by Cleo Coyle
I stopped scanning when I saw Tristan’s signature workout. Now where’s the staff page?
The name “Tristan Ferrell” was listed, but his picture was no help. His sinewy body was posed on all fours, prowling in a forest setting like a jungle cat. But his head was off to the side with camouflage paint over his face to match his skintight animal-print bodysuit.
Below the bodysuit photo was his bio.
Tristan Ferrell
Creator of The Critter Crawl® Workout
Tristan has quickly become one of Equator’s most popular fitness instructors. An innovator in bodyweight training and fluid movement, Tristan has developed multiple programs for Equator—including our most in-demand workout class, The Critter Crawl®, which celebrates natural movements of the human/animal body. The president of Ferrell Fitness, Tristan is a respected personal trainer to celebrities and athletes. He created The Critter Crawl® Workout and Critter Motivational Flow and Well-Being Program® after traveling to the rain forest of Brazil, which taught him . . .
I stopped reading. If I wanted to learn anything about the rain forests of Brazil, I would ask Matteo Allegro.
Frustrated with no image of Ferrell’s face, I turned to a general search engine, typed in “Tristan Ferrell,” and was surprised by the results—or lack thereof.
The few photos of Tristan I found were body-focused, much like his Equator staff photo. Either that or he wore primitive masks to mimic the animal poses of his fitness workout.
What are you hiding, Tristan?
Just then, my phone lit up and belted out Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money.” I wanted to clap with glee. It was Tucker’s favorite song—and his ringtone.
My AWOL assistant manager was finally returning my calls!
Fifty-five
“CLARE!”
“Tuck?”
What followed was a very un-Tucker-like stream of Spanish, going by way too quickly for my rudimentary skills to comprender.
“Punch, is that you?”
“Give me a minute, Clare. I have to catch my breath . . .”
Tucker’s boyfriend, Punch, was a gifted dancer, a skilled martial artist, and one of the most popular drag performers in New York City. He wasn’t usually that excitable, so I was getting worried.
“Is something wrong with Tucker?”
“I’ll say. He’s gone loco en la cabeza!”
“Crazy in the head? Why?”
“Tuck’s decided to move back to Louisiana to work in his cousin’s coffee shop—”
“No!”
“You have to do something, Clare. I can’t live down South. I’m allergic to okra, and I can’t stand grits!”
“Calm down. You and I need a plan—”
“Yes, please, talk some sense into him, because he’s too hardheaded to listen to me. Convince Tucker to stay in New York—”
“Punch, I can’t even convince him to return my calls. He’s ghosting me!”
“You have to try again, for both our sakes. Moving will surely end his showbiz career, and mine. You know I don’t do Scarlett O’Hara. Carol Burnett ruined that whole Southern belle shtick with that curtain rod. And I’m way too svelte to impersonate Dolly Parton!”
“So what do I do? The last time I tried to speak with him in person, he ran away.”
“That’s why I called. Tucker and I are going to some trendy, expensive gym this afternoon. The producer of Swipe to Meat is footing the bill for the cast as a morale booster after the police investigation shook everyone up.”
“You’re in Swipe to Meat, too?”
“Tucker got me in as an extra. No lines, but I have some nice on-camera moments prepping veg for the Killer-Lover Chef. Anyway, listen! There’s a juice bar at this club. I’ll take Tucker there after our class, and we can just happen to run into you. Okay? Together we can force Tuck to listen to reason.”
“Okay, which club?”
“Equator—that luxury gym by Chelsea Park.”
Oh, brother. “I’m not a member of Equator, Punch. I can’t afford it.”
“I’m just a guest myself. So I can’t get you in. How about your barista? You know, the little fresh-faced farm girl with the Judy Garland Dorothy braids—”
“Nancy Kelly?”
“That’s the one! Tuck told me she works there part-time. I’m sure she can sneak you by their muscle-bound bouncers. Please come. For your sake, and mine— Oh, no! Tuck’s out of the shower. I’ve got to run! Remember, we’re in the noon Critter Crawl Workout class. Equator at Chelsea Park. We’ll see you at the juice bar at one!”
