Authors: Beth Gutcheon
There was a brief silence, and then Laurie Lopez said, “Maybe.”
When the class was over, the instructor chirped, “Thank you, everybody. Have a wonderful day, even if it is Black Wednesday!”
“What is it about Wednesday?” Jill asked the woman walking next to her.
“Wednesday is the day everyone hits the wall. We’re all achy and constipated, and the instructors hate it. But don’t worry; tomorrow you’ll feel like a million bucks.”
In front of them, Carol Haines caught up with Laurie.
“I’ve been dying to tell you how much I admired your husband,”
she announced with the good-natured tactlessness that was her cardinal characteristic.
Laurie nodded, suppressing a flash of resentment. Oh, fine. She supposed they all knew now who she was. But what right had strangers to have any opinion at all about Roberto, their idea of Roberto?
56 / Beth Gutcheon
She let Carol talk as she thought about what class to take next.
Nine o’clock was the fiercest workout of the day. Laurie was thinking of the boredom of step class, and getting ready to say, “Thank you, Roberto was an example to us all,” when she heard Carol saying, “I wanted to kill him with my bare hands, what he took from us. And I hope you’re going to fight back. Everyone hopes you’re going to run against Turnbull yourself.”
The sun seemed to Laurie to be directly in her eyes. It shone on Carol’s bright hair. Laurie thought, This woman has no idea…she has no idea what it costs me to get out of bed in the morning.
“It’s very kind of you—”
“That pig Turnbull thinks nobody could beat him. But
you
could…I’m in Washington a lot, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say that in the last month. ‘Laura Lopez would be the perfect candidate. A famous political family, she knows everyone in the state, she’s a distinguished judge, and the bastard killed her husband.’”
“Carol…I can’t…I can’t even…” Laurie began.
“I think you can. Let’s talk at lunch,” said Carol.
She dashed off toward step class, and Laurie decided to sit by the pool and read a book. She wished she didn’t know about that bottle of vodka in Rae’s waist pack.
Carter was meeting with Terri, her personal trainer. Terri was muscular, with glowing black skin and long hair in cornrows. She wore strong colors and had teeth so flawless they looked like the capped mouthfuls flashed by the trophy wives you see all over Hollywood. But Terri’s were her own.
Terri had interviewed Carter about her “exercise program.” The very idea of calling it that made Carter snort. Then Terri had set about testing her flexibility with various contortions, her upper- and lower-body strength, and her percentage of body fat. Now she had her on the treadmill. To Carter’s annoyance, this was the moment Terri chose to get chatty. She set the slant of the treadmill up to High, set the speed up to just under Jog, and then asked, “So, are you from Arizona?”
“L.A.,” said Carter.
Five Fortunes / 57
“No kidding! Me too! I’m from South Central.”
“You’re a long way from home,” Carter said, beginning to feel the sweat trickle between her shoulder blades.
“Tell me about it. I’ve got family there though. My sister and my little niece. What do you do in L.A.?”
“I’m a private detective,” said Carter.
“No shit!” Terri covered her mouth with embarrassment, but Carter laughed loudly.
“Sorry. I know a lot of my ladies are doctors and lawyers. I never met a private detective before, especially here.”
“I’ll bet,” said Carter.
“How are you feeling now, by the way? On a scale of one to ten, are you working hard?”
“Five.”
Terri adjusted the speed of the treadmill upward a notch. “No kidding, how’d you get into that?”
“I was a public defender, and I got tired of the slime.”
“I hear you.”
“How about you? What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“I played basketball, volleyball in high school. I got a scholarship to college.”
“I didn’t think there was any money in women’s sports.”
“This college sent a lot of teams to the Olympics. Coach was training us for that.”
“Did you make it?”
“All the way to the last cut, then I broke this little teeny bone in my wrist. How you feeling now, scale of one to ten?”
“Seven,” said Carter.
“Hop off a second and let me take your pulse.” Carter jumped her feet to outside the moving tread and Terri took her wrist for thirty seconds, watching her stopwatch. Then she readjusted the treadmill and said, “Get back on, and keep walking, we’ll cool you down.”
“Then what happened?” Carter asked.
