Chapter 9
NINE
Rochelle
She met Blond Elvis late that day at the club. She hadn’t been able to schedule him in earlier, and Lord knows, she needed him.
He was in the posing room, doing a back double biceps, staring intently at his back through the mirror in front of him. She knew how it felt after a good workout, to make that mind-muscle connection so that you could really isolate and flex.
“Am I early?”
“I’m just finishing.” He turned away from both mirrors. “Now you’re going to think I’m one of those stereotypical narcissistic assholes.”
“I already know you are,” she said. “Because I’m one, too.”
“Well, just take me out and shoot me if I ever get fat.” He took a final, lingering look at his back. “I mean, Christ, if your belly is so big that you can’t even see your own dick, what’s the point?”
“A man after my own heart,” she said. “Now, let’s keep me from turning into another Tania Marie.”
“No worries there,” he said, reaching for the door.
“At least you don’t have to sneak into a fat ladies’ gym and wind up with your ass plastered all over the newspaper.
” Ass, she thought. Not boobs, not abs. “You should have given Tania Marie my phone number, especially since she appears to be in the Killer Body family now.”
“Not on your life. You know too many of my secrets.” The floor was quieter than usual, only the clank, creak and groan of the weight machines.
Rochelle lifted two fifteen-pound weights from the rack and began her traveling lunges, motivated by the ass comment as well as by the Nordic picture of perfection beside her.
Blond Elvis, as everyone at the club called him, was the ideal personal trainer. He knew how to coax extra reps out of her, pushing her beyond her limit while keeping her form perfect. And he didn’t judge.
At the end of the session, she wiped a towel across her forehead, patted down her neck, feeling more animal than human, a feeling she relished. Her body ached from within, and her head spun in a whirlwind of endorphins.
Her hand trembled as she filled in the check.
“Here,” she said, handing it to him. “You might be as expensive as a shrink, but you’re a hell of a lot better.”
“That’s what I tell everyone.”
Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her damned ass, and in navy blue, at that. How the hell did it look in street clothes? To Bobbo? Jesse, for that matter?
“What’s wrong?”
“My ass.” She met his porcelain-blue gaze and tried for a comedic, scrunched-up grin.
He frowned and walked around her, shaking his head. “Looks pretty good to me.”
“Don’t stroke me, Blond. With Tania Marie out of the way, assuming I’m that lucky, the Killer Body job is between Princess Gabby and me.”
“Damn.” He couldn’t hide the doubt dimming his eyes. “Princess Gabby is pretty hot.”
“I don’t want to hear it, okay? I just want to know what I can do. I need something now, and I need results right away.”
“What are you eating?” It was a Jesse question, but before she could conjure a Jesse answer, he said, “Don’t lie to Blond Elvis.”
She laughed. She should never underestimate this man. “Actually, with that new cut, you look more like Billy Idol.”
“But we aren’t talking about me, are we, Shel?”
“Minute Rice. Are you happy now?”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I did the same thing when I was competing.”
Jesse would have chided her. Blond understood. “A whole cup for one-third the carbs.”
“And zip nutritional value, but this ain’t Nutrition 101. What else are you eating? Let me guess. Baby food vegetables?”
“It’s Survival 101, and yes. Tuna sometimes, though.”
“By the tablespoon?”
“Quarter cup.” Damn, it felt good to talk like this.
“Taking Clen?”
Clenbuterol, Clen, for short. She leaned so close that his sweaty, husky scent burned her nostrils, like smoke. “Sounds like a venereal disease, doesn’t it?”
“It works in the short run, and that’s what you’re concerned about, isn’t it?”
In that second, she realized something that hadn’t occurred to her before.
Her entire life, from the time she’d left home, had been the short run.
Every role, every goal, had been the short run.
Jesse and Megan were her only constants, her only long-time commitments.
Her husband. Her daughter. And her damned, betraying body, of course.
“I’ve used it before. What’s the price these days, after you take off the trip to Mexico? About a dollar each?”
“No way.” His voice was as quiet and full of whispered conspiracy as hers. “I can probably get you fifty for around twenty bucks.”
She hadn’t expected anything this reasonable. Jesse had scored the first Clen for her when her series was still going. That was almost four years ago, and Blond’s price was better. She tried to remember the dosage.
