Authors: Kate Rockland
To prepare for
Oprah,
Billy bought her books on speaking in public. He decided she needed a voice coach, designated himself, and made her walk around the living room with books on her head for posture. “This feels like something out of the fifties,” she’d complained. “Like etiquette class.” Billy told her to shut her trap and pay attention, and she had to admit that doing ridiculous voice exercises with him like gargling with salt water to relax the throat had somehow ended up relaxing her, in the end. She’d clearly been the victor in the
Oprah
debate.
If Billy was her only friend, her personal trainer, Sarah, was someone she admired greatly and respected. She
would
consider Sarah a friend, as they’d been working out together several years now, but since she paid her extravagant amounts of money she wasn’t sure if that constituted an actual friendship.
Sarah was forty but looked not a day over twenty-five. She was tall, svelte, Puerto Rican, and rumored to have once picked Carlos up over her head and bench-pressed him. (Carlos weighed in at 190, all muscle.) She had coffee-colored skin, and huge green eyes with long black lashes. She worked out three hours a day and had one of the tightest bodies Alexis had ever seen. She was married to an oncologist at NYU Medical Center. Alexis worshipped Sarah and they’d had many discussions about the epidemic of obesity in America. Sarah was very concerned with fast-food chains in New York City, and she led a large protest with
Skinny Chick
readers when a McDonald’s opened next door to the gym. They’d made the six o’clock news. Since then, Sarah wrote a monthly column with exercise tips for Alexis, which always received a lot of attention and hits.
Alexis would come across Sarah in the gym doing crunches hanging upside down from a bar like a bat, or spotting women in the weight room. Today she was sitting on a spin bike and reading a magazine when Alexis found her. She peeked at the cover and saw
Parents
written across it.
Weird,
Alexis thought.
All of the cooler magazines like
Vogue
and
Nylon
must be taken already.
“I’m ready to be tortured!” Alexis joked, admiring Sarah’s very toned brown biceps. Sarah had a unique program in which she worked out alongside Alexis, pushing both of them to achieve the optimal workout. People in the gym were used to seeing both women balanced on large balls, their stomach muscles clenched, as they slowly did bicep curls.
“Hey, it’s Skinny Chick!” Sarah said, grinning. “Carlos and I were just rehashing how great you were on
Oprah
. We laughed our asses off when that other blogger tried defending eating junk food. I seriously think she had some warped ideas about nutrition.”
“I know!” Alexis said, plopping down on an exercise bike next to Sarah. Maybe this was her new program, to slowly warm up on a bike before the punishing and grueling workout that most days she jumped right into. “I kept thinking about people dying from heart disease, who have to get their legs chopped off from diabetes, and here this girl is saying it’s okay to indulge. I just felt I had to carry the right message, even if it’s not what people want to hear.” She felt valiant and brave talking about her mission with
Skinny Chick
. It always gave her that rush, which studying the law had lacked. She didn’t see how taking people for every cent they had when going through the worst time in their lives (her father’s firm dealt with high-profile divorce cases) was helping humanity in any way.
“Well, you’re not doing this to be popular,” Sarah said. “Don’t worry, people will eventually come around to our way of thinking, once they start having relatives and loved ones whose weight problem impacts their daily way of life.”
“Right!” Alexis chirped, pedaling her feet around and around. Her sneakers looked bright against the purple of the sky’s sunrise. The gym had floor-to-ceiling windows all around, and she could see some people rushing off to work, coffees clutched in their hands, talking on their cell phones, wrapping scarves around their necks as they hit New York’s pavement.
Sarah smiled. “Ready for torture hour?”
“Always. Are we going to warm up here on the bikes?”
Sarah’s face changed, and Alexis’s heart dropped. Something was different. Alexis didn’t
do
different. “What is it?”
Sarah gave a little nervous laugh and that scared Alexis even further. This woman pulled truck tires across the room with a single rope and could do five hundred sit-ups without getting out of breath.
