The Cinderella Pact (9 page)

Two months later, Nancy got a phone call from American Express verifying that a hotel in Cozumel was not fraud. Ron had told her he was off to the Poconos for a fishing vacation at a family cabin. He didn't mention that he'd left a few days early to join Gina, his twenty-five-year-old Guatemalan law clerk, on a Mexican beach.

His bags were packed and on the doorstep when he got home. Nancy refused to listen to one word of explanation.

That was about a year ago, and here we are in the Princeton Arms and I, for one, am frustrated that a couple meant to be together for eternity is splitting up for no good reason.

“He wants to get remarried, you know. That's why he's been so nice to me lately. Don't cross your legs, Deb, remember? Blood clots.”

Deb uncrosses her legs. I am impressed that Nancy picked this up from Suze's lecture.

“He's getting married? To Gina?” I ask.

Nancy finishes off her champagne and helps herself to a refill. “Who else? Guess it was true love all along, despite what he claimed when I caught them in Cozumel.”

I don't believe it. “He's bluffing,” I say. “There's only one woman he loves, and that's you.”

“Really?” Nancy leans forward as if she were driving home a point to the jury. “Then tell me why he asked me if I'd be up for a legal annulment.”

I am speechless, partly because I've never been sure what an annulment really entails.

“He wants an annulment,” Nancy finishes, her eyes slightly glazed from the champagne, “because he wants to marry Gina in the Catholic Church so they can raise up the dozen Catholic babies he wanted me to spit out as soon as I was done putting him through law school.”

With this, Nancy plunks her champagne glass on the table so hard that the stem shatters and the three of us scream. Brian the beefcake waiter rushes over, followed by a busboy carrying a heavy white cloth. We are ordered to sit still as they clean up the mess, Nancy apologizing profusely.

“Don't be sorry. No big deal,” he says, leaning over and revealing a large broad back. “Looked like you girls were having fun.”

“It's our last party before I undergo weight-loss surgery,” Deb blurts, displaying her knack for saying odd things in awkward social situations.

“Weight-loss surgery, huh?” Brian tosses the glass in a bag. “All of you?”

“Just me.” Deb raises her hand. “Nola and Nancy are going about it the old-fashioned way. Diet and exercise. Apparently if you walk five miles a day and cut back two hundred and fifty calories a day you can lose, like, a hundred pounds in a year. Did you know that?”

Brian frowns doubtfully. “Surely you ladies don't need to lose a hundred pounds.”

Right then, I wish I could wrap him up and take him home. I bet he's a Princeton student, too. Smart
and
adorable.

“I don't know much about diet, but I do know a ton about exercise,” he says. “And you need to ramp up the program pretty progressively. Walking around the block won't do much good for long.”

“I don't like the sound of that,” I say. “Ramping up.”

“No. Really. Sounds worse than it is. In fact, I put my sister on a program at the gym and she lost so much, she was buying a smaller size every other week. She says I should make an infomercial or something.”

“You should!” I exclaim, having no idea what he's talking about.

“I'll tell you what.” He wipes the last of the champagne. “I'll let you in on my secret, and if it works for you, then—
booyah
—I'm going cable.”

And before we can say
booyah
back, Brian outlines his infomercial-worthy regimen on a paper napkin, which I carefully tuck in my purse as though it were the map to the most valuable treasure ever hidden.

Nancy, however, declares that she'd prefer to go with a personal trainer. That's what you can buy with all the money she has, a personal trainer.

But, like the Beatles trilled, can't buy her love.

Chapter Nine

Exercise. That's what I've been missing.
This
is the genuine ticket for weight loss, ask anyone.

How many stories have I heard about people who just start, for example, jogging and before they know it they're in marathons and have stopped menstruating, they've lost so much fat. And if you ask them what diet they were on they say with surprise, “I ate just like I always did and the weight came off.”

It's true!

