Tales from the Yoga Studio (16 page)

A
few minutes later, Katherine and Conor are walking down to the reservoir to meet Lee. It's a warm late afternoon, and the houses are glowing in the sun. “Are you good at everything? ” Katherine asks. “Are you one of those really nice guys who's just good at
everything
?”

“I've got my fair share of weak points and fuckups, Brodski.”

“I'm not sure I believe you. Like you had some drunken, drug-ridden past?”

“I've had a few beers in my life. But no drugs. My brother fucked up his life on that shit. I spent years trying to keep him clean, he'd get better, and then he'd go right back.”

“I'm sorry. How is he now?”

“Let's talk about something else,” he says.

Yes, that suddenly seems like a very good idea. “How long are you stationed at the firehouse?” she asks.

“I'm doing rotations of different neighborhoods. I'll probably end up being here for a couple of months, total. Lucky we met when we did.”

Katherine hopes that's true. She does want to believe it was lucky.

L
ate in a long, emotional roller coaster of a day, the sight of Katherine and her fireman sitting on a bench beside the reservoir is a welcome relief. He's sprawled across the seat with his arms spread along the back, showing off a singularly impressive wingspan. He's saying something to Katherine, and she's laughing, really laughing, in a way that Lee rarely sees. It would be nice if something finally worked out for Katherine in this area. It's the missing piece in the puzzle of her life after all the disappointments and disasters. She can see the two of them glowing when they come over to the car. “I'm sorry to break up your day like this,” Lee says. She almost used the word “date,” but she has a feeling Katherine would bristle.

“Conor's professionally obliged to have his day broken up by crises,” Katherine says and makes introductions.

“I'd love to come and help if I can,” Conor says. “But if that's awkward . . .”

“Of course not. It might be helpful to have you there.”

There's something so reassuring about Conor, the big solid presence of him, Lee agrees to let him drive to West Hollywood. Anyway, he's much too tall to fit into the backseat comfortably, and she likes the idea of stretching out herself back there. She fills him and Katherine in on what she knows about the situation, and Conor assures them he's pretty good at handling such things. “I know a lot of people who've fucked themselves up over and over again.”

Katherine casts a worried glance in Lee's direction.

Despite all the progress Katherine's made in the past two years, and her appealing tough-girl routine, she still tends to take things personally, mostly because she feels so bad about the mistakes she's made over the years. She feels she should be criticized and punished, and so she's always ready to spot criticism, even when none is intended. It's all that good old Catholic guilt that was drummed into her from birth about how unworthy she is of being loved, even though, from the sounds of it, it's everyone around her who was unworthy of her.

“What do you think of the studio?” Lee asks.

“It's great,” Conor says. “Very low-key. I like that.”

“Conor's coming to your advanced inversions workshop next week,” Katherine says.

“Careful what you joke about,” he says. “I just might. I've never minded making a fool of myself.”

Lee calls Graciela, and by the time they pull up in front of Stephanie's building, she's standing on the sidewalk, her arms wrapped around her, visibly shaken. When Lee goes to hug her, Graciela melts against her shoulder and starts to cry.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I'm really, really sorry. I probably shouldn't have had you come all the way out here. It's just been a long day, and . . .”

“Don't even think of it,” Lee says. “What's going on in there? ”

“I don't even know. She seems out of it and the place is a mess. It seems like she's dehydrated, and she keeps drifting off. There's this crazy neighbor of hers. . . . Anyway, as soon as I told her I thought we should go to the hospital, she started getting hostile.” She looks over at Katherine and Conor. “I didn't mean for everybody . . .”

“It's all right,” Katherine says. “We wanted to come. This is Conor, by the way.”

“Hi. Sorry to get you down here.”

“Did she hit you?” Conor asks.

Graciela shakes her head no.

“How'd you get that . . .” He points to a small cut on Graciela's forehead.

“She threw a few things around, but it didn't seem like she was aiming or anything. It was just an accident.”

“I know a lot of EMTs,” Conor says. “I can call one and have an ambulance down here in no time, if that's best. We'll make sure they don't have the lights on and that the whole thing is done very quietly.”

Lee can see that Graciela is more comforted by the presence of this big capable guy than she is by either Katherine or her. With her thick, tangled hair and her dark features and perfect complexion, Graciela looks even more beautiful in her exhaustion and weariness than she usually does.

“You don't think that will make things worse?”

“I'll take responsibility if it does,” Conor says. “Let's go in. There's someone else in there now?”

“Billie, her neighbor. But she can pretty much take care of herself.”

Graciela starts walking toward the apartment building, and Katherine nudges Conor and says, “Go in with her. She's a mess right now.”

“Come with us.”

“Maybe we shouldn't overwhelm her with too many people. We'll call in a few minutes and you can let us in.”