“I can take, what? Six a day?”
He grabbed his hair as if pulling it out by the roots. “That is just so ballistic.”
“Calm down. I did it before.”
Something new, an emotion he hadn’t exhibited previously, set his face as if it were a photograph. “Who told you to take that much?”
And before she could reply, “Don’t do it again, Shel.”
She nodded. He was right. The last time she’d been so shaky, so jumpy, she’d had to take way too much Valium just to claim a decent night’s sleep.
Blond had this way of making you feel it was just the two of you. As she looked around, she realized that, for once, it was true. Few people remained on the floor.
“Guess we’d better get out of here,” she said. “I’ll pay attention to what you said.”
He gave her a hug. “You’re in great shape, Shel. You’re wonderful.”
“And Princess Gabby?”
He had to look away before he could face her.
“She’s hot, but that doesn’t mean jack shit. Stuff like this always comes down to who wants it, and you want it more than anyone.”
“You’d better believe it.”
“The Clen will do the rest.”
“And if the Clen doesn’t work?”
“It always works.”
The club felt more like a warehouse. For the first time, this young boy trainer looked like a neophyte with all of his directives and platitudes.
She squeezed his thick arm. “What if the Clen doesn’t do enough, Blond? What if I can’t lose what I need to?”
“Then,” he said, “I can get some toys that will.”
“Toys?”
“That’s what the bodybuilders call them.”
The word intrigued her, as did the thought. “Toys,” she repeated. “Why don’t you look into that for me? Just in case.”
Rikki
After I leave Pete, I call Dennis Hamilton and tell him I’m going to be spending the night in town and am going to drop by the office in the morning. He asks if I want to have a drink or dinner. Translated: Would I like to drink with him or eat while he drinks?
After my short visit with Pete, I don’t feel like talking to anyone, so I decline Dennis’s invitation. I need time to think and plan. Tania Marie actually lived up to her promise and gave me all of her Killer Body literature, but I learned little from it that I didn’t already know.
Bobby Warren, world-famous bodybuilder and inventor of revolutionary exercise equipment, started the program when he was trying to help his wife, Dolores, lose weight. It worked, Dolores lost, and Killer Body gained.
Crazed with success, Bobby Warren went national. Now Killer Body is the top weight-loss program in the country, in dollars, at least. Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, LA Weight Loss don’t even come close. The secret is the spokesperson. Was the spokesperson. Julie Larimore.
It’s her image that dominates the centers’ walls and windows, although constant videos feature “real people,” as Killer Body calls them, who’ve achieved major weight loss with the program. Members meet daily with counselors, taking responsibility for every morsel they put into their mouths.
In the fitness center, they ski on elliptical machines, run on treadmills and submit to what the literature describes as “dynamic body-changing sculpting classes.” Julie Larimore’s motivational tapes are piped into their ears via the ever-present CD and headphones.
In short, they are immersed in a program of self-absorption that works, or works for a while.
“You’ve got to want the body” is the slogan, and they do.
Hamilton and I didn’t learn anything when we went to the local Killer Body center last week. I decide to try it again, alone.
Unlike the lavish Killer Body headquarters in Santa Barbara, the local place could have easily been a dentist’s office or a photography studio in its past life.
It’s jazzed up now, though, with nonstop videotaped success stories and counselors who could be described, with a straight face, as “svelte,” another term that keeps popping up in Killer Body jargon, usually in a reference to Julie Larimore.
As I enter, I hear the music coming from the back.
That must be where the workout center is.
Once they get you in here, they don’t let you go.
I recognize the song, “Personality,” which is “Bobby Warren’s trademark tune.
” Because that’s all that matters, right?
And that’s why the big ladies ahead of me in line are spending the big bucks. Personality.
The one ahead of me, about the age my mother would be if she were still around, says, “You’re too small to be here. You must have hit goal.”
“I had a weight problem once,” I tell her, which is true.
She nods and moves closer to the glass-topped counter. “Once a problem, always a problem, right?”
Another Killer Bodyism. I wonder how I’d feel if I were her size—or even myself when I was overweight.
Would Killer Body intimidate me, or would it offer me the hope I couldn’t find within myself?
I shut off the questioning reporter in my brain and the questions that are hitting too close to home. Two more women, and it will be my turn.