I checked my watch.
Things were slow downstairs, preparations were in hand for this evening, and Esther would be here within the hour.
I was planning to squeeze in a nice swim at my YMCA to work off those scones. But if I could convince Tucker to come back to the Village Blend, it would be worth my time to have a smoothie at Equator. And since I would be in the gym, anyway, hmm . . .
Would Nancy be able to get me into that workout class, too?
It would give me a chance to check out Tristan Ferrell, “creator of The Critter Crawl.” According to AJ, he’d bribed Haley well to lure her away from Cinder. I’d like to know why, and whether or not this guy had an alter ego named Richard Crest.
Tucker and Tristan: time to kill two critters with one call.
And I placed it to Nancy.
Fifty-six
I entered the exclusive gym in the most unglamorous way—through a Dumpster-lined alley and a dingy back door.
“Welcome to Equator: World of Luxury Fitness!” Nancy chirped, without a trace of irony.
“Are you sure I’m not going to get you into trouble?”
“We’re good. The security camera above the door has been broken since I started. Nobody reports it because the instructors like to duck out to smoke.”
“There are fitness instructors here who smoke?”
“Or vape.” Nancy shrugged. “Hey, I don’t judge.”
I followed her wheat-colored braids into a long, dark hall. Fortunately, she was easy to track in her formfitting, tiger-striped Day-Glo orange leggings and X-back sports bra.
“All of Tristan’s spotters wear glow-in-the-dark animal prints,” she explained. “It makes us easier to spot in the dark!”
“The dark?”
“You’ll see.”
As we rode the service elevator to the top floor, along with a giant bin full of towels, Nancy gave me an encouraging smile.
“Don’t look so worried. You’ll be fine.”
“Your boss won’t mind someone crashing?”
She waved her hand. “He won’t even notice. The Critter Crawl is always in high demand. Tristan accepts up to one hundred people in his Saturday introductory class. With that many bodies, it will be easy for you to blend in.”
“A hundred in one workout class? That doesn’t sound like very personal training.”
“It’s Darwinian. You know? Survival of the fittest.”
“What? You have to survive the class?”
“Um, forget I said anything. You swim regularly—that’s sort of exercise. You’ll be fine!”
We exited the elevator and crossed to another door.
“Give me your jacket, and I’ll check it. Then go through here and I’ll meet you inside.”
“Nancy, one more thing,” I said. “I’d like to speak with Tristan Ferrell after class. Is that possible?”
“So you’re interested in his Critter Motivational Flow and Well-Being Program?”
“Sure!”
(Okay, so I told a white lie. But I didn’t want Nancy to fret about my real objective. At best, to ask Ferrell about his relationship with the late Haley Hartford. At worst, to expose him as the real Richard Crest.)
As it turne
d out, I didn’t need to worry.
“I think Tristan will want to meet you, actually. And Madame, when it can be arranged.”
“Really?”
“He says it’s his mission to seek connections with successful people in every walk of life. He’s throwing an Angel Party, too. If you speak with him today, I’m sure you’ll get an invite.”
“Angel Party?”
“He’s looking for investors. That’s part of my job as a spotter. I’m supposed to spot wealthy candidates who want to back Tristan’s new app, the Critter-a-Day Motivation and Exercise Calendar.”
“Great,” I said. “Can’t wait.”
Nancy leaned close. “Tristan always stops at the Euclid after class, just to network.”
“Is that some hipster bar in the neighborhood?”
“Oh, no! Tristan doesn’t drink alcohol! The Euclid is a juice bar in the lobby—”
Good, I thought, recalling Punch’s plan to ambush Tucker there.
“After class, get a drink at the bar, and I’ll introduce you to my boss . . .” She giggled. “I mean my other boss. Now give me that jacket; I’ve got to run or I’ll be late.”