Of course, if you're overweight like I am, you're caught in a kind of Catch-22 where you need to lose weight first before you feel comfortable going to a gym but you can't really lose the weight unless you're working out five days a week. And then there's that fear of being among the gym rats who look at you askance, as if you're a pretender to the throne of being fit and you have no right to be on the machines.

Well, I will simply have to put all that neurotic worrying behind me and take the plunge. As I drive in my Dodge Shadow rental car to the Princeton Gym and Racquet Center, I envision myself months from now in tight black yoga pants and a sports bra, my abs tanned and flat. And people will say, “Do you know she used to be extremely overweight?” To which the reaction will be, “No! She's got such a great body now.”

Maybe the gym will pin up before and after photos. Or put me in one of their newspaper ads.

AS SEEN ON BRIAN THE HUNK WAITER'S INFOMERCIAL: NOLA DEVLIN!

I'll be like an in-house Princeton Gym and Racquet Club celebrity.

Armed with Brian's Fast Fitness Plan, as I suggested he call it, I boldly walk into Princeton Gym and Racquet Club, humming an old Helen Reddy song. Years from now I will be able to recall this as a moment that changed my life, much like when I read the back page of
Who Moved My Fat?
I will think of myself as walking in plump and walking out thin. Just like on that Lifetime movie.

Actually, I have had a membership to the Princeton Gym and Racquet Center for three years. It comes with my job at
Sass!
which pays for half of the membership, just like
Sass!
will pay for me to go to Weight Watchers or, if I were a smoker, SmokeEnders.

The logic here is that attending these organizations will reduce health insurance rates. Though, to be honest, it's so Big Brother that most smokers in our office refuse to go. Once you declare you're a smoker, forget it. Your insurance rates are doomed forever.

At the gym, I drink in the invigorating smells of chlorine and sweat as I swipe my card and head for the locker room.

“Excuse me,” says a gum-chewing girl at the front desk. “It didn't go through. Try again.”

No problem. I rub my card and give it another go.

“Still nothing.” She looks me up and down. “When was the last time you were here?”

“Ohhh.” I study the ceiling, trying to pinpoint a date that sounds as if I've been temporarily detained, not permanently slacking off. “I think a few, uh, weeks ago.”

I give her my name which she types into the computer. “Try January.”

“That long?” I feign shock. “Can't be.”

“January second. Just like everyone else in town. OK. I'll have to reset your card.”

I hand her my card guiltily.

“Do you need a locker key or anything?”

“Absolutely not!” I declare. “I rent a locker.”

“Uh-huh.” She hands me back the card. “I hope you still remember your combination.”

Of course I do. It's 36-16-6. Verrry easy.

I take my reset card and towel down to the women's locker room and brace myself. It's not as though I'm a prude as much as it is that I'm . . . modest. I have never been the type to prance about in the buff slapping on lotion and yapping about some movie I've seen. Then again, I might be the type if I had a body that didn't jiggle and fold in odd places.

The locker room is filled with steam and lots of naked women slapping on lotion as I'd feared. I carefully leave my shoes by the door in ultimate gym etiquette and make my way to the rear by the sauna where I see my locker #38 and my trusty combination lock. Excellent.

Except 36-16-6 doesn't work. Neither does 16-6-36 or any combination thereafter.

“We were wondering who had that locker,” says a woman wrapping a white towel around her chest. “I've been going here for years, and I've never seen anyone use it.”

“IS SOMEONE USING NUMBER THIRTY-EIGHT?” screeches her friend, pulling on a pair of jeans.

“Yeah. Her.”

“DOES SHE KNOW WHAT THAT SMELL WAS?”

Smell? My locker smelled? How mortifying is that?

“Bet you forgot,” observes the toweled woman who shows no signs of leaving until the locker is opened. “I'll call Tricia at the front desk.”

Twenty minutes, one Tricia, and one sawed-off combination lock later and I am in a pair of wrinkled black sweats and a loose white T-shirt and running shoes, which happen to reek of moldy sponges and an odor that reminds me of Super 8 Motel shower curtains.

