My Year of Casual Acquaintances (South Bay #1)

2.

At ten-thirty the next morning, I am in the main fitness studio, where the power sculpt class with Donna gets off to an unpromising start. After a brief warmup, she directs us to do a hundred lunges and a hundred pushups right out of the gate – not all at once, thank you very much, but in alternating sets of twenty-five reps each, which is distasteful enough.

“Who wants to do a hundred of anything?” I grumble sotto voce to Whitney. My chest and quads will be screaming tomorrow.

“Oh, don’t worry. It gets better after this,” she reassures me, flashing me her signature crimson smile. Whitney doesn’t skimp on the cosmetics, even at the gym. I marvel at her ability to remain fresh no matter how long she works out, her heavy layer of black eyeliner and mascara still intact. If I tried to duplicate that look, in twenty minutes I’d resemble some sad-ass clown with dripping dark rings around both eyes, the sort of clown you see in those cheesy paintings.

Is Henry’s beloved Alice a whiz with a makeup brush? No doubt her skills rival Whitney’s.

After the pushup-lunge circuit consumes the longest twelve minutes of my life, we continue to alternate between upper and lower body drills. There’s one contortionist move where we rotate back and forth into a side plank position while flinging our upper legs into the air and aiming our feet about thirty degrees backward.

“Am I doing this right?” I ask Whitney, squinting hard from the exertion. She somehow manages to shrug even as she executes the moving side planks with consummate skill.

“Okay, everyone, grab two sets of dumbbells for our weightlifting,” says Donna. “We’ll do two different exercises for each of the remaining muscle groups: biceps, triceps, shoulders, back.”

We tackle the bicep curls first, and my forearms ache with the strain as I maneuver the twelve-pound dumbbells up and down. Maybe I should have used eight-pounders instead. We heft our weights while seated on big inflatable balls. “Ladies, you won’t believe how well the balance ball works your core. And the best part is, you can’t even feel it,” says Donna.

“I’m feeling it plenty,” I inform Whitney in my same kvetchy voice. By the time we reach the final cooldown and stretch, the room has grown warm and malodorous. Strands of sweaty hair cling to my forehead and to the hot, sticky blue mat on which I stretch my legs. I wrinkle my nose at Whitney, who gives me a puzzled frown that says she doesn’t understand my latest complaint.

As the instructor turns off the music, she says, “If you liked the class, my name is Donna. If you didn’t like it, my name is Debbie.”

A few scattered chuckles follow this announcement, but nobody is busting a gut over Donna’s tired old joke. As we exit the studio together, I groan and tell Whitney, “They used the same line at my last gym. There must be some book of Feeble Fitness Jokes where all the instructors get their material.”

Whitney looks more distracted than amused. She says, “I still can’t figure out who you remind me of. It’s driving me crazy. I guess it’ll come to me.”

Afterward, I’m in the locker room chatting it up with a bunch of the girls. Women, to be more accurate – the age range this morning is twenty to eighty. It strikes me I am dead middle in that range.

I’m right in the middle in other ways as well. Appraising myself in the floor-length mirror, I note that I’m neither thin nor fat, short nor tall, dark nor fair. My body is still trim, my skin unwrinkled, and I wear my pink and purple leggings and matching sports bra well. My light brown hair falls in soft curls around my unlined face – at least it does when I’m not perspiring this much. How long will I keep looking forever young, a female Dorian Gray? For quite some time, if my seventy-seven-year-old mum is any indication.

Whitney is there, along with a petite blonde named Jill, and an older woman whom they call “Paulette” or “Paulie.” I don’t know anyone’s last name, not even Whitney’s. When she typed her contact info into my cellphone earlier this week, she listed her name as “Whitney Gym.” As for the other women in the locker area, since I don’t have a clue about even their first names, I invent little descriptive phrases to remember them by. My favorite is Amazon Lady, an impossibly tall woman with strawberry blond hair and a luscious body – golden-skinned, flat-bellied, and perfectly proportioned. She often sits naked on one of the benches, all six feet of her sprawled in a relaxed pose for everyone to admire. She is so pleasant, I don’t find her display of nudity to be boastful or exhibitionistic. It seems natural and lovely.

“Hey, how are you today?” she says with a welcoming smile. I can tell she doesn’t know my name either, but she sounds as if she cares about how I am doing.

“I’m great. And you?”

“Wonderful. It’s nice to see you.”

A sense of warmth spreads through me, filling up the holes of deprivation. After months of isolation, this simple exchange of meaningless pleasantries is just the ticket.

“Has anyone eaten at that new Mexican restaurant over in the Village Shops?” asks Dame Donut. She has a peculiar ring of flab that surrounds her waist, giving her otherwise normal sixtyish body a misshapen appearance.

“The food is very upscale. It’s being touted as the best new restaurant in the South Bay,” says Tattoo Woman, who boasts serpentine etchings along her upper arms and shoulders.