“You’re not going to another gym, are you?” Alexis asked. She put her arm on Sarah’s, only to realize it was the first time the two women had touched, other than when Sarah spotted her in the weight room. “Because seriously, I love this place, but if you leave I would
totally
follow you to your new place of employment.”
“Oh, no, I’m not leaving, honey,” Sarah said. “Don’t worry!” She put her magazine down on the floor between them, then placed her hands on either side of the bike and pedaled faster, her knees high as she pumped her feet. “I seem to have gotten knocked up, is all. Can you believe it? In my old age?” She smiled ruefully but Alexis could tell she was somehow … happy.
What the hell?
“But I thought you hated kids,” Alexis stammered, remembering a conversation they’d had years ago about not walking past the gym’s day-care center for fear of germs. She jabbed at the bike’s control screen, not making eye contact.
Sarah laughed. “I do! I can’t stand them. They cry and whine and poop their pants. My body is going to get so big, and it will take twice as long at my age to get it back to where it was. Trust me, this was not planned. I’ve been training for the Ironman for the past six months!”
“Is Aldo excited?” Alexis asked slowly. She was so surprised, her voice was almost a whisper. In the years she’d been working out with Sarah, this was something she’d never considered. That she would be left high and dry by her trainer, whom she paid exorbitant amounts of money to, money she barely had.
Sarah turned to her, taking one of her hands in her own, which surprised Alexis yet again. Neither woman was very touchy-feely. “He is so fucking thrilled it’s not even funny.” Her face broke out into a smile. She had dimples on both cheeks. “He keeps running around the apartment shouting that he can’t believe he knocked me up at forty. You know Latin men. So proud of their dicks.”
Alexis swallowed. “Well, if you’re happy, then I’m happy for you, Sarah.” She mustered up a small smile. “Congratulations!”
“Thank you, Alexis. And don’t worry. I’m not going to work out alongside you as much, but we can continue our appointments. I’ll be more like a traditional trainer; a coach. I’m only three months along, and I plan on working up until I deliver, you know me.”
“Yeah, you’re tough,” Alexis told her lightly, but inside she felt utter panic. Her life was going to change. Sarah was her mentor—she didn’t want to work out with anyone else. She wasn’t a particularly social person, and couldn’t see meeting with another trainer, male or female. Oh,
why
did people have to grow up and get married and have fucking babies? All this did was ruin things. Babies were financial burdens, they caused friction between husband and wife, and they were bottomless money pits.
Alexis thrived on routine. From the time her alarm sounded while the sky was still dark to when she closed her laptop at five o’clock in the evening, every day was exactly the same. That’s how she liked it. She was disciplined and a hard worker. She had no patience for anyone who didn’t have the same values. How could Sarah, who had worked so hard for so many years to build her business, gathering a clientele and reputation as a kick-ass trainer, give it all up for a baby? How could someone so much like herself be looking at Alexis now with starry eyes, a red flush of excitement across her cheeks? How could she have gotten herself
pregnant
? Surely by forty a woman had control over her reproduction! A baby would ruin everything.
After their two-hour workout ended, Alexis again congratulated Sarah, and confirmed their Wednesday appointment.
“I have a doctor’s appointment that morning, but I could do ten?” Sarah asked casually.
Alexis’s hand flew to her cheek. She felt like the sailor Billy had smacked. She’d seen Sarah three times a week for three years straight, always Monday, Wednesday, Friday, always at five-thirty in the morning. Neither woman had missed a day, and now this thing, this
parasite,
was screwing up her entire world. Once, Alexis had all four wisdom teeth pulled on a Tuesday afternoon, and was working out the following morning, high as a kite on Percocet.
Seeing her client clearly distressed, Sarah quickly said, “You can write the blog later in the day, right?”
“No, not really,” Alexis said. She stopped pedaling. “I write from nine to three every day, Monday through Friday. It’s not as easy for me to change my schedule as you might think.” Just thinking about
Skinny Chick
made her want to rush home to see what the reaction in the blogosphere was to her wedding-day post. If only her readers knew how far away from getting a ring on her finger (or wanting one) Alexis was. It amused her—who was she to dole out wedding advice?