That's OK, I assure myself, I'm in a gym. You're
supposed
to stink in a gym. I pull out Brian's Fast Fitness Plan and try to concentrate on what I'm here for. Losing weight. Feeling fit. Living longer.

Brian's plan is quite simple, though it involves a lot of running around and perfect timing, two qualities I'm not famous for. The idea is to mix an aerobic workout with an anaerobic workout so that your body is fooled into burning more fat than it normally would.

Fooling the body. I like that.

The first thing I must do is a ten-minute workout on an aerobic machine like a treadmill or elliptical trainer. Then I must immediately run to the weight room (Nautilus, Brian informs me, is for wimps and old ladies) and lift barbells for five minutes. Then it's back to the treadmill for another ten, over to the weight room for dead lifts, back to the elliptical trainer, and finally, push-ups.

I feel firmer already.

The elliptical trainer is fun, almost like a video game with digital pictures of courses and statistics. I plug in my weight, which I lie and say is 150 since the guy next to me is looking over my shoulder. Course? I choose Random since Weight Loss would give me away.

And I'm off. This is very easy. Not even hard on the knees because the foot pads are actually lifting my feet! I smile at the man next to me who is wiping sweat off his brow and wincing. He must really be out of shape if he's having such a hard time on a machine that does all the work for you.

Beep!
A light is blinking indicating we are going up to a harder level. See what I mean about it being like a video game? Fun, fun, fun. Well, this is slightly harder. Then again, as Brian said, they wouldn't call it a “workout” if it didn't involve “work.” I would say hello to Tricia passing by except, oddly, I'm out of breath.

Beeeep!
Uh-oh. Now what are we doing? PREPARE FOR REVERSE, the screen says.

Reverse?

Shit.

REVERSE! It's screaming at me. REVERSE!

I can't REVERSE! I'll fall off, I think, as I start running backward, my calves sending out messages to the brain to cease and desist with this nonsense right now. Where did I get the big idea, running backward? That's not how the human body is designed. If we were meant to run backward, we'd have toes on our heels.

And then it's over. My ten minutes are up.

I leap off, wipe down the machine, and dash to the weight room, which is populated by big, unappealing men with blue pads around their middles, grunting at their reflections. The smell here is even worse than in locker #38.

One guy in a Rider University T-shirt rolls an eyeball toward me and cocks his chin to his steroid-addicted friend. They are sending a signal loud and clear that women like me are not allowed. This is testosterone country.

We'll just see about that.

Summoning all my esteem, I confidently walk over to the barbells, settling on a ten-pounder since the threes and fives seem so puny. I need to establish a reputation, like prisoners do on their first night behind bars.

With expert skill I pick up a barbell in each hand, raise my arms, then lower them, careful to concentrate on my breathing. I may be big, but I am strong. Even the steroid junkies are checking me out with admiration as I go for—yes—a second rep.

“You gonna be done with those soon?” Rider appears in my mirror and points to the barbells.

“I've got three more sets,” I say, though I can't remember how many lifts are in a set.

“OK. I'll wait.” He sits himself down on a bench, folds his arms, and waits. I'd like to point out that there are plenty of other ten-pound barbells there, but I can't speak. In fact, I am having trouble controlling my bladder.

“That's two,” he counts helpfully. “You got thirteen more to go.”

“No,” I correct, my face turning red as I lift again. “I'm doing three.”

“Three sets. There should be fifteen reps in each set.”

Cripes. Who is this guy? Len Barkowski, my high school gym teacher?

“Getting tired?” he taunts. “Are your muscles burning?”

“No. They're fine. It's just that I'm on a program. I have to be back to the machines.” I drop both weights, narrowly missing my pinky toes. “Now.”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling knowingly. “I thought so.”

Fuming, I run back to the machines and hop on a treadmill, setting everything for ten minutes at level 18, the highest. How dare he intimidate me out of the weight room? Am I going to stand for that? Heck no. I pay dues here. I have just as much a right to lift weights there as he does.