by Joy Fielding
Poor Mrs. Elfer, Jill thought, contorting her body to the right, her hands stretched taut above her head. There's always one in every class who doesn't know her left from her right.
"And to the left, now, ladies. And one and two."
The rest of the class of some twenty-five women was already on the second beat when Mrs. Elfer finally found the first.
"Better, Mrs. Elfer," the instructor called out, not missing a beat. She seemed to speak as if every other word represented the clashing together of cymbals. "Okay, one more time. Now, bend forward from the waist and bring your right elbow over to your left heel for two counts, then your left elbow over to your right heel. Got that, everybody?" she yelled above the music (Debbie Harry and Blondie singing "Call Me," which Jill recognized as the theme from American Gigolo), The instructor bent forward and peered back between her spread legs at the rest of the group. "Ready? And one and two. Switch. One and two. Switch."
She's trying to kill us, Jill decided, bringing her right elbow to her left heel in time to the blaring disco beat. Whoever said disco was dead obviously had never been to Rita Carrington's exercise class. Jill stared wonderingly at Rita's protruding rear end. The woman was an Amazon, at least six feet tall, with the kind of body that usually found itself in the centerfold of Playboy magazine. Indeed, it was said that Rita had once worked as a Bunny and had been prominently featured in the magazine's presentation of "The Girls of Chicago." It gave one something to aspire to, Jill thought. Better than some fat old lady in torn leotard trying to convince them that hers was the way to a better body. At least, with Rita Carrington leading the way, there existed the faint glimmer of hope that it was indeed these exercises—and not an act of God—that had produced those results.
Rita Carrington straightened up and shook her hair free of her face. The hair was a deep auburn color and cut into seductive layers. ("She'd look good wet," Beth had commented when they first saw her.) Almost immediately, Rita Carrington was into the middle of another exercise. "Okay, ladies, up into the jog," she said, lifting her knees rapidly and jogging in place. "Get those legs up. Good. Good. Let's get a little sweat going here, ladies, come on. Let's move."
"She obviously hates women," Beth whispered from beside her.
"Whose idea was this anyway?" Jill breathed heavily in reply.
"Laurie's doing okay," Beth noted, indicating David's daughter in the front row.
Jill looked over at her husband's elder child. She still couldn't fathom why Laurie had expressed an interest in coming along. But since it was the first thing Jill had ever done that Laurie had been even remotely interested in, Jill did not feel it appropriate to turn down her request. Laurie had even called several times since the weekend to make sure the date was still on. And so here she was, all fourteen years of her, in the front row, twisting and turning her already skinny body, working as hard to trim off whatever fat she imagined she had as the rest of the women, who had, unfortunately, a good deal more excess flesh than imagination.
"You're doing pretty good yourself," Jill told Beth sincerely. Beth Weatherby, at forty-five, looked better in her black leotard and pink tights than most of the other women did who were many years her junior.
"No talking, ladies," Rita Carrington cautioned. Jill felt suitably chastised, as if she were a child back in school. Beth made a face and turned her attention back to the instructor. "Okay, ladies. On your backs."
Jill crouched down, watching Beth do the same. When Beth put her hand on the floor, she winced. "Still hurts?" Jill asked.
"Ladies, please, you can talk in the lounge later."
"We can talk in the lounge, later," Jill repeated under her breath.
"Feet up, knees bent. Bend from the waist. And one and two and three and four—"
"Oh, that tastes good," Jill exclaimed, taking a long, slow sip of her Coca-Cola. "There is nothing like the taste of pure sugar after an hour of torture."
"It's better than sex," Ricki Elfer agreed, tossing away her straw and lifting the glass of Coke to her mouth.
"Well, I don't know—" Jill protested.
"Oh, yes, take my word for it," the slightly pudgy blonde protested. "I may not know my left hand from my right, but the two things I do know are sex and Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola's better."
Jill and Beth laughed at the woman who shared their table. Jill wondered if Ricki Elfer made the same distinction between Coke and Pepsi as did her stepson.