I stripped off my outerwear, to reveal black leggings and a matching exercise bra under a baggy Caffeine Is My Co-Pilot T-shirt that was anything but formfitting—and hopefully covered most of my well-cushioned assets.
A moment later, Nancy was gone and I stepped “into a world of perfect fitness, balanced wellness, and all-around good health”—or so said the light-board scrolling around the equator of an enormous chrome globe dangling from the ceiling.
Now, I’ve got nothing negative to say about the bare-bones weight room at the McBurney YMCA, but Equator’s facilities were on a whole different level—like beluga caviar was on a different level from frozen fish sticks.
Okay, so the circular atrium wasn’t as large as the Coliseum, and its ceiling wasn’t quite as high as the dome at St. Peter’s, but this was certainly an impressive space. Tall glass walls offered a spectacular 360-degree view, with scores of ultramodern exercise machines set in a Stonehenge circle facing the glass.
The floor was padded to absorb shocks and mute the unpleasant echoes that typically plagued a hardwood gymnasium. Instead, New Age music flowed from invisible speakers. Neat rows of exercise mats had been arranged around a circular stage set under the giant globe.
Nancy entered with a dozen young men and women wearing the same garish animal prints.
“Come with me,” she said. “I found you a spot beside the movie people in the front row.”
The “movie people” had yet to arrive, so I did some stretches on my mat while scanning the crowd.
There was no sign of Tucker, but I did spot one familiar face: Cinder’s head of security, Cody, her muscular frame Amazonian—and a little intimidating—in green camouflage leggings and matching sports bra.
CEO Sydney’s loyal guard dog had apparently slipped her leash, for there was no sign of her boss. And if the toned member of Team Tinkerbell noticed my presence, she pretended she didn’t.
Then the gentle music began to fade. Automatic blinds descended over the windows, to block out all light, until only the stage was visible, bathed in a weird green glow. Meanwhile, the raucous sounds of the jungle poured from the sound system—wild animal chirps, barks, grunts, roars, and screeches. The cries rose in volume and intensity until the noise became earsplitting.
Suddenly silence descended and the room went completely black. All I could see were the ghostly forms of the glow-in-the-dark Critter spotters.
Slowly, a golden spotlight came up on the sculpted body of a near-naked man at center stage. Shirtless, pecked, and six-packed, his muscular arms were outstretched, legs braced wide. The man was shoeless, too—in fact, he wore nothing more than animal-print spandex trunks. From my front row perspective, they outlined more of the man than I cared to see!
“Welcome to my jungle, Crawlers! My name is Tristan Ferrell . . .”
With no mask or camo paint, Ferrell’s face was now clear to see and not even close to Richard Crest’s. Where Crest’s bone structure was square, Ferrell’s was triangular with features that were more refined, almost delicate—pointier chin, smaller nose, and sunken cheeks with prominent cheekbones.
“Please consider me a friend,” the fitness guru told the class, “and call me Tristan, although my Critter Name is much more primitive. Would you like to hear it?”
Everyone nodded with interest.
“My Critter Name sounds more like this—” The crazed banshee screech that followed rattled the blinds and the crowd. Ferrell seemed to love this.
“That’s right,” he said with cocky confidence, “I like to scream. Screaming is good, and it’s good for you, too. You won’t hear a lot of grunts or groans in my fitness class, but you will hear a lot of screaming.”
Uh-oh, I thought. That can’t be good . . .
Fifty-seven
THE tardy movie crew arrived as Tristan Ferrell was wrapping up his introductory remarks, telling us how a painful failure in “the business jungle” drove him into a real one—the Brazilian rain forest—where he regained “balance and wholeness and wellness.”
As the Swipe to Meat cast filed past me to take their positions on the reserved mats, Punch spotted me, gave me an excited wink, and maneuvered his lanky, floppy-haired partner close to me.
Tucker seemed oblivious to his surroundings, locked in a whispered conversation with a pudgy, balding man wearing retro tennis shoes and white socks that ended mid-calf. I pegged him as the producer.
