“Go,” Timothy said. She made her fingers into a “V” and pointed them at me as if that would start me up. Then she began counting, “One, and, two, and, three, and,” even though I hadn’t moved. When she got to ten she took my feet out of the strap so we could get me into position for the next ordeal.
Timothy was Japanese. Tall and rail-thin with long black hair that was choppy on the bottom. Andrew never told you the important details about a person like the fact that she was Japanese. She was wearing a vintage one-piece bathing suit and platform sandals. Her toenails were long and painted metallic brown. She had long false eyelashes sprouting only from the corners of her eyes but she was beautiful despite all that. A metallic booze smell seeped from her pores. It was an honest girl smell. I was jealous of that smell. I would rather smell like smoke and booze than my own smell—shawarma and pathetic Oil of Olay.
“A guy I know told me to take Pilates with you,” I said, hoping Timothy would ask me who the guy was.
“That’s good,” she said.
“Yes, so anyway this guy said you were a great trainer.”
“Okay, now we’re going to do The Saw,” she said. “Sit with your legs spread like this and pretend you’re sawing off your right pinkie toe with your left hand.” That didn’t sound pleasant.
I waited for her to ask Andrew’s name. “His name is Andrew Lugar,” I said.
“Andrew ‘Strap me in, baby’ Lugar?”
“That’s him,” I said.
She laughed. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“No!” I said.
“He’s such a jerk,” she said. She pointed to the old black-and-white picture on the wall of a nurse helping a man to do some sort of a sit-up. “He keeps telling me I should dress up like a nurse to be true to the tradition of Joseph Pilates. What a perv.” We both laughed. “I hope he’s really not a friend of yours.”
“He’s not,” I assured her.
“I actually mentioned him to my shrink, and she said he’s a psychopath. My boyfriend and I laugh about him,” she said.
“You have a boyfriend?” I asked. I wondered if her boyfriend knew that she was a stripper.
“We just moved in together in a loft in Williamsburg. We’re having a fight because he’s angry at me that I went to Bali a few months ago for three weeks and he felt all abandoned.”
“Maybe I should go to Bali,” I said.
“It’s great,” she said. “But one morning I woke up in my hut and I went to put on my panties. I was just about to pull them up when I looked down and saw a giant scorpion lying right in the cotton crotch.”
Andrew should be careful not to go through her hamper, I thought.
“I hate those married guys who come on to you. I just make it very clear to them that I have a boyfriend.”
“Andrew’s not married,” I said. “He just lives with someone.”
“Really? I thought he and Jordan recently got married. Who knows with him? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him wear a ring. Sometimes he says ‘my girlfriend,’ sometimes he says ‘my wife.’ But I know he has a lot of affairs.”
“What a jerk,” I said. “Does he talk about them?”
“Well, you know the designer Peter Kellerman?” she asked. I nodded. “He talks about Peter Kellerman’s daughter, Liv Kellerman, a lot.” I smiled. Andrew had talked about me.
“So he’s having an affair with Liv Kellerman?” I asked.
“Well, actually he says horrible things about her. He talks about her so much that lately I’ve been accusing him of being in love with her. Whatever it is, he’s obsessed.”
My heart bounced in my chest. Then it felt gripped like a pale red rubber ball in a dog’s teeth, slimy and wet from saliva.
“What horrible things?” I asked.
“Well, apparently she lives in this really squalid tenement even though her father’s so rich. He said not even her father can stand her. She pretends she doesn’t want his help, but really he won’t help her. He said she’s like the girl in that book Washington Square, you know? Really ugly and untalented and oafish and dumb.”
I nodded to show that I had read the book even though I had only seen the old movie starring Olivia De Havilland in the part of me.
“She’s a lowly real estate agent, too. I bet there are a lot of rich celebrities out there who have totally ordinary children. So it’s sort of our little joke. I always accuse him of being in love with her and he always says she repulses him.”
Washington Square might have ended a little differently if Katherine had had a gun.
She made me do something called The Teaser. I was so angry I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do it. I just lay there thinking.
“What do I have to do to get you to move?” Timothy asked. “Hold a gun to your head?” I considered that idea. I could get the gun out of my pocketbook and she could hold it to my head. Maybe if I was lucky she would shoot me.
“Did you know that one of your hips is higher than-the other?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
She had me lie on my back with my legs together so she could measure if one leg was shorter than the other. It was. Then she spent the next twenty minutes pulling on my shorter leg trying to make it longer. Pilates was a lot like dating. I could be passive. Just simply lie there and let someone pull my leg.
Timothy ushered me over to another bed device she called the Cadillac. I didn’t know if she was kidding. She put both my feet in fuzzy sheep’s wool ankle straps and hoisted me up so I was hanging upside down. She stood over me holding my feet so they wouldn’t slip out.
“Isn’t this sort of advanced?” I asked.
“You can do it.”
“Can Andrew do this?”
“He can hardly do anything. He gets all sweaty and has to check his blood pressure every five minutes. You’re already doing more than he is and he’s been coming for almost a year.”
“Really,” I said. He had told me he had just started.
“He was just here right before you actually. I’m surprised you didn’t see each other.”