"I remember when I was in Rome," Ricki Elfer continued. "This is many years ago, remember. I was twenty. I’m thirty-six now. I was with a girlfriend. We'd been touring Europe all summer. You know, university kids on their summer vacation, and this was in the days of Europe on five dollars a day. And that was like all the money we had, so there was no such thing as little luxuries like a Coke, because we couldn't afford them. And this one day, it must have been a hundred degrees out and we'd been walking around all day looking at the Colosseum or whatever, and we were so thirsty, I thought we were going to die. Suddenly, this car pulls up beside us and these two Italian guys shout, “Americanas, Americanas.” And my friend, who was getting a little tired of having her ass pinched every two seconds, shouted at them to keep driving. They yelled back that all they wanted to do was talk. So I said, 'Buy us a Coke first, then we'll talk!' And they did. And we did. And later that night we did a little more. And like I said, the Coke was better." She finished her drink. "It always is." She shook her head. "At least you know what you're getting; it doesn't pretend to be something it's not. And it always leaves you satisfied." She smiled. "Oh, youth," she said, still traipsing through the ruins of ancient Rome.
"Speaking of which," Jill interjected, "can you believe Laurie deciding to take another class?!"
"That skinny kid?" Ricki asked.
"My husband's daughter," Jill nodded. "She says her waistline's too thick."
"How old is she?"
"Fourteen."
"She's nuts," Ricki said plainly, and Jill and Beth laughed. “They're all nuts at fourteen. Then they get older, they get worse. Wait till she wants to go to Europe.”
"You have children?" Beth asked.
"Two boys," Ricki Elfer answered. "Ten and eleven. They live with their father."
"You're divorced?" Jill asked, noting Ricki's wedding band.
"Several times. Paul, my current—I love that word, it makes him sound so impermanent—is my third husband.
“I’m trying to decide right now whether to have another baby or tie my tubes."
"That's quite a decision," Beth commented.
"Women are always faced with wonderful choices like that. But it's true. Part of me would like to have another child—which part, I'm not sure—and I figure, at thirty-six, if I'm going to do it, I better do it now. The other part of me—the sane part—says I've done my share and what do I need with the aggravation, not to mention the nausea and the discomfort and, lest we forget, the pain." She signaled the waiter for another Coke. "Not to mention what it does to your body. Can you believe that before I married my first husband—his name was Errol, his mother named him after Errol Flynn—anyway, before we got married, I weighed ninety-eight pounds. And I'm five foot four. Not exactly a shrimp."
"You must have been like Laurie.” Jill remarked.
"No. I was skinny, all right, but Laurie's almost emaciated. You ever heard of anorexia nervosa?"
"Oh, no," Jill said, dismissing the thought. "She's skinny but I don't think she's deliberately starving herself."
The waiter put a second glass of Coca-Cola in front of Ricki Elfer. "Thank you," she said, then turned her attention back to her new friends. "This place used to be a real dump, but since they put in this lounge and everything, it's picked up a lot. Rita did that. Before she came, there was nothing."
"How long have you been coming here?" Beth asked.
"It's been a second home for the last two years." She looked at her body. "Discouraging, isn't it? Especially when, after all this time, I'm still going one way
when everyone else is going the other. Remember when you took ballet and there was always one kid in the class whose arms were going up just when everyone else's were going down? Well, that was me. I'm that kid." She patted her stomach. "I know that somewhere inside here, Jane Fonda is struggling to get out." She shook her head. "After thirty, boy, that's it. The body goes all to hell. Everything drops three inches. What doesn't drop, expands. And your skin dries up and pretty soon you're looking like a big, fat prune." Jill and Beth started laughing again. “Let's get back to sex; it's not quite so depressing."
"How'd you meet your husband?" Jill asked.
"Which one?"
“The latest," Jill smiled.
“I met him while I was married to husband number two. We were thinking of renovating our townhouse and so we called in a few architects to get some ideas. Paul was one of the architects; I took one look at him and got plenty of ideas. Now that I think of it, I probably should have my tubes tied instead of insisting that Paul have a vasectomy. If I tie my tubes, I can still fool around. If Paul has a vasectomy, it's another fifteen years on the Pill."