“I went back to college, took my degree in Phys Ed. I was going 58 / Beth Gutcheon
back to the neighborhood to teach, but my mother’s asthma got worse. I applied for this job so I could move her out here where it’s hot and dry.”
“How did you even know about this place?”
“Same way the guys at the Texaco station know about the Rolls-Royce factory. Hop off again, I’m going to take your pulse.” Carter did, and was silent again for thirty seconds.
“Okay, get back on. I’ll bring you some water. You want a towel too?”
Carter nodded. When Terri came back Carter asked, “Are these jobs hard to get?”
“Very,” said Terri. “You can work some very crummy dives in this profession. Most places the showers aren’t clean, and the clients are rude, and you have to teach classes until ten o’clock at night.
Everyone in our business wants to work here.”
“Why?”
“The atmosphere. The clients are happy because they get massages every day and the food’s good. The trainers are happy because they get respect, you know? It’s not like some storefront aerobics joint where you never get to know anybody and the clients think you’re a moron because you’re an athlete, and they’re a genius because they’re a paralegal.”
Carter laughed.
“Okay, if you feel like your heart is back to normal, you can hop off any time and I’ll give you the news.”
Carter pushed the button that stopped the machine. She mopped her wet face and got another cup of water; then she stepped outside the gym to where Terri was waiting in the shade.
Terri showed her the charts on her clipboard.
“The news is pretty good here. You’re in the top ten percentile for fitness for your age. Your endurance is good, your heart is strong, returned to resting pulse real fast. You’re a smoker, aren’t you?”
Carter was startled. “How did you know?”
“You got more winded than I expected, given your general fitness.
You had more trouble talking at your peak aerobic rate than we like to see.”
Five Fortunes / 59
“Is
that
why you suddenly decided to have a conversation with me?”
Terri smiled. “How are you doing here without smokes?”
“I can go for about two hours without bringing the subject up. I can go for five or ten minutes at a stretch without thinking about it, which is a lot better than Monday.”
“Anyone in your office smoke?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“Just trying to get a sense of how it’ll be when you go home. I picture detectives sitting around the office with their feet on the desk and cigarettes dangling out of their mouths.”
“Not in my office. In my office they’ve all got pictures of the kids on their desks and Baby Ruths hanging out of their mouths.”
“This sounds like some unusual detectives.”
“Yeah, we are.”
“Have you got a card or something?”
“I’ll bring you one.”
Terri promised to meet with her again at the end of the week to design a program Carter could follow at home. Amused at the thought of herself in leotards prancing around her living room, Carter thanked her and went off in search of lunch.
Laurie had spent the whole morning playing hooky. She lay in the warm shade in a quiet lanai beyond the pool and read a novel she’d found on the shelf in Saguaro. She was feeling strangely serene, as if to refuse to do anything that was expected of her, let alone good for her, had been a defiant act, and the novelty agreed with her. She decided to stay where she was and eat lunch by herself.
She had to admit she was feeling better. This morning the world had appeared a sluggish gray. Now it was sepia, as if it had once
had
color, but not much. She noticed that the turkey burger she was eating, on a homemade bun with fresh green lettuce and bright red salsa, was both pretty and delicious. She chewed in silence and listened to the burble of a man-made waterfall across the courtyard.
Meanwhile, at the walled garden tables, everyone was talking about the morning weigh-in.
60 / Beth Gutcheon
“I lost two pounds,” said Glenna Leisure.
“That’s pretty good,” said Rae.
“One year I lost four by the middle of the week.”
“Which isn’t that much, really, when you notice they weigh you first when you’re all bloated from traveling.”
“My weight changes at least that much in a day,” said Carol Haines. “Two pounds? Easy. Depending on the time of day.”
“I didn’t lose any,” said Rusty, looking sad.
“You don’t need to lose, Mom,” Carol said.
“Did you hear about the time they hired the chef from Le Relais?”
Glenna asked. “My girlfriend was here, she said it was awful. They hired this new chef and he said, ‘
Mais d’accord
, spa cuisine,’ and for the first few days everyone said how great it was, how delicious.
Then came the weigh-ins and people were
not
losing. They were
gaining
. Finally the guests were so upset Lalou put a spy in the kitchen and, of course, he was loading things with butter and cream.