I heard shrieks and laughter from the lower level. “I’m not doing that. I just ate,” a woman was saying. The sound traveled up the spiral staircase. It was Robert De Niro’s wife, Grace, down there with one of the other trainers, she told me.
Then a flower delivery man came with a big arrangement of cellophaned orchids. The delivery man looked at me hanging and sort of shook his head. I watched upside down as Timothy was called to the front desk. They were for her. I hung there with no one holding my feet.
Timothy opened the card. “Oh, my God.” She went to the phone and dialed a number. “Honey, it’s me. Thank you so much, they’re beautiful. I love you.”
“Timothy,” I said, upside down. Watching her get flowers was more than I could take. The last thing you want to see when you go somewhere to work out is a beautiful thin girl eating or getting flowers.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said into the phone.
Pilates cost eighty dollars an hour.
“No, I can talk until my next client gets here.” She looked at her watch. “My session just ended. I’m going to smoke a cigarette outside. What are we going to do for dinner?”
“Timothy,” I said.
Timothy put a vintage kelly-green wool coat on over the bathing suit and took a cigarette out of a pack in her purse. She went out through the glass-and-chicken-wire door, still talking on the cordless phone.
Hanging there my body started to lengthen and even itself out. I became thinner and braver, like Timothy. Pilates was incredible, that’s why all the celebrities did it. It was already working. There was a tingling sensation between my legs. It reminded me of how much I hated Andrew. I hated Andrew so much I wanted to kill him. He should be hanging here like a duck in the window of a Chinese restaurant, not me.
After a while Timothy walked back in and
noticed me hanging. “Oops,” she said, letting me down. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I didn’t mind.”
I changed in the tiny curtained-off dressing stall and went to the coatrack to get my coat and shoes. I noticed something familiar jammed into one of the cubbies on the bottom row. It was a blue duffel bag, just like Andrew’s. There must be thousands of bags just like this, I thought. It couldn’t be his. I stood there staring at it. Keeping my upper body completely still, I dragged it out of the cubby using only the foot of my longer leg. It was like a new Pilates exercise I had invented called The Duffel Bag. I looked around to make sure no one had seen me.
Then I let my coat fall right on top of the duffel bag. I bent down and scooped up my coat with the bag hidden underneath it. I smuggled the bag into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.
I unzipped the bag, and there, floating right on top, was Andrew’s journal. I opened it and saw a sea of Livs. Livs dotted the pages. Liv this and Liv that. I couldn’t focus.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Just a minute,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know if I should take just the journal home or the whole duffel bag with the journal in it. I was dying to read it but I was afraid Andrew would come back for it before I could smuggle it out. There wasn’t time to read it now. I had to get out of there. I stared at the picture of Joseph Pilates on the edge of the sink as if he would tell me. He was standing in bikini underwear with his legs spread and his hands on his hips, proud to be sixty. I wanted to put his picture next to the picture of the swami on my desk so I slipped it into my pocketbook along with Andrew’s journal.
I left the bathroom with the duffel bag wrapped up in my coat and flung the duffel bag, with the rest of its contents—his jockstrap and a Faulkner novel—back into the cubby, walked past the front desk with the sign reading “Not responsible for lost or stolen property,” and right out the door.
Timothy was smoking again outside. “I guess my next client is a no-show,” she said. “Which way are you going?” she asked.
“I’m taking a cab to MacDougal Street,” I said.
“Do you mind if we share one? I’m meeting my boyfriend around there and I’ll just kill time at a café until then.” She made me wait while she went back inside to get her flowers and hug the girl at the front desk goodbye. I could never work in a gym or at a restaurant because you have to hug all your co-workers all the time. You didn’t see real estate agents hugging.
We walked to the corner of Hudson to get a cab.
“Moses is a strange name for a girl,” Timothy said.
And Timothy wasn’t?
Finally a cab pulled over. The guy in the backseat paid the driver and then opened the door on the street side. I opened the door on the sidewalk side as he got out.
It was Andrew. He stared at me standing there with Timothy.
“Liv, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Liv?” Timothy said, wide-eyed. “Oh, my God.”
“Hi, Andrew,” I said.
“Hi,” he said. “Uh, I’ve got to run. I left something at Pilates.”
“You don’t have to run, Andrew,” I said. “I’ve got it right here.” I pulled his diary out of my pocketbook, revealing just a corner of it.
“That belongs to me,” he said. He put his hand out for it.
And that’s when I saw his ring. It took me by surprise. I felt guilty, like I had accidentally come across something I wasn’t supposed to find. It looked vulgar on his finger, as if it were a cockring instead of a wedding ring. But maybe he had worn it all along and I had just forgotten to look. Maybe the cold platinum band had grazed my nipple when we were in bed together and I hadn’t even felt it.
When exactly had this happened? I wondered.
We all just stood there holding the cab doors open.
“Fuck you. Close my door, cheap asshole,” the cabdriver screamed at Andrew. He had some kind of Middle Eastern accent.
“Did you forget to tip the driver, Andrew?”
“I don’t make turn and he make me take two dollar off meter,” the driver shouted.
