Chapter 4
Four
“Breathe in, two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Out two, three, four. Breathe in two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Out two, three, four,” Yogi Marah hummed as she glided around the candlelit room, incense stick in hand while the class settled into their mats.
Marah was a pint sized, raspy voiced spiritual guru.
She seemed timeless, but Kenny thought she was much older than she presented given her experiences of the universe.
Marah traveled to India to master her practice and met the Dali Lama when she was exploring Tibet.
While she was in Stanford’s Ph.D. program, she moved to Germany and wrote her thesis on the correlation between yoga and the philosophies of Immanuel Kant.
Her Vinyasa style focused on the mind just as much as the body, and she believed that humans had the supernatural power to breathe through any difficult or adverse situation.
Classes revolved around breathwork. Kenny hadn’t bought into the faculties of inhaling and exhaling, but she mostly took to heart everything that Marah preached.
Marah’s deliberate, yet effortless guidance filled the studio with an energy that was palpable from all corners of the room. As the heat and humidity rose so did the audible breaths from the room of yogis who filled and emptied their lungs in rhythmic unison.
For the first time in a while, Kenny slowly started to feel connected with her body as the community moved through a fast-paced series of Sun A and Sun B Salutations.
“Top of mat. Rise up. Forward fold. Halfway lift. Forward fold. Hands to mat. Chaturanga. Upward facing dog. Downward facing dog. Breathe in. Breathe out,” Marah hypnotically repeated.
Although her body was heavy and her swan dive wasn’t as graceful as it was a few weeks ago, Kenny felt her limbs elongate and strengthen with each flow.
The sweat poured off her face and body like a faucet that someone forgot to turn off.
It was a rapid detox. The movement and positions were invigorating and freeing.
Except the forward fold. The position that had her bent in half, face to feet, was a glaring reminder of how badly she needed a pedicure.
Her toenails were chipped and misshapen, and she could not remember the last time she had a tootsie tune-up. Memorial Day? Easter?
“Mental note: Add pedicure to to-do list,” Kenny quietly whispered to herself between breaths. “Throw in brow wax and Brazilian, too.”
A good brow wax was like an instant face lift, especially when Kenny had a spare fifteen minutes to enjoy the under-eye gel masks her esthetician started adding to the service.
She wondered if the treatment was offered to all loyal clients or only to her out of pity because she always looked so stressed and tired.
The hour-long class approached culmination, and she took pigeon pose on the right side. And then pigeon on the left side before reclining into Savasana.
“Namaste,” Marah cooed as she firmly placed a chilled lavender towel across Kenny’s shut eyes, her body sinking fully into corpse pose.
Kenny laid, completely still, in the pool of her own sweat for longer than the traditional two minutes a yogi stays in the final resting posture.
She wasn’t ready to give up the quiet and 105-degree temperature of the room or to begin tackling her ever-growing to-do list. She was also self-conscious about standing up, knowing that her soaked, oversized tank would cling to the rolls of her midsection.
She gingerly pushed herself up to a seated position, rolled up her mat, and made her way out of the hot room.
After grabbing a bottle of guava goddess Kombucha from the cooler in the hall, she sat on the cubbies to cool down.
She reached under the bench for the red drawstring bag and pulled out her flip-flops, sliding ten grimy toes into them.
While she sipped the raw tea drink with one hand, she dug around for her phone with the other, and when the screen lit up, mid-gulp, she almost regurgitated the liquid that was halfway down her throat.
Fifteen missed calls. Five voicemails. Thirty-seven emails.
All with the subject line URGENT: Dr. Love. Flagged with the red exclamation point of dread, the symbol that noted exceptionally high priority messages.
Kenny’s heart rate was still elevated from the workout, but she physically felt the blood-pumping organ drop inside her. It had been exactly sixty-eight minutes since she received the glowing email from David Greene singing her praises. And now this.
From: David Greene
To: Kennedy Sloane
CC: WBS Executives, WBS News
Subject: RE: Clinton White Coverage
WHERE ARE YOU????????? CALL ME NOW.