“I didn’t have dinner there, but they serve fabulous signature cocktails in the bar. Creative stuff,” says Patch – given this secret name by me because of the patchy, thin layer of greasy dark hair interrupted by bald spots on her head. The poor woman must be suffering from a horrific scalp condition, but the name helps me to remember her. Will I ever be able to learn the real names of these women now that the nicknames have become indelibly burned into my brain?

I’m distracted from this conversation when I notice Whitney staring at the wall-mounted TV in the room’s corner, a look of discomfiture on her face. The rest of us have our backs turned to the video screen, so I can’t see what has caught her attention. Now Amazon Lady glances up at the TV, and I follow suit. The set is tuned to a local news program with the sound muted. Amazon Lady’s usual beatific expression fades into a frown. “What’s going on?” she says, then she stands and reaches up one long graceful arm to adjust the volume control on the set.

We learn that another shooting has occurred, this time at a shopping mall somewhere in the Midwest. The preliminary body count is three dead and six wounded – including the shooter, who has been apprehended and hauled off in a rescue truck to treat his shoulder wound.

“Oh God,” says Amazon Lady.

“This is the third one in—what—a month?” Patch says.

Whitney’s expression has gone from uncomfortable to horrified. She races off to the bathroom and slams the stall door shut. I follow her and stand outside the stall, waiting for her. “Are you okay?” I ask when she emerges.

“I—I feel a little queasy.” Her lips form a smile, but when she glances at me, her eyes are wide with panic. She blinks hard and turns away as if blinded by headlights.

“Why don’t we go out to the pool deck for some fresh air?” I say. She follows me outdoors to the club’s harbor-view deck. I move two cushioned lounge chairs close together and gesture for her to sit down. She does so, tilting her head back, eyes closed.

“I’ll be right back.” I go inside and purchase a Coke for Whitney from a vending machine in the hallway. It seems incongruous for a gym to have a soda machine, though not as incongruous as the bowls of pretzels and chips they place in the lobby every afternoon. Maybe their strategy is to fatten up club members to stimulate increased use of the facilities, like a dentist passing out lollipops to young patients.

Whitney makes a face when I hand her the Coke can. “I know. I don’t like soda either, but it will help settle your stomach,” I say.

She clutches the can in two perfectly manicured hands and gives it a tentative taste, like a toddler drinking from a sippy cup.

“Whitney, what’s wrong? You looked so shaken when we saw the news report on the shooting.”

“It’s awful. So horrible. How can people do these things?”

“I know.”

“But you don’t seem upset.”

“To be honest . . . it happens so often now, I’ve grown kind of hardened to it.” I shake my head and sigh. “At least this time, there are only a few fatalities. Nowadays, it takes twenty or thirty dead at minimum to have any major shock value.”

“That’s so unfeeling,” she says.

“Oh gosh, I—I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic. Of course, it’s awful. Sad—really sad we’ve come to this.”

Now she seems wary of me. “You were kind of sarcastic in power sculpt too.”

Not only do I regret what I just said, I also wish I hadn’t given her a hard time during the class I attended on her recommendation. I determine to make it up to her. “Sorry, I’m having a bad day myself. Listen, are you free tomorrow night? I thought we might have dinner at that new Mexican place. My treat.”

Her face brightens a little. “That’s nice of you. I—I guess we could do that. If my stomach trouble goes away.”

Whitney takes another sip of Coke as I study her perfect fingernails. I picture Alice with those same high-gloss crimson nails, administering an expert neck massage to Henry as he sits in his executive office chair. Perhaps they were in mid-massage when I called months ago and she answered Henry’s phone, cooing hello in that syrupy voice.

Whitney says, “So . . . Mar, I’m still not feeling great. I’m gonna go home.” She stands up slowly and retreats into the building, then turns. “Thanks for the Coke.”

In the locker room, the women are back to comparing notes on new local eateries. For them, like me, the shooting has already been relegated to the background. Antsy to return to my routine, I take my leave. The women all wave and wish me a nice day.

Late in the afternoon, before dusk sets in, I’ll take my usual solitary walk along the esplanade by the beach – an hour-long break from my editorial duties. I take this daily walk not only to stretch my legs but also to clear my head, sorting through whatever personal issues are weighing on my mind at the time. I’ll run into Dog Lady, a pretty, full-figured young woman I see almost every afternoon, and we’ll exchange friendly greetings as I stoop to admire her Wheaten terrier. Then I’ll swing by Whole Foods to pick up salad and a piece of grilled salmon from the food bar for my dinner. Aqua Girl, the young checker at the market – so named because her spectacles are rimmed with big, round, turquoise-colored frames – will comment on my daily take-out selections and note how she shares my disdain for cooking. Apart from that, I will have no more human contact until I return to the gym tomorrow.

And that’s absolutely fine with me.