"Do you fool around?" Jill asked her, amazed she was having such an intimate conversation with a woman who only an hour ago had been a total stranger.
"Not as much as I'd like," the woman answered. "Not as many cars pulling up beside me these days yelling 'Americana, Americana.” She laughed heartily. "What about you?" she said, turning to Beth.
"Me?" Beth smiled. "Oh, no. I've never even been to Europe." Both Jill and Ricki regarded her expectantly. "No, I've had a very sheltered life. I met Al, my husband, when I was seventeen. I was working in a bank. I was a teller. He used to come to my window all the time. I thought he was cute, not very tall, slight of build, but cute anyway." Jill giggled. She loved stories like this one and she'd always been curious about Al and Beth Weatherby. "He was so full of confidence though, you would have thought he owned the bank," Beth continued. "He used to strut over to my window and deposit his money. After a few months he started talking to me. Told me he was a lawyer. I was very impressed. He said he liked the theatre and lifting weights and that one day he was going to head the city's largest, most successful law firm. I told him that when his bank balance hit ten thousand dollars he'd have to marry me." It was Beth's turn to giggle. Jill thought that when she did, she looked just like a little girl.
"And he did?" Ricki asked.
"The day after my eighteenth birthday," Beth answered. "My mother wasn't at all happy about that. She thought I was much too young, that Al was too old for me, and that he'd always have more dreams than clients."
"What does she think now?" Ricki wondered.
"She died about eleven years ago."
Ricki was appropriately apologetic. "So, you've been married how long?"
"Twenty-seven years."
"My God! Amazing! Any children”
"Three. Two boys and a girl. The oldest, Brian, is a doctor in New York; Lisa, the middle one, is a singer in L.A.; and Michael," she sighed, "Michael has fallen into the clutches of the Reverend Moon, or someone like that." She looked past Jill into the open space behind her. "It's funny," she said, almost wistfully, "how nothing every works out quite the way you thought it would."
Jill nodded her head in agreement. Her own life was certainly not what she had expected. "How is Lisa?" she asked.
"Oh, fine. She's still not working, but at least she's trying."
"And the married musician—?"
"Married musician?" Beth looked genuinely astonished. "What are you talking about?"
Jill was confused. "Al mentioned that night you cut your hand that you were upset because of Lisa's involvement with a married man, a musician—"
"Did he? I don't remember—" Her voice trailed off. Jill thought it best to drop the subject. There were several seconds where no one said anything at all.
“How about you, Jill?" Ricki asked suddenly, catching Jill by surprise. “How'd you meet your husband?"
"Oh, we met when I was interviewing him for a television show," Jill began.
"You're in television?" Ricki Elfer asked quickly. "What's your last name again? Are you someone I should know?"
Jill laughed. "No, you wouldn't know me. My name was Jill Listerwoll before I got married. Now, it's Jill Plumley." She stopped, thinking that her name had always been full of I's. "And I'm not in television anymore. I'm a teacher at the university."
The door at the far end of the lounge opened, and David's daughter Laurie came inside. For the first time since the three women had sat down, Jill allowed herself the luxury of taking a long, hard look at her surroundings. Rita Carrington had done a good job. The room was restful, almost soothing, with its deep burgundy walls and pink and mauve sofas. Even the bar area, where they were sitting, was well-appointed with attractive white tables and chairs with deep purple cushions. Just the right sort of room in which to pamper yourself after an hour with Rita Carrington. Jill watched as Laurie ambled toward her. The child was still in her pink leotard and leg warmers.
"Hi, Laurie," she said pleasantly. "How you doing? Want a Coke?"
"No, thanks."
"Oh, you gotta have a Coke," Rickie Elfer encouraged. "It's better than—"
"So how was the second class?" Jill interrupted, cutting Rickie Elfer off just in time.
"Great," Laurie said. "Better than the first. It was a different instructor. This one really made you work." Jill and Beth exchanged incredulous glances.
"You better watch that you don't exercise yourself into thin air," Rickie Elfer cautioned.
