I let my eyes swivel to Marge who is gasping as she lifts that kettlebell. — Goo-ood . . .
Back onscreen: a lot of outraged, angst-ridden hand-wringing from Thorpe, who appeals, crybaby style, to the stern anchor, claiming he wasn’t given a fair hearing. The host then takes him to task, making him look even more of an asshole. Then they cut, thankfully, to the story of the conjoined twins. — Could be worse, Toby, dripping schadenfreude, nods at the screen.
A head shot of Annabel, some mousy aspirational chatter of her love for Stephen, then a close-up on intertwined fingers, as she’s revealed to be holding his hand. We pull out in long shot to see Amy looking in the opposite direction from Stephen, away from her sister. Rather than going tight on the lovebirds, the freak-show bastards keep her in shot. With her hook nose poking through her long hair, she resembles a scavenger bird perched on Annabel’s shoulder. My cell vibrates and it’s Valerie. — Hey, you, I shout with enthusiasm, to show that Toby creep that I’m not fazed. I turn to Marge. — Treadmill, twenty minutes, starting at jogging pace, 4 mph, and I’m moving toward the front door and some privacy.
— Hi, Lucy. I just saw the news . . .
— Yes, but surely it’ll blow over . . . I say, gesturing at a stalling, gasping Marge to climb the fuck on and get with it, as I step outside into the sun and look up at the azure sky.
— It’s got VH1 nervous. You need to
not talk
to the press or TV.
— Okay . . .
— Sorry if I sound a little strung. A singer client’s been caught with blow in some Ocean Drive spot. The promoter who has her on at the Gleeson is some kind of born-again asshole who has a weird antidrugs stipulation in the contract and is threatening to pull tomorrow night’s gig. Must go . . . oh, one other thing, the Total Gym people sent me a free home gym for you. They’ve enclosed a note, one of those “no obligation, but if you do like the product and feel inclined to endorse it, we would be grateful,” so that’s up to you. I’ll send it on.
— Wow! That’s rad!
— Yes, it’s all good. But don’t talk to the media, it’s all fuel to them, so just let it burn out.
— Cool, I say in cagey affirmation, thinking, just what I need in my life: a Chuck Norris-endorsed piece of crap fitness equipment, which will fall apart as soon as it’s taken half my life to assemble and eat up practically all the space in my shoebox apartment.
The line goes dead and I step back into the gym. I raise a lumbering Marge to 5 mph with a slight gradient, and the point of exhaustion. — Almost there! That’s what I need! The warrior Marge! And five . . . and four . . . and three . . . and two . . . and one . . . and the machine goes into cool-down mode. — Good work, I exclaim, as she looks at me like the kid who has fallen on her ass and doesn’t know whether she’s going to laugh or cry.
Fry that hoe’s cellulite. Smooth that bitch’s dimpled fat
. — Breathe, Marge: in through the nose, out through the mouth.
Jezzo, they still need to be told to do this! What the fuck is
that
saying? But Marge finishes her session and staggers gratefully to the locker room for a shower. On the screens Thorpe and Quist have gone, replaced by the mother of the conjoined twins, talking about the girls, followed by a nauseating, breathless voice-over, — . . . like any mother, Joyce fears for the future of her girls. But in the case of Amy and Annabel, their future, like their past and present, is inextricably bound up with each other.
I’m contemplating the grotesqueness of this setup when Sorenson appears, in new gaudy
pink
workout gear. It’s the sort of outfit either a retard or a ten-year-old would wear. — All righty! she sings. — I’m fired up and rarin to go!
— Good, I smile, teeth clenching, moving toward the machines, her following me.
How do I shave the beef off this irritating chubster? I get her on the treadmill, putting her through her paces. I’m upping the stakes, giving her more, nudging it to 5 mph, forcing her to pound that rubber track.
Dance, fat little hamster, dance!
— C’mon, Lena Sorenson, c’mon! I shout, as heads turn, my voice booming over Toby’s ambient drivel. I push the treadmill up to 6 mph, watching the blaze intensify on Sorenson’s face. — We are fired up and rarin to go!
Every time the chunky hoe catches her breath to do what she does best, even more than eat, namely talk, I push her further, or change the activity. She has to get the message: this is
not
a social club.
But Sorenson surprises me with her cojones. She’s taking everything I’m throwing at her. Even after the session, she’s still sticking around, breathlessly trying to engage with me when my mind is clearly elsewhere. — That . . . is . . . just . . . soooo . . . good . . . I haven’t felt this good . . . in ages . . .