Sarah sighed. “Well, I guess I could change my appointment to another day, but this doctor is really famous and hard to get a time slot with…”
“Great!” Alexis said brightly. “So I’ll see you Wednesday as usual.”
She ignored the widening of Sarah’s eyes and walked to the locker room. Alexis knew she was being awful but was unable to stop herself. This happened all the time, the overwhelming need to get what she wanted, the thrill of prevailing, and then the crash-and-burn feeling of recognizing there was a reason she had only one friend in the whole world, no boyfriend, no family she was close to: she was unbearable.
And yet, that line that most people wouldn’t cross, Alexis always did. She’d played softball in high school, a fact that amused Billy. (He’d once tried on her old uniform, prancing around their apartment. It had fit him better than it had her.) She’d been skilled as pitcher, one of the best in her town, and her mojo was fucking with the head of each batter. Alexis got a reputation for changing up her speed more times than any other pitcher in the league. She enjoyed watching her opponents squirm. She loved winning. That feeling never dissipated.
She knew Sarah was loyal to her and the closest thing to a female friend she had, and yet … she still wanted her to provide the same service, which was to be her trainer three times a week, at the scheduled time. Why should
her
routine have to get screwed up just because Sarah couldn’t remember to take her birth control pill?
As she flung her workout bra and shorts on the organic bamboo bench beside the shower and stepped under the water, she suddenly heard loud, heaving noises and looked around for their source, only to realize they were coming from
her
, that she, Alexis Allbright, was crying, for fuck’s sake. Because her personal trainer was pregnant. She laughed as she lathered her hair with the Aveda shampoo provided by the gym. She scrubbed so hard her scalp would be bright red the next day. How ridiculous! This was a happy time for Sarah, she’d been her loyal trainer for years, never canceled a single appointment, had kept Alexis in fabulous shape … but Alexis knew that if Sarah was trying to change her regular appointment today, it wouldn’t be the last time. For the next six months things would change a lot, and Alexis didn’t like change. She was successful exactly because of her strict adherence to her schedule.
Her readers logged on to
Skinny Chick
as soon as they got into work, and she didn’t get up to three million clicks a day without being über-disciplined. She stood under the scalding water until her shoulders were fire-engine red, turned off the faucet, and dried off.
On her way to the exit, she saw a bright yellow laminated sign perched on the front check-in desk. She walked over to have a closer look. “Looking good, baby, looking good,” Carlos called out to her.
“Thanks, Carlos!” She picked up the poster. “What’s this event?”
“Oh, that’s actually going to be pretty dope. Sarah and I are both going. A chef, Noah Cohen, is going to give a simple, healthy cooking lesson. He worked at a few New York establishments, Nobu, Gramercy Tavern. In his bio it says he’s from Colorado and makes a mean chili.”
Alexis fingered the poster, looking at the photo of Noah. He was tall, with coffee-colored skin, and the picture highlighted his soft bed of dark brown curls with sunny blond tips. His sleeves were rolled up and thick, sculpted muscle peeked through, a vein bulging in his arm like the
David
statue. His eyes were his best feature, a brown like melting chocolate, and mischievous, like he would be the first guy at a party to do a keg stand. His ears stuck out slightly from the sides of his head and this tiny imperfection made him seem even more personable. He had a shadow of a beard across his square chin and mouth, a hint of goatee. He had a dimple in his right cheek. He reminded Alexis of the skater guys from high school who would annoy her by performing noisy, messy tricks outside the window while she was studying in the library.
Alexis found herself hoping his blond highlights were natural, as she didn’t find men who dyed their hair very masculine, and then wondered why she cared what this particular man did with his hair. In the picture, he was wearing a traditional white chef’s attire, open at the throat and showing a gold Jewish star peeking through. He had large hands and a huge grin that stretched across his whole face, like Mick Jagger’s. She wondered how he could be both black and Jewish (he must be, with the last name Cohen?), then remembered Sammy Davis, Jr., was black. And Jewish. And
why
on earth was she standing here trying to figure out this man’s heritage when she had a column to write?