“No, I really need the exercise," Laurie insisted, then turned back to Jill. "Is it okay if I take a shower before I go home?"
"Of course," Jill said. "I’ll wait for you." She paused. "Actually, I thought that since David was working late tonight, you and I could have dinner together, maybe go to a movie—"
"Oh, I can't," Laurie said apologetically. "Ron's taking my mother and me out as soon as I get home."
"Ron?" Jill asked.
"Ron Santini, my mother's new boyfriend."
"Ron Santini, the gangster?" Jill asked, the words popping out of her mouth in astonishment.
"He's not a gangster," Laurie answered indignantly. "He's in fruit."
"Oh," Jill said, nodding. "Sorry. There must be more than one Ron Santini in Chicago."
"I guess so," Laurie pouted. "Ron's in fruit." Jill nodded again. "I'll go take my shower."
"I'll wait for you here," Jill offered. "At least I can drive you home."
"It's not necessary."
"I'll drive you home," Jill insisted. Laurie shrugged and walked away. "I don't know," she muttered, almost to herself. "I try, I really try to be friends with that girl—"
"Shouldn't have called her mother's boyfriend a gangster," Ricki advised.
Jill laughed. "It just slipped out." She watched Laurie make her exit. "I thought everyone knew Ron Santini was a big shot with the Mob. We did a show on the guy a few years ago. Those fruit stores of his are nothing but fronts."
"I bet I know something you don't know," Ricki chimed in a singsong-like refrain.
"What's that?" Beth asked.
"Well," Ricki said, leaning forward. "Ron Santini, reputed Mafioso, is also reputed to have a twelve-inch cock!"
"You're kidding!" Beth exclaimed, looking around her. None of the other women in the room seemed to have overheard, although one woman at the next table was leaning noticeably farther back in her chair.
"I'm serious," Ricki continued. "A girlfriend of mine once had a very brief fling with the guy—he really gets around, you know. Apparently he's Chicago's answer to Warren Beatty."
"It can't be the same guy," Jill said.
"Why not?" asked Beth.
"What would a playboy with a twelve-inch cock be doing with someone who only likes to screw on Christmas and Thanksgiving?"
"Who only likes to screw on Christmas and Thanksgiving?" Ricki asked.
"Elaine, my hu
sband's ex-wife."
"Who told you she only likes to screw on holidays?"
"My husband. He said that in seventeen years of marriage, he doubted they made love more than fifty times."
"Never believe anything a husband tells you about his ex-wife," Ricki advised.
Jill turned to Beth. "You know her, Beth," she said. "What do you think?"
"Who ever really knows about anyone else," Beth answered cryptically.
"True."
"My first husband had a big dick," Ricki said, loudly enough to attract the undivided attention of the women sitting at the next table. They stopped any further pretense at conversation. "A big dick and thirty million dollars," she continued.
"And you left him?!" the woman leaning back in her chair asked, almost falling to the floor.
"He was so boring," Ricki explained, moving her chair in order to accommodate her new listeners. "He was really the most boring person I have ever met. I knew he was boring when I married him, of course, but I thought that with a dick a foot long and thirty million dollars, I could learn to love being bored. Alas, such was not the case," she sighed theatrically. "That plus the fact that he caught me in flagrante delicto, or whatever you call it, with his stockbroker. Husband number two, incidentally." She paused. "God has to be a man," she said, thinking out loud. "Only a man could take such wonderful potential and make such a mess!"
Everybody laughed. "They should only know how women talk about them,” Jill said, and everyone agreed.
One of the women at the next table stood up. "Well,” she began, "it's been a pleasure, and I hate to leave just when things are starting to get interesting, but it's late, and my husband likes his dinner on the table when he walks in the door."
"So, let him put it there," someone else said.
"The only bad thing about marriage," Beth announced, "is that it goes on for so long."
"Not mine," Ricki exclaimed, standing up as well. "Actually, I should go too."
"We all should," Beth agreed. "Much as I hate to admit it, Al also likes his food on the table as soon as he comes home."