It gets so oppressive that I’m even delighted to meet
Mom
for lunch.
Anything
, if it means escaping my own personal Siamese twin. Annabel, I know your pain. Sorenson practically invites herself along, and then has the audacity to look at me like an abused stepchild when I tell her I have things to discuss with
my mother
. My God, I’m even concerned the needy bitch is going to stalk me all the way to the Ocean Drive joint where we’ve stupidly agreed to meet! I step outside the gym and make my way toward the Atlantic.
If numbers count in my game, then my mom, Jackie Pride (58, 5’8", 130 lbs), through being in real estate, is probably even more subject to their capriciousness. The market has tanked; she sold twelve condos in Miami two years ago, three last year, and so far none this year. Two years ago she ran around in a big Lincoln; its predecessor was the one she bought to replace the Caddy I inherited. It was the era when real-estate guys imitated lawyers and nobody laughed. Now that she’s driving a Toyota and staring hard into the demise of another long-term relationship, zero is a troubling statistic.
She’s already seated, laptop fired up Sorenson-style (ha!), and rattling into her cell phone. As I approach she looks up, — Hey, pickle, and she gives me an apologetic nod, her shaved-and-penciled brows arching as she snaps her Apple Mac shut. She’s wearing a white top, with a checked skirt and pair of shoes, both black and white. She wears glasses on the bridge of her strong Saxon nose (not like my little button Paddy thing, inherited from Dad), and a pair of shades pushed back on her head to keep her still-brown collar-length hair in place. Mom ends her call and scrunches into her plastic chair, which slides a few inches along the sidewalk. — Oh my God . . . she groans. She looks good; the only really noticeable ravage of age is where the jowly flesh around her chin and neck has sagged to a crumpled bag. Mom keeps talking about getting “work done” but being “too busy even for Lasik.”
A young blond chick I recognize (I think one of Mona’s clients at Bodysculpt) swaggers by, wearing a yellow string bikini bottom and matching yellow T-shirt, with MS. ARROGANT emblazoned on it in big blue letters. SoBe remains a sun-drenched refuge for strutting grotesques and desperate narcissists. Mom’s phone goes again. — Lieb, she pleads. — I’ll take this, sweetie, then I’ll switch the goddamn thing off, I promise.
— Cool, I say, picking up the menu.
— Lieb, sweetkins. . . . Yes. Gotcha. . . . Gotcha. Just keep them entertained. Gulfstream Park or the like, you know the drill. . . . Check. Just keep them believing that it’s a rock-solid investment, which, to all intents and purposes it is . . . Yes, I love you . . . Her brows arch further north. — Gotta go now, sweetie, Lucy’s here. Ciao. She flicks the iPhone into silence. — Men. The toughest of them seem to need the most hand-holding. It’s so weird. I mean, he can take those squeaky assholes to a bar or a strip club. I don’t care. She shakes her head. — God, people are just losing their nerve! That investment is solid!
— I’m sure it is.
— But listen to me go on . . . let’s get some food, she says, then looks right into my eyes, following the line of my vision. — You were checking out my sagging jowls! Oh, you cruel child!
— No, I lie, — I was just think of how well you look!
Mom lets out a long, deflated sigh. As she speaks, her eyes, by turns vapid and intense, always seem to be gazing past me into the disenchantments that lie ahead. — I’m thinking of having work done. It’s just time. That and money. She shakes her head bitterly as the busboy pours our glasses of iced water.
— Things still bad in your game?
— Let’s not even talk about it, she says, as a hovering, Botoxed, failed model approaches and robotically grates out a list of specials.
No, Mom’s putting on a positive face as we order, and then she starts regurgitating some self-help book she’s devoured (her personal version of Sorenson’s cakes) back at me. — Real estate . . . it’s such a bitch in South Florida. I need what Debra Wilson—have you read her?
— No. Have you heard of Morning Pages? They’re supposed to be great.
— Marianne Robson at Coldwell Banker says that they’re essential. I must try them, once I get to make some time for me.
— What about this Debra Wilson thing?
— Well, I need what she calls a “compelling personal project,” and Mom’s face creases sweetly in a smile. — Of course, my most wonderful project is my beautiful baby girls, she says, as I think:
spare the fuck out of me
, — but those babies have grown up now. Her brow ruefully creases. — I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Jocelyn lately?
— Still in Darfur with the same NGO, last I heard, I tell her, trying to check out, perhaps a little too ostentatiously, a ripped surfer guy who ambles past.