Soon their conversation ended, but my plan to catch Tuck’s attention was thwarted when the lights dimmed again, until only the garish green stage was visible.
“I want you to come back to that night with me,” Tristan said, “when I rediscovered my core. I became balanced. Whole. At peace with everything and everyone in the universe. Alone and naked, I could feel the jungle teeming with life. Tiny insects. Big cats. Long snakes. Short worms. Buoyant bats. Heavy hedgehogs. Then the revelation struck—”
Ferrell paused to smack his own head. “It didn’t matter their size or shape, whether they flew or swam or slithered or crawled. Critters don’t worry about fitness!”
Good grief.
“Critters are fit. And in that moment, The Critter Crawl was born.”
Honestly, I nearly lost it at “long snakes” and “short worms,” but the crowd was eating it up. Some even oohed and aahed. While Tristan continued his preamble, I tried to get Tuck’s attention.
“Psst! Psst!” I hissed. But it didn’t work. The only attention I caught was the teacher’s.
“I hear the call of the slithering snake,” Ferrell said with an approving nod. “Someone has been in my class before!”
Tristan then informed us we were about to learn our first position—the Boa.
“I want you to throw your arms back and thrust your chest out. Snakes don’t have arms, so I really want you to toss those useless old limbs away . . .”
A sudden scream marked the first wardrobe malfunction. A sports bra in flight slapped Tuck’s producer in the back of the head, while the bosomy actress it belonged to covered herself and bolted for the exit.
As things turned out, she was the lucky one. The rest of us were compelled to lie on our stomachs in the dim green lighting and slither like boa constrictors.
With the animal soundtrack turned back up and everyone busy flopping around in the faux jungle, I squirmed on over to Tucker’s long body. He was deep into method acting—he really was that snake—when I bumped him out of his trance.
“Clare Cosi! What in blazes are you doing wiggling around on an exercise mat?”
“That’s a question we should all ask.”
“Slither! Slither!” Ferrell cried. “I want to see you contort those stiff spines.”
&nb
sp; A howl of pain signaled a slipped disc. Two animal-print musclemen rushed to the scene and hauled the agonized man off in a luxury stretcher.
“Oh, my,” Tuck fretted. “Now I know why they made us sign those releases!”
Several people threw up the arms they were supposed to pretend they didn’t have and headed for the exit. I longed to join them, but my mission here was not yet finished.
“Come on, Tuck!” I said, my plea muffled by the gym floor’s padding. “You have to come back to the Village Blend. We need you. Now, more than ever.”
Tuck tossed back his floppy brown hair and peeked nervously at the pudgy, balding man, who was earnestly boa constricting with the best of them.
“Clare,” he whispered. “I’m here on business. Could we talk personal later?”
“Only if you promise you will talk to me.”
“I promise.”
“Right after class. Downstairs in the juice bar.”
“Yes, yes,” he replied, still wiggling.
“I’ll be waiting.”
As I Critter Crawled back to my mat, I heard Punch’s exasperated groan. “This is horrid, humiliating, and no fun at all! I’ll take my mother’s favorite workout over this, any day.”
“What did she do, jumping jacks?”
“No. Richard Simmons’s Sweatin’ to the Oldies. It was awesome! Everyone sang along—and wore nice comfy shorts and tees. None of this pinching spandex. Why can’t I find a workout like that anymore?!”
“I don’t know about Oldies,” Tuck said, writhing with effort. “But if you can find me a workout called Sweatin’ with Donna Summer . . . and the Village People . . . and the Bee Gees . . . and KC and the Sunshine Band—I’ll be the first one to sign up.”
“OMG, Tuck. You just created Sweatin’ with the Seventies!”
Tuck froze, mid-slither, as it hit him. “OMG, Punch, we have to produce that!”
Punch nodded like crazy, put up his palm, and the two high-fived each other.
“You there! No hands! No hands!” Tristan yelled. “You’re a boa. The Monkey Climb comes later!”