Lee watches them heading into the building, checks out the look of sad resignation on Katherine's face, and wishes she hadn't interrupted the date by asking Katherine to come down here.

“Great guy you've got there,” she says.

“Yeah. Probably too great for me.”

“No one's too great for you, Kat.”

Katherine starts laughing. “That's such a line, Lee. And so not true. He really deserves someone like Graciela—sweet, no past.”

Lee puts her hand on Katherine's arm. “Don't do this,” Lee says.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Please? For me? Don't. Now let's go in and see what we can do.”

E
very Tuesday and Thursday morning for the past three weeks, Becky has been picking up Imani and driving her to a yoga class at a different studio somewhere in L.A. While Imani knew it was a big trend and “everyone” was doing it, she had no idea there were so many available options. Becky told her she knows of about 120 studios scattered around the city, and that doesn't include the private places and the out-of-the-way classes taught in community centers and schools and gyms and the YMCA.

“How do you
know
all this?” Imani asked her.

“The old-fashioned way: Internet. I subscribe to about three dozen websites where they review studios and update classes and post gossip about teachers. Pictures, too, in case that's your thing. And Twitter has been
amazing
. Every afternoon at five I get a tweet about the best classes and workshops going on the next day. Everyone fights for a spot, so you have to register in advance or try to bribe your way in. It's worse than getting tickets for concerts.”

It doesn't sound very
om shanti
to Imani, but she's the novice here and, yoga or not, it's still L.A.

“Can't you just use your name?” Imani asks. “That ought to be enough to get you in.”

“Are you kidding?
Everyone
goes. If I won an Oscar, maybe I'd get moved up the list. Anyway, it's embarrassing using my name like that. My screen name on these sites is ‘yoga roommate, ' which I thought was kind of clever.”

“Cute.”

Becky is officially between projects and trying to get in shape for a movie that starts shooting in a few weeks. She has to do a sex scene and there's nudity involved, so she wants to be in perfect shape.

“No body double?” Imani asks.

“Of course there's a body double. That's in all my contracts. But I don't want anyone on the set to think I'm using one because I'm out of shape. I actually have to look
better
than the double to save face, so it would be easier if I just did the scene myself.”

Imani feels lucky nudity was never an option on network TV. If yoga helps Imani get Becky's thighs and obliques, she's willing to put up with gazing off into infinity for a couple of seconds at the beginning of class and pretending she's visualizing world peace. At first she thought Becky was calling her because she happened to be available (most of Becky's friends work nonstop) or because she felt bad for her. But it's brought them a lot closer, and now she feels like a real friend.

The names of the places are what Imani loves the most. Yoga Bind, Yoga Bend, Yoga Hop, Yoga House. A few dozen clever uses of “mat” and “dog” and “down” and endless plays on branches and trees and limbs. A lot of dharma and karma. The names remind her of hair salons and how they're always coming up with some new, nearly witty pun on hair, just when you thought they'd all been used up.

This Tuesday, Becky calls Imani at 8:00 a.m. and tells her she's texting her the address of a studio in Santa Monica and she expects to see her there at eleven o'clock.

“Come on, Becky,” Imani says. “Can't you find something a little closer?”

“Oh, my God, girl. This is Taylor
Kendall
.”

“I'm waiting to be impressed.”

“Honey, I was online at the dot of midnight when they opened the website to reserve places in his class. I got the last two spots, and according to my clock, it was twelve oh two. He is the
best
yoga teacher in the country. I mean, he trained with . . .”

This comment spurs another list of names Imani has never heard of, some of them unpronounceable ones with an Indian inflection, others those weirdly androgynous, soap opera names so common among yoga teachers, she's discovering. Campbell Dylan. Chrysler Marks. Rand Bryce. And people criticize black women for the Africanish names they give their kids! (Imani was her manager's choice; her mother had gone for Loretta, a fact not even Becky knows.)

What Imani is also discovering is that there are about six hundred teachers in the country who are, unquestionably,
the best
. Funny how they all happen to be
gorgeous
.

But, long ride or not, Imani agrees to meet her. She feels as if bumping into Becky in the cupcake bakery was fate. She's had more fun over the past few weeks with Becky than she's had since . . . well, for a long time. It's all the driving around to parts of the city she's never been to before, the hopping and jumping that she's getting quite good at, even the fun new clothes that make her feel sexy and athletic. She's always been fit, but she's never felt athletic before. There's always a moment in these classes when she finds herself rolling her eyes (“Take a few deep, poignant breaths and direct them toward that little storage space in your body where you keep your sadness”), but she does it anyway. And no matter how silly it sounds, it's having some kind of effect. She doesn't believe for one second that twisting her spine is helping to “wring out toxins” or whatever it's supposed to be doing, but it is true that she's started to feel as if a dark mood is being wrung out of her. Maybe she's emptying out her “storage space.” Glenn has noticed a difference, too.