Just loading them…”
Everyone at the table was laughing, the thought was so awful.
“When Lalou confronted him, he said, ‘But it’s so much more delicious, it makes everybody happy’…People were fucking homi
ci
dal.”
“I wish I hadn’t heard this story,” Rusty said.
The waitresses were clearing the plates, bringing coffee, and serving little cups of sherbet. Everyone at the table eyed it suspiciously.
“It’s frozen banana,” said The Success Story, taking a practiced taste. “I make this at home, it has about forty calories.”
They dug in. When she had finished eating, Carol Haines said,
“You know what we’ve got to do? We’ve got to make Laura Lopez run for the Senate.”
“Oh, honey,” said Rusty.
“No, I’m not kidding. She could beat Jimbo Turnbull. I’m in Washington a lot, and people have mentioned it.”
“You
are
in Washington? Why?” Rae asked.
Carol shrugged. “I have clients who have matters there.”
“Jimbo Turnbull,” said Glenna. “I
hate
Jimbo Turnbull.”
Five Fortunes / 61
“Of course you do, you have a brain.”
“Is he
still
in the Senate?” Rae asked.
“You mean after what he did to Ella Steptoe? I know, it’s hard to believe.”
“No, I mean, he must be older than I am. I thought he was dead.”
“Listen. Jimbo Turnbull bounced over three hundred checks at the House bank. He used the Senate postal system to launder campaign money…”
“He has a daughter and two sons-in-law on his payroll and not one of them has set foot in the office, in Washington or Boise, in seven years…” said Glenna.
“Is this all true?” Rae asked
“Yes.” “Absolutely,” said Carol and Glenna together. They had both seen the same segment on
60 Minutes
.
“It’s disgusting,” Carol added. “He pinches women in the elevator,
congresswomen
. He calls Senator Kassebaum ‘honey’ on CNN, and she’s a Republican!”
“I heard that he gave a speech to the Press Club and called Sandra Day O’Connor ‘that little girl down at the Court,’” Glenna said.
“He’s against the ERA, he’s against Choice, and he honestly thinks he’s untouchable.”
“He’s a disgrace,” said Glenna.
There was a brief silence. Carol hitched her chair in as if she were confiding a trade secret, although the facts had been discussed in detail in both the
Washington Post
and the
New York Times
. “You know what they’re saying in Washington. They’re saying if it weren’t for Jimbo Turnbull, Roberto Lopez would be alive today.”
This got a rise out of them.
“No, really. That plane, that charter company, it’s owned by an old fishing buddy of Jimbo’s. He leaned on people to cut his pal some slack on the inspections.”
“How can he get away with that?”
“There was a hearing, but nothing came of it. They all do it. You know. It was just a courtesy to an old friend, no harm meant, no harm done. They can’t really prove what caused the crash, I mean they claim
62 / Beth Gutcheon
it was pilot error and maybe it was. Maybe there wasn’t something absolutely wrong with that particular plane. But the company’s safety record was, like, pathetic.”
There was another silence. “If we wanted to do it,” Jill finally said,
“if she wanted to run, how would we help?”
“Listen,” said Carol. “There’s one woman here this week who raised eleven million dollars last year for a hospital in Los Angeles.
There are probably ten right here who know how to do that. This morning I walked with a woman who owns a newspaper chain, and I have a friend in D.C., a policy wonk, who’s probably going to get a “genius” grant. You’ve all got friends like that too. Enough with the Old Boy Network. We’ve got money right here and we’ve got power, and we’ve got brains.”
“Right,” said Rusty, rising from the table, her head scarf slightly askew and her little withered legs sticking out from the skirt of her bathing suit. She cocked her hip and said in her gravelly voice, “And we’ve got the
babe
factor.” She headed off for her massage.
J
ill was wandering around the Beauty Cloister with her schedule for the day in her hand. One of the white-uniformed Beauty people, a pretty woman with blond hair and olive skin, approached her.
“Are you lost?”
“I’m supposed to have a body scrub with Anna.”
“She’s waiting for you in the bathhouse. Go through the weight room, and turn left.”