Chapter 9
Meeko waited for his knock on the leisure club manager’s door to be answered. There were two ways this meeting could go: more classes or fewer classes. Given the cut in the opening hours of the hotel’s pool, it was probably fewer. Meeko couldn’t afford that. His monthly budget was already stretched since Lynn had moved out, leaving him to juggle all the expenses alone. He hadn’t told Fiona that his finances were a balancing act because she’d insist on helping him out and he didn’t want to be beholden to anyone, least of all his closest friend.
To Meeko, Fiona was a pauper too, but in a different way. She didn’t lack material comforts but she was so closed in, and focused on remaining so, that she missed the riches life had to offer. Fiona couldn’t go with the flow. Everything had to be choreographed to the nth degree and also have a Plan B. When he’d challenged her, she’d put it down to her career in IT project management, where attention to detail and timing was essential. Meeko thought it more likely to be due to something in her past. A catastrophe that had gone beyond the bounds of a normal calamity and wrecked any trust she might have had in fate or other people. He knew there’d been a divorce, but the way she lived her life was out of proportion to that. Some bond of trust had been so deeply severed that, from that point on, the only person she trusted was herself. And that was sad. Several times he’d tried to ask about her past, but she always looked as though she was about to cry and then clammed up. He was sure that, one day, when she was ready, she would tell him.
There was a muffled “Come in” from behind the door. Meeko crossed his fingers and entered. Frank pushed his laptop to one side, stood up briefly and then gestured at the guest chair in front of the desk. The manager couldn’t be more than forty. He was dressed in a hotel polo shirt and close-fitting jeans and had the sort of physique that Meeko, on the cusp of his seventh decade, was having to work harder and harder to maintain. Broad-shouldered but slim and muscular everywhere else. Meeko’s mind flitted to Joe. He’d been wearing chinos and a long-sleeved shirt when they’d met, but as a physio, Meeko guessed he’d be no slouch in the gym either. ‘Joe the toad’ was how Meeko preferred to think of him.
Frank and Joe even had better, more solid names than Meeko. Meeko’s real name was Michael but in junior school his friends had labelled him ‘Mickey’. His mother had thought that was common and that her son deserved a better class of nickname. She came up with Meeko, after a friend went on a package holiday to Italy, when such excursions were rare, and came back with photos of a handsome waiter. The nickname had caught on with his friends and he’d been stuck with the label ever since. If he had the guts he’d revert back to ‘Michael’ or the more macho ‘Mick’.
“The feedback from your yoga classes is consistently excellent and they’re always fully booked. Your regulars turn up four or five times a week and get great value for money from their monthly fee.” Frank leaned forward and smiled, despite his voice indicating there was a ‘but’ on the way. “But we need to diversify our timetable to attract new members to the leisure club as a whole. We need more people to set up that monthly direct debit, and the best way is to cash in on the January dieters with a slogan like ‘Burn fat the Birnside Way’. That means reducing the number of holistic classes and increasing those that burn calories.”
Meeko felt a rug starting to be eased from under him. “You can’t penalise me for being successful!” There was an awkward silence. It seemed that Frank could indeed punish success. Meeko hadn’t seen this coming. He had to invent something quickly to maintain his claim on the gym timetable. He couldn’t be a one-trick pony. “What about a Legs, Bums and Tums class, including some brisk moving about the room to raise the heart rate?”
“Still sounds like a session for the ladies-that-lunch. Those are the people already attending your classes. We need something hardcore. Something to attract new people to the club. Something that really raises a sweat for our members. I’ve already hired a new instructor.” There was another awkward silence before Frank found his flow again. “We want to appeal to the younger gym user.”
Frank hadn’t said it in so many words but it was obvious that he felt Meeko, due to his age, was no longer an asset to the club. This wasn’t just a kick in the teeth, it was a full-on, knock-out blow and Meeko felt physically winded. His classes weren’t the right type and he was too old. There was nothing he could do about his age and Frank didn’t want to give him a chance on trying a different class.
“Of course, you’ve still got your loyal followers.” Frank smiled. “And we don’t want to alienate them. So, to start with, I’m only dropping your early Saturday and Sunday classes — those are peak times for younger people who are working during the week.”
“My regulars are going to be disappointed. There’ll be angry people at your door.” A lot of Meeko’s attendees relied on his classes to keep their joints mobile, improve their balance and guard against falls. Others, like Fiona, came along to maintain flexibility and strength, and to keep all the muscles toned and strong. In Meeko’s classes everyone worked at their own level of ability. “You’re going to lose members.”
Frank shrugged and stood up to indicate the meeting was at an end.
“I’ve grown the holistic offering at the club massively and there is still a demand for it,” Meeko tried.
Frank shrugged again.
Someone with a quicker brain would have thought up a clever response to that shrug. Instead, Meeko walked out of Frank’s office and joined that scrap heap dedicated to those aged sixty-plus. He cursed the day he’d decided to be self-employed rather than a hotel employee when he was first offered the role. He’d thought keeping his independence would allow him to teach elsewhere as well, but in reality he’d done very little of that because his Leisure Club classes had easily filled all his time. And now Frank could wave goodbye to him at the drop of a hat. No mention had been made of the glowing emails that his class attendees occasionally sent to Frank, praising Meeko’s classes and the time he took afterwards to answer questions. No mention had been made of Meeko’s innovative monthly ‘Relax and Restore’ afternoons, which were slowly growing in popularity, or the way that Meeko had responded to demand and taken an additional, self-funded, course in order to offer a Yin yoga class. Frank’s mind had been made up, possibly by head office, before he even spoke to Meeko.
The breakfast waitresses were clearing away as the last of the late-risers strolled from the dining room.
“Meeko!” one of the waitresses called him over. “You look like death. Sit in that corner, out of sight, and I’ll get you coffee and one of the left-over Danish pastries.”
“Make that two,” he said, “and a couple of serviettes.” He’d had his free breakfast hours earlier, but this additional dip in his finances, on top of Lynn moving out, meant he needed to make preparations for a free lunch too whenever he could. A diet of pastries wasn’t great, especially for a yoga teacher, but needs must.
He ran his fingers through the silver spikes of his hair and added sugar to the coffee. He felt shaky as Frank’s words hit home. The loss of the two classes meant fifteen percent of his income had disappeared overnight. And it wasn’t just money that was getting him down. At breakfast with Fiona the previous day, he’d felt he was finally breaking through that carefully controlled electric fence she’d constructed around herself. But then she’d told him about the toad moving in. In Meeko’s head Joe hadn’t properly got over his divorce and still carried a candle for his ex-wife. Now the toad would have a claim on the time that Fiona had previously spent with Meeko.
Couple that with learning he was too old and not attracting the right sort of people to his classes and Meeko’s confidence was at rock bottom. He’d been pushed off a cliff. At the end of November, he’d decided on his new year resolution. After the success of his Yin yoga class and the ‘Relax and Restore’ afternoons, he was going to investigate the possibility of teaching barre yoga — but the instructor course had a cost attached and Frank would have had to be talked into supplying the additional equipment. That was now going to be a non-starter. Meeko was left with the prospect of a bleak Christmas and an even bleaker new year.