— Still doing good deeds, Mom sings wistfully. — I swear that girl shames us all.
I feel like telling her if she actually got out of Jocelyn’s face while she was trying to do shit growing up, she probably wouldn’t be hanging out in the crappiest corners of the globe playing Mother Teresa. But Mom has gone back to her own drama. — So I told Lieb that I really need something else in my life.
— You got real estate, I say, unable to resist it. Mom never wants to talk about anything else when the real-estate market is lively. Now that it’s dead, it’s practically
all
I want to discuss with her. If you aren’t put on this Earth to subtly make your mother’s life one suffering hell, then what the fuck is the point of human existence?
— I mean, outside of work, she says as the Stepford-bound server chick brings our tofu salads. They are sorry-assed affairs, the lettuce as limp as bad-back Miles’s dick, and the smoked tofu tastes like sweaty old gym socks. Mom winces under the first mouthful. Then she gives me a piercing look. — How is your father? I’m ashamed to admit it, but I frequently google him.
— Well, it’s natural that you’re curious. But if you google him regularly, you’ll know more than me.
— C’mon! You were always his favorite, the sporty one.
— Mom,
he
was always his favorite.
— Ain’t that the truth! I still can’t believe it about him. She shakes her head, that lacquered mop not shifting a inch. — It’s almost like being successful with those books was your father’s last great act of spite against me.
— C’mon! He’d always talked about being a writer!
— Everybody
talks
about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there would not be one tree left standing on God’s green Earth. No, as soon as he left me—
— As I recall,
you
left him. For Lieb.
Mom exhales and rolls her eyes. She explains, in labored tones, as if I’m still a kid, — I
physically
left him, yes, but only because he didn’t have the balls to get out first. But he engineered the split. Then, after me supporting the bum for years, through all that inquiry shit with the BPD, he actually got off his fat Irish ass and
wrote
.
— You get
on
your ass to write.
— Exactly, that’s why it’s the perfect occupation for him, she says, then her mouth turns down as a grim thought insinuates itself. — I suppose there will be a younger woman in tow, some vacuous bimbo—
— Several, I’d wager, I acknowledge as I raise a forkful of tofu to my mouth, hoping it’ll taste better than the last. And being immediately disappointed.
Mom’s jaw falls as she gapes at me.
— Well, it’s the human condition. How
do
you get older? You behave with restraint and dignity, and then life becomes a colossal bore. If you indulge yourself, then it looks sad and pathetic. Pick red or black, cause ain’t nobody leavin this casino with a full stack of chips, baby.
— God, Lucy, catch yourself! You sound
so
like him.
— Well, that’s a quote from Matt Flynn.
My mother goes through the client database in her head, before coming up with a blank expression.
— His Boston gumshoe protagonist, I tell her.
She tuts and lifts another forkload of soggy spinach leaves to her mouth. Poor Mom, such a breadhead, and the very guy she thought would never be able to cut it, made good as soon as she fired his ass. Must be doubly hard when everything is turning to shit for her. And she lives and breathes this motherfucker of a real-estate gig. That woman will do
anything
, within certain parameters she says (and I have to take her word at that), to close a deal. Mom will get out of bed in the middle of the night to pick up groceries for a client. She’ll provide them with any sort of services. Yes, and where the line gets drawn there, I’d rather not even speculate. Her long-term partner, Lieb, seems all but cast adrift, lost to the dive bars of SoBe in much the same way my dad once sauced through the maze of Southie watering holes.
Mom’s opted for a ginger sauce on her tofu and she forks up some ludicrously gloopy mix, then grimaces and drops it back onto the plate. — Yuck, a ginger sauce which is all flour. Gross! Ocean Drive: always a dining mistake!
We fight our way through our respective messes in a stoical silence. I’m on Lifemap TM, trying to calc the useless calories in this toxic dressing. I go to say something but Mom waves a silencing hand, pointing to the cell she’s lifting to her ear. — Sorry, pickle, I gotta take this . . . Lonnie! Yes, it’s all good here! Mmmm-hmmm. . . . Yes, some people are really feeling the pinch but we’ve been very, very lucky. The super-premium market is still, well, I’d be indulging in the stock real-estate bullcrap if I said buoyant, but it’s certainly holding up well. And the property you’ve chosen is an excellent one. . . . Mmmm-hmmm. . . . Did I mention that you might have Dwyane Wade for a neighbor? A little bird tells me he just looked at a place across the way, you know, the Spanish colonial? Not a patch on your choice though, I’m sure you’ll agree . . .