early? She smiled at him and approached, remembering Fiona’s words. Here, she
didn’t have to be Shy Charlotte. She didn’t have to be so nervous all the time.
She was halfway across the lobby when Slicky pointed a finger at the opposite
wall.

She turned and there he was. Lee-AH-pawlt. Leaning against
the wall, in an indigo track suit, three silver stripes down either side. His
skin was white as chalk, his bald head shiny in the overhead fluorescents. His
chin was lifted just enough that he appeared to be looking straight down his
nose at her.

Charlotte had never felt so intimidated by such an unappealing
man. She applied her best self-assured and fearless face, but one look from
Leopold told her that he could see right through her. She even got the sense he
could tell what her naked body looked like under all these clothes.  

They met eyes—his were heavy lidded and the skin around them
dark—and he flicked them down toward his watch as he grimaced. She was a full
five minutes early. She knew she was. What was he trying to do here?

Leopold jerked his head to the side, motioning her toward
him. Charlotte glanced back at Slicky, who was now absorbed in a frenzied series
of tasks: tapping buttons on his computer, straightening items on his desk, not
meeting her eyes.

Leopold squeezed two fingers together and used them to point
to the locker room. Then he held those two fingers in the air. “Two minutes.
Our session starts. Right here.”

She was already dressed, so she used the time to stash her
gym tote in a locker, and then she messed with her ponytail and tightened the
laces of her sneakers until two minutes had fully passed. No sense spending any
more time with this guy than she had to. People like him made her trip all over
herself, and the more she tried not to, the more it just worked out that way.

When she emerged, finally, Leopold turned and led her up a chrome
flight of stairs to the running track that circled the ceiling.  Just inside
the center of the track was a carpeted area with free weights, kettle bells,
and a digital scale. He flitted his two fingers at the scale and she stepped on.
He grunted and scribbled a note. Then he pushed a set of weights toward her.
“Do like me,” he said as he began to lift.

Ordinarily she liked the quiet, but today she found it
unnerving. “Do we do this all in silence?” she asked. Her voice tittered nervously,
the way she knew it would.

“If I have something to say, I will say it. Exercise and
building strength is as much a mental exercise as it as a physical one. Pay
attention to your form. Do not distract yourself with words.”

And so she did her best to concentrate. First, he would bark
the name of an exercise and then she would perform it along with him. The
weights felt light at first but, after a series of reps, she found she could
hardly lift them. “The last three repetitions should be very difficult. If they
are not, we will increase the weight,” he told her.

In this fashion, she successfully executed a set of one-arm
alternating bicep curls and a set of  hammer curls. Then it was on to tricep
extensions and one-arm alternating tricep kickbacks. And then it was down to
the floor for standard pushups, military pushups and diamond pushups. Each time
her back dipped, he straightened it with his hands. “Your core needs strength.
Much strength.” He scribbled more notes on his clipboard. Her stomach gnawed on
itself and she knew to stand up very slowly and carefully; making sure her head
was the last thing to come up.

Leopold produced a stopwatch from his pocket. Surely they
were nearly done. If she had been feeling more comfortable, if she hadn’t been feeling
so shy, she would have told him that she was feeling a little dizzy. She would
have told him about her blood sugar problem. But he seemed like the kind of guy
who wouldn’t care if she had an excuse anyway.

“Run,” he demanded, popping at the top of his stopwatch as
she set off along the track. She rounded the first corner and spied a clock on
the wall. Five fifteen. Only fifteen minutes had passed? She felt the room spin
once. Vroop. She slowed and took a deep breath, and then her skin prickled in a
rush. That’s how she knew it was too late.

And that’s when it happened. All the lights flickered and her
skin went barbed and brambly and she felt herself dissolving into the darkest,
tiniest pinhole, just as she felt her body slump to the floor.

***

A red-headed man who smelled like spearmint was staring
straight into her face, and her insides felt squishy but bristly at the same
time. Another man was making notes on a clipboard and, behind him, stood a
whole group of men with pressed white shirts and blue slacks and squawking
walkie-talkies.  

“Ah, there she is,” the redhead’s voice said. “Hello,
beautiful.” She blinked her eyes. He had a smooth, unlined face and a mop of
angled red bangs, which swung as he pushed a rolled towel behind her neck. She
found it oddly embarrassing to have someone so young taking care of her. She
blinked her eyes again. “What did you eat this morning?” he was asking.

She shook her head. Closed her eyes. Tried to sit up. A pair
of hands forced her backward.  

She squinted. What the hell? Her stomach felt like it was
caving in on itself and the lights were too bright and her ears were ringing, and
who were all these people?  

“What did you have to eat this morning? Anything? Do you
remember?”

“No, nothing. But I meant to.”

The red-haired man (whom she immediately named Lucky for
reasons she didn’t have the wherewithal to determine) took her pulse. His hands
were smooth. Then he moved the blood pressure cuff onto her arm. “I think I
know you,” he said.  

She squinted up at him. Why were these lights so bright?

“You are Fiona’s sister. Right?”

She wrinkled her brow and squinted. Ah, it was because he
looked like the leprechaun on the Lucky Charm’s box. With his red hair and his
button nose and all of that early morning exuberance. Did that leprechaun have
an actual name? Surely it was Lucky. He was talking now. “Fiona does my wife’s
hair. I think my wife is scheduled to help you with something…finding you a job
or some such thing.”

“Oh.” 

The paramedics formed a horseshoe around her, nodding and
grinning. Just behind them was Slicky, his eyebrows expressing eagerness and
concern. She braced herself up on her elbows. “Where’s Leopold?” she asked,
realizing she might be pronouncing it wrong. Her head throbbed.

One of the men pointed. He was standing near the rail on the
side of the track, his arms folded tight across his chest, his chin raised. His
eyes met hers, and then he moved his head from side to side.

“I just need a peanut butter sandwich,” she said, in her
intrepid-undaunted-fearless voice. The one that made her hate herself, the one that
made her feel like a fraud, and the one she used in times like this. “I just
forgot to eat in my excitement to get started, and I have this low blood sugar
thing. That’s all.”

Lucky nudged her back against the towel roll. His voice
dropped. “Has Leopold been pushing you too hard?”

“No. No. I just…like I said, I just need a peanut butter
sandwich.” And then that laugh she hated came spilling out of her. When she
could next look over, Leopold had disappeared, and Slicky let her know that the
day’s session had ended.

***

Charlotte wondered who would tell Fiona first. Who would
relate the tale of her embarrassing sister who passed out cold at the health
club and who most likely prompted an investigation into Leopold and his
training techniques.

Why hadn’t she eaten anything? And how could just fifteen
minutes of swinging weights around make her so sore? Even her bones hurt, along
with the tendons and the ligaments and the nerve fibers. And if she were this
sore now, how would she feel tomorrow, when it was time to visit Leopold again?
How could she feel this awful and have no visible signs of damage? No missing
limbs. No hemorrhaging from her head. On the outside, she looked like
Charlotte.

That cute little band of paramedics had wanted to transport
her to the hospital for observation, but she had stood up then and nearly ran
out of there, mumbling something about needing a sandwich. But really, why
didn’t they just have peanut butter sandwiches in their Emergency Response
Packs? It would solve all kinds of problems. Every mom knew that.

Now that all the excitement was over, she had some wicked
shakes. Was it twitching muscle tissue or a delayed response to unmitigated
humiliation? She wasn’t sure, but, on the way home from the gym, she located
the Starbucks, where she ordered an iced coffee and a seven-layer bar to revive
her energy. There was protein in there, she was nearly sure. She had worked out
hard, and she deserved it. Besides, she would need some strength to face her
sister.