Tales from the Yoga Studio (13 page)

She takes a deep breath and retraces her steps in her mind, figures out how to get onto the thruway. Once she's speeding back to town, she decides to call Stephanie again. Her phone is still turned off and her voice mail is full. She wishes she knew someone else to call to ask about her, but they're not really close and Stephanie's never even mentioned other friends. Graciela has her address entered somewhere in her phone. The only thing that makes any sense is to stop at her apartment and see what's going on.

S
tephanie lives on Sweetzer, right off Melrose. Even though Graciela has spent her entire life in L.A. and therefore should know better, she always assumes that anyone working in the movie business must be doing pretty well and living with the kind of glamorous frills that are out of her reach. Especially someone like Stephanie, who talks about her connections to People with Names. Not bragging, but just because that's what her life is like.

Graciela Netflixed
Silver Linings
shortly after she met Stephanie. She would have liked more plot and maybe one love story that ended happily, but it had Ellen Page, Jean Smart, Sam Rock-well, and a two-second cameo by Johnny Depp. It was about a WASP family in the Midwest—as far from Graciela's background as you can get—but there was something in the (dysfunctional, of course) relationship between Ellen Page and her mother that Graciela identified with so closely, she couldn't get the movie out of her mind for days. It's how moved she was by it that made her put Stephanie on a pedestal. Not a superhigh one, but even so. Apparently she wrote a lot of it, and you have to admire someone who can create anything that makes you feel that much. It's talent.

So she's surprised when she pulls up at Stephanie's address and sees that it's a pretty ordinary three-story white brick building. There's something a little untamed about the hibiscus and bougainvillea bushes in front. She tries Stephanie's phone one more time, knowing she's not going to pick up, and of course she doesn't.

“Like she's going to answer the door,” Graciela mumbles to herself, but gets out of the car anyway.

She rings Stephanie's buzzer and—big surprise—there's no response. Graciela figures that if she were Stephanie, she'd hit the thing a few more times, but even though she's driven all this way, it seems too rude. She stands there for another minute, but she can't make herself do it. For all she knows, Stephanie is out of town or running around arranging meetings. Or maybe she sees Graciela's number pop up and doesn't take the call. But that wouldn't explain the phone being turned off and the messages being full, and on top of that, Graciela is pretty sure the buzzer is not sounding inside an empty apartment. She can feel it. Sometimes she has an extra sense for things, something she really can't explain.

As she's about to leave, Graciela spots through the glass a young, blond woman coming down the staircase from the second floor. The woman opens the door and steps outside and Graciela realizes with a shock that in fact, she's not young at all. Ancient might be more accurate. The blond hair is a brassy gold, combed and teased into a big bubble and sprayed stiff. It could be a wig, but in Graciela's experience, most people try to make wigs more convincing than this. Despite having an unlined face, the exposed skin of the woman's chest and arms (she's wearing a tank top, so there's a lot of exposed flesh) is freckled and as rumpled as a bedsheet. There's a lot of jewelry, too, sort of heaped on in layers, so you can't really tell where one bracelet ends and the next one begins.

“You looking for somebody?” the woman asks. Nice, but at the same time, suspicious.

“I have a friend who lives in the building, but she's not answering her bell.”

“Well, maybe that means she's not at home,” the woman says, more suspicious than nice this time. She turns around to make sure the door has locked behind her, and that's when Graciela notices that she has a yoga mat slung over her shoulder.

“I love your yoga bag,” Graciela says. “I just started doing yoga.”

This perks her up, and she instantly turns chatty. “Good for you, honey. Keep it up. I been doing it for twenty years now. It's how I stay in such great shape.” She flexes a slack arm. “Bikram, four times a week, one hundred eight degrees. I been the exact same weight since I turned twenty. How much do you think I weigh?”

Graciela is
not
taking that bait. “I'm really bad at that,” she says. “It's like guessing the temperature. I never know.”

“A hundred and two pounds. A hundred and three if I'm premenstrual.”

“Nobody can believe it when I tell them I'm forty-seven.”

As a matter of fact, Graciela doesn't believe it, either. Reverse the numbers and they might be in the ballpark.

“My friend who lives here got me into yoga,” Graciela says. “She does it all the time.”

The woman adjusts a tangled mass of gaudy necklaces. “Bikram wants me to get my teacher certification, but who has time? And let me tell you, I have three daughters I been trying to get into it for years. Not interested. They're at boarding school. The bills!”

“My friend is Stephanie Carlson. You don't know her, do you?”

“Stephanie! She lives next door to me. She wants to put me in a movie, but I'm sick of acting. Too much pressure. I love her. I'm glad she got rid of that boyfriend.”

“Really? ” Graciela has known Stephanie for about four months now and she's never once mentioned an ex to her. Maybe it wasn't a serious relationship.

“Yeah. When he was living here with her, she was so happy all the time, it was depressing. I'm done with men. And believe me, it's not like I don't have opportunities. My girls' father was the last. He left me for an older woman. Imagine that!”