David Greene
President and Executive Director, WBS News
Oh my God. What could have happened in a little more than an hour?
There were no fewer than one million thoughts going through Kenny’s head and breathing certainly wasn’t one of them.
In fact, she may have forgotten to breathe altogether.
Before she had time to process what was going on she could hear David Greene’s voice coming at her from the other side of the phone.
She wasn’t sure if she dialed him, or he called her.
But she knew she needed to regain her composure to verbalize something, anything.
“Clinton White sat down with NBC!” the usually docile executive barked.
“He gave them hours for an interview. He gave them access to the homestead—a tour of the house where the murder happened! He gave them old home videos and family photographs. He even gave them his children’s report cards and homemade Father’s Day cards they crafted when they were students at Sidwell Friends School!
For Christ’s sake, Kenny, what the hell happened? ”
Alarmed by the delivery, but mildly relieved by the absurdity of it all since Clinton White was incarcerated—and it would have been impossible for even the most stealth reporter to contact him—she confidently asserted, “David, I apologize for any confusion but that’s not possible.
White has been sitting in a cell since his arrest last year, no media can get to him.
Where did you hear this? The Daily Mail?
It’s probably just that tabloid trying to stir drama.
You know they’ll conjure up anything they think will drive viewership. ”
“In fact, Kenny, yes, I did read it in The Daily Mail,” David scolded in a stern tone that was unfamiliar—and scary. “And on Page Six. And in the Daily News. And in People. It’s even in the goddamn New York Times!”
“I . . . I . . . I don’t, I don’t under . . . I don’t kn . . .” she sheepishly stammered, again grasping for words.
The only thing she knew for certain was that now she was not breathing, and her heart dropped further down her insides like the ball at Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The drop was fast and slow, at the same time. The only thing missing was the ten-second warning.
“I don’t know what you do or don’t know or understand, Kennedy. But understand this: I want to know how this happened, and I want to know that you will never lose a big interview like this ever again,” David chided with emphasis on the word ever. Click.
Find out what happened. Okay. Find out what happened? What? How the hell am I supposed to find out what happened?
None of it made sense. The relationship and trust she built with Luke and Lonnie Locke over the months, was any of it real? Or was it all one of those crazy dreams that she mistook for reality?
Before calling the Locke Brothers to attempt to piece together the career-killing events that were unfolding in front of her, she scrolled through her emails.
The contents were nauseating. Headline after headline and links to articles about the get of the decade. The get that was supposed to be hers.
The Daily Mail: “Dr. Love’s NBC Interview Will Leave Viewers Blushing”
New York Post: “Harvard Hottie Gets Intimate in NBC Exclusive”
New York Daily News: “NBC Woos the Love Doctor”
People: “Dr. Love Spills All to NBC”
The New York Times: “Clinton White Breaks Silence in Primetime Exclusive Interview”
Kenny began to get lightheaded. Her stomach turned and head pounded.
Her hands were clammy and eyes stung as they welled with tears.
She had to get in touch with the Locke Brothers to try and fix this mess.
She launched an aggressive communication outreach assault.
Both of their cell phones went straight to voicemail and Helen, the office manager, didn’t pick up the landline.
Emails were met with out of office replies. Text messages weren’t read.
Kenny found the “Send Read Receipt” phone feature stalkerish and creepy but liked that Luke and Lonnie always had theirs enabled.
Until now, when she knew they weren’t reading her texts.
Not only did the Locke brothers promise her an interview and give it away without warning, but now they were blatantly ignoring her.
WTF.
She chucked her Kombucha bottle in the trash can; her ability to swallow disappeared with her ability to verbalize a sentence.
She collected her belongings and, this time, shuddered when she looked out the window.
The glass, fogged up from the heat and humidity still pouring out of the hot room, was like the state of her head.
The golden rays of sunshine had given way to swirling, angry gray clouds that blanketed the city.
The skies looked like they would open at any moment.
Mental note: Add “Buy umbrella” to to-do list.