“Andrew, I think you owe the driver—what is your name?—an apology.”
“Mohammed,” the driver said.
“Apologize to Mohammed.”
“Liv, I’ve got to go,” Andrew said.
“Apologize.”
“Can I have my book?”
“Get back in the cab,” I said.
Andrew just stood there.
I pulled the gun out of my pocketbook and pointed it at him, holding it close to my body. “Get back in the cab,” I said.
Andrew looked at Timothy. I remembered that Andrew said that the owner of the Pilates studio was a friend of Jordan’s. He looked more scared of Timothy telling on him than he did of my gun.
She gave him a disgusted look. “Get in,” I said. Andrew got into the cab.
Timothy stood frozen on the sidewalk. I loved her hair, my color, but straight and choppy like that. “Come on,” I said to her, “it’ll be fun.” She didn’t look too convinced.
“Look,” she said, “this is none of my business. I’m really sorry he said those things about you but I think you’re both kind of wacko. I’ll just get my own cab.”
I really didn’t want to get in the cab alone with Andrew. “He says things about you, too,” I said.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Well, only that you’re a stripper.”
“What!” she said.
She got in the cab, and I got in after her. We all sat in the backseat with Timothy in the middle.
“Please drive up the West Side Highway,” I told the cabdriver. I had never hijacked anything before but that seemed like a good route because we could move fast.
I leaned in front of Timothy and held the gun up to Andrew’s head. “Pardon my reach,” I said to Timothy. I was trying not to hurt the flowers on her lap.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said to Andrew. I shoved the gun into his ear. Even though it felt light in my right hand, I supported my wrist with my left.
“What is going on back there?” Mohammed said.
“Drive!” I said. “Hurry.”
“I cannot make cab fly,” Mohammed said, angrily.
The cab started moving and the recorded celebrity announcement came on, but it wasn’t my father. It was Judge Judy and Judge Jerry Sheindlin saying it was just plain “stoopid” not to wear a seat belt.
“You heard the judge,” I told Andrew. “Fasten your seat belt.” He fastened it.
“Why don’t you tell Timothy and Mohammed how much you love me, and how you’re going to leave your wife and marry me?” I said in a loud voice.
“Liv, you’re really acting crazy,” Andrew said.
I pressed the gun into his ear as hard as I could.
“Cut it out,” he said.
“Shut up,” I said. “It’s loaded, and I will kill you.”
“I am not a stripper, Andrew,” Timothy said.
My wrist started to ache from holding it up for so long. I wanted to change hands but I was afraid he would see that as an opening.
It took all my strength and concentration to keep the gun steady. I would have to take a lot more Pilates if I was ever going to try using the gun on a regular basis. Suddenly it occurred to me that he could turn around quickly and knock the gun out of my hand. He could kill me. Without thinking, and without even really knowing what I was doing, I racked the slide back and sort of cocked the gun. It made a loud cocking sound that surprised all of us. I had never cocked a gun before.
Someone’s cell phone rang. Timothy reached for her bag but it wasn’t hers, it was Mohammed’s. “I can’t talk right now,” he said. I remembered how much Jerome hated cell phones. They were the bane of the blind man’s existence. He w
as always veering around thinking there were twice as many people on the sidewalk than there actually were. Mohammed hung up.
“Tell Timothy and Mohammed how much you love to fuck me,” I said. “Tell them how you lied to me. Tell them how much you love to bite me when we fuck.”
“Fuck you?” Andrew said, like he was thinking. Like he was stalling for time. I could tell all he was worried about was this information getting back to Jordan.
“Tell them!” I screamed.
“Come on, Liv,” Andrew said. “Fuck you? I’ve never fucked you. I’ve tried to be a friend to you, Liv, but I’ve never fucked you. I’ve tried to help you as much as I can.”
I was stunned. “Help me?” I said.
“You’re a sick girl, Liv. You know there’s never been anything sexual between us.” His voice was sickening, as if he was trying to talk down a lunatic. As if I was the lunatic.
I folded his earlobe over with the gun. “Give me your ring,” I said.
“This is going too far.”
“Give it to me,” I screamed.
Andrew pulled at the ring on his finger until it came off. He handed it to me and I put it on my thumb.
“Tell me, Andrew, how long have you been married? Were you married when we sat in the sauna together on Laight Street? Were you married when you brought me my curtains? Were you married the night of the boxing match?”
He had ordered the fight on my pay-per-view and we watched it in my bed. It was fifty dollars but he said he would pay me back when my cable bill came. He never did.
“You owe me fifty dollars,” I said. “Give it to me.” He struggled to pull his wallet out of his back pocket and handed me two twenties and a ten.
Suddenly he started to cry. He cried quietly with his head down. I wondered if he was crying over the fifty. Crying like that, he looked too young to be married. He looked like a little boy. He looked like a small little psychopath instead of a big grown-up one. I wondered if I had overreacted.
I softened my voice. “Just tell me exactly how long you have been married,” I said. “And I’ll let you go.”
“Since the day I met you,” he said. “I was married that day in the court building. Right after Judge Moody’s retirement party. He was the one who married us. He’s my father-in-law.”
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