“Have you seen Stephanie around lately? She hasn't been answering my calls or anything.”

“I haven't seen her for days.”

“Oh. Was she going out of town? On a vacation or something? ”

“I believe in minding your own business. I keep to myself; I do my yoga. At forty-two, I've learned to focus on me.”

At this rate, she'll be a teenager before the end of the conversation. If you're going to lie about your age, you ought to at least be able to remember the age you claim.

“Do you know any of her friends we could call? ” Graciela asks.

“You're nosy,” the woman says. “Pretty as hell, but nosy. I don't know anybody. But I'll tell you one thing, if she doesn't show up soon, I'm calling the super. I can't take the smell coming out of her apartment much longer.”

K
atherine turns on the little scent infuser in her massage room. “Lavender or bergamot?” she asks.

Conor is sitting on the edge of the massage table, watching her closely.

“Lee's the lady who runs the studio?” he asks.

“She is. And I love that you used the word ‘lady.' Is that a Boston thing?”

Conor winks at her. Probably he's decided never to answer any of her questions, and it's going to become a running joke between them. Assuming there is any “between them.”

“You two get along?” he asks.

“A few minor disagreements. Mostly, I think of her as my best friend. And since you haven't given an opinion, I'm going with the bergamot.”

“Go for it. I have no idea what that is. Anyway, I have a really bad sense of smell.”

“Punched in the nose too many times, Mr. Ross? I think you better take off your shirt for the massage.”

“Let's start with you. Otherwise I'll feel totally outclassed and intimidated.”

“Oh, come on. You just want to see my tits.”

“I do. But not right away. This is strictly professional. I'll step outside and you get ready.”

Katherine unbuttons her shirt and puts it on the chair, then checks herself out in the mirror on the back of the door. She's had enough therapy to know that she's used men for validation her whole life, to feel attractive, desirable, some version of loved. It's common among women who were sexually abused as kids. Some people take comfort in being part of a larger pattern—misery loves company?—but Katherine has always hated being predictable and having her personal acting out turn out to be exactly what everyone else is doing, almost as if her life and her actions had been determined by the bad behavior some fucking
stepfather
decided to inflict on her. She always liked to think of herself as being so original.

Oddly—or wonderfully—enough, she's never felt more attractive than she has since going into sexual hibernation after the Phil disaster. That's probably what's to be expected, too. She's done so much core work, her stomach has flattened out and her obliques are firm. If Conor likes giant boobs, he's out of luck, but for the first time in her entire life, Katherine has begun to appreciate the fact that she's got a pretty incredibly proportional body. She's
not
flat-chested,
not
wide-hipped,
not
the thousand and one flawed things she's always imagined herself to be. She's just fine. And more to the point, since she's been taking classes with Lee, she's learned to appreciate what her body can
do
—despite all the abuse that's been dumped on it by everyone from her stepfather to herself—instead of focusing on what it looks like.

There's a knock on the door, and she lies on her table, facedown, half wishing they were back at her house, half loving the little game they're about to play. Maybe they'll date a few times before going all the way. That would be a first! Conor comes in and closes the door softly behind him. “Ready for your appointment, Miss . . . I didn't get your last name.”

“Brodski,” Katherine says.

“Another Irish lady,” he says ironically.

“Only on one side of the family. I'll let you guess which.”

As soon as his hands touch her back, Katherine feels a warmth rush through her body. He presses his hands into the small of her back and begins kneading along one side of her spine with his big thumbs. Either he's had some formal training or he's the world's most intuitive amateur. “And I'm not sure ‘lady' really applies here.”

“You let me be the judge of that, okay?”

By the time he's worked his way to her shoulders, she feels so calm and relaxed, she almost doesn't care about anything else. If worse comes to worst, she can always find another place to rent and take Lee's classes wherever she plans to teach them.

When Conor begins working on her neck, she feels his warm breath somewhere in the middle of her back and then, so lightly it's almost like a whisper, the scratch of his beard on her skin. “Who taught you how to do this?” she asks.

He moves his face up her back until she can feel his breath tickling her ear. “I'm just making it up as I go along,” he whispers.

“So far, so good, Mr. Ross.”

“Glad you approve. You've got some interesting tattoos back here.”

“They're not scaring you off, are they?”

“I'm tougher than I look, Brodski. And I bet you're more of a good girl than you like to pretend.”

“I wish that were true, Mr. Ross, I really do.”

Katherine's phone starts ringing somewhere in her bag. It's Lee's designated ring.

“You want to get that?” Conor asks.

“It's just Lee, my sort-of boss.”

“In that case, you should answer it.”

“If you're trying to make an honest woman of me, Mr. Ross, you've got your work cut out for you.”

“I'm not trying to make you anything,” he whispers in her ear. “I'm just trying to get you to sit up so I can see your tits.”