27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I was in the midst of finishing my mission of delivering a screen-printed table skirt to a realtor in an enclave of small businesses and office suites. On the sidewalk, I noticed a bunch of garish yellow balloons under a similarly jaundiced awning. “Do you like your current gym?” a baby-faced woman holding a clipboard called after me as I walked by.
I stopped mid stride. “What?”
“Do you like your current gym? I can tell by the way you move that you work out.”
“Are you hitting on me? ”
“No, um, I work for Goin’ Bananas Gym.” She sliced her hand through the air to indicate the nonstop yellow. Get it? The obnoxious branding? “What does your current gym offer?”
“I don’t have a current gym.”
“Would you like to try our special introductory offer for new clients?”
Oh, a bullshit promotion to get me to believe I was special. “What’s the offer?”
“A free week . You can attend one class a day and have unlimited access to the weight and cardio room for a week.”
“Neato.”
“You need to fill out this form.”
Of course. The form asked for name, address, and a credit card. I gave the number of the one I recently canceled.
“You can sign up for the classes you want to go to online. That way, you’re always guaranteed a spot.”
And before I knew it, I was signed for a week of free classes at the Goin’ Bananas Gym.
The next day, I arrived at the gym wearing my good luck lavender bike short set with the matching sports bra. I wore the chemical-burn, accidental crop top with the cat and toys—the pussy one. I signed in at the desk. “I’m here to take Balletch with Jackie.” Balletch being the lovely portmanteau of ballet and stretch, a Goin’ Bananas exclusive exercise class.
“You can’t wear that shirt here,” the teen at the front desk said. I’d call him Killjoy Kyle.
I gave the cartoon on my boobs a look over. “Really?”
“We want to keep the place family friendly.”
“I can turn it inside out?”
“You’re welcome to purchase one of our shirts.”
That’s how I found myself in a Balletch class in a yellow shirt with a giant peeled banana on it. Having to deal with an unexpected shirt problem, I was one of the last to arrive in class. Front and center.
The rest of the Balletch classmates wore black unitards and easily had a lot more height than me. Did I just walk in on a ballet class for adults?
“This is Jackie’s class, right?” I asked.
“Yes, she’s fantastic,” the retired ballerina to my right said. She even had the bun and the wrap sweater that screamed she’d burnt a hole through her disc copy of Center Stage .
Jackie padded in. She wore shiny, black leggings with a yellow sports bra, and a matching yellow scrunchie held her ponytail back. Her stance was in perpetual turn out. In a soothing voice, she greeted, “ Hi, ladies. Welcome to intermediate Balletch. We have something for everyone. To the beginners who are trying us out for the first time—hi, Sah-oy-ers. Cute shirt.”
I murmured that my name was pronounced Sir-sha . And didn’t she realize the yellow monstrosity was the gym’s own creation? I wouldn’t wear a half-peeled banana without some kind of dick joke scrawled underneath. Maybe some anti-circumcision rallying cry— Don’t snip the tip .
“Let’s warm up.” Jackie lay down on the mat. I followed suit. She held her legs up at a forty-five-degree angle, tipped her chin to her chest, and flapped her arms while she breathed something out of a birthing class.
I did my best to copy Jackie.
“Relax your shoulders, Sah-oy-ers. Keep the movement of your arms between the floor and your shoulders. Feel that pulse, Sah-oy-ers?”
“Just call me Sir,” I grunted, sounding more like a toad.
We completed a few more exercises in which I appeared to be backstroking through the air confused. My face contorted into distressed expressions in the mirror. My muscles didn’t feel jack or shit, but apparently if I kept my movement within my hip socket—whatever the fuck that meant—I’d feel the burn in my glute.
On top of confusion came lies. “Let’s work for those long, lean arms we all love about Balletch.”
Muscles didn’t lengthen. A long and lean look was achieved in the kitchen, not the gym. If Jackie had a personal trainer like Beau, she’d know that.
Then came the pièce de résistance, shoulder stands. My core strength had improved since my first foray into lifting my ass above my head. It also helped to have an extrinsic motivation—how easily Beau could pile drive me with his cock in bed was a perfect motivator. I sat up, watching all the ballerinas effortlessly whoosh their legs above their heads, toes hitting the floor above their head.
“Go for it, Sah-oy-ers!” Thighs crushing her diaphragm deflated Jackie’s enthusiasm from her voice.
I looked around the room to find a supply closet or a cart of accessories. “Call me Sir. Do you have any bolsters or anything?”
“Reliance on accessories can weaken your practice.”
What a giant load of horse shit. “Cool, so do you?”
“Just go for it!”
I swung my legs over my head; my boobs crushed my throat. In a room full of elegant swans, I was a waddling duck kicking the air for dear life. And like some kind of cartoon duck, I grunted out a request. “How… can… I… breathe?”
“Normally, you don’t want that much swing. It becomes less of a core strengthener then. Straighten your legs.” Annoyance threaded Jackie’s tone. I was a less-than-ideal student, and she was the teacher who possessed a withering iota of patience for me.
“Boobs… crushing… me.” My tits pressed into my voice box.
Jackie returned with a singsong, “You got this, Sah-oy-ers.”
I rolled out of the mess. I had a middle finger and two legs. And I walked out.
I was hoofing it on my way home, loving the post-workout injustice huff I had driven myself into. A tan sedan slowed down next to me as I walked along the sidewalk. Was I going to get kidnapped?
“Sir!” a woman’s voice called out.
I turned to see Beau’s mom, driving her car at a crawl. “Good, I recognized you from the wild shirt.”
Didn’t want to break it to her that this one wasn’t mine .
“Hi, um, Mrs. Bishop. ”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, call me Carol.” Who would’ve thought Beau’s progenitor could be so lovingly exasperated? She continued, “We inferred something happened between you and Beau when you stopped coming around.”
I might have played the part of a girlfriend, showing up randomly at their house. I didn’t have the heart to tell her our relationship was transactional. Cash for ass. “Beau and I weren’t really—”
“He nailed the audition and accepted a job offer in San Francisco. I barely see him now. He leaves in the morning, returns later at night.”
He did it. In the way that I knew he would. I held the corners of my mouth together to keep my smile from beaming.
“Have you had lunch yet?”
I hadn’t. But me, rounding forty, wasn’t going to rely on my ex-lover’s mother’s kitchen. “Um…” Must think of an excuse faster .
“Get in the car.”
Did Beau get his dom side from his mom? Jesus!
Of course I slid into the passenger seat.
She fixed me the same lunch my mom packed me when I was twelve. A turkey sandwich, baby carrots, apple slices, a chocolate chip cookie, and a tall glass of skim milk. She asked me how long I had lived in the area—eight years; what brought me here from the Midwest—my then-husband’s job, now ex-husband.
I ate the last crumb of the cookie. Honestly, with how good it tasted, I was surprised Beau had the body fat levels he did.
“Can I show you something?” Carol asked.
“Um…” This woman left me as speechless as her son.
“Beau won’t be here for a few more hours in case you’re worried you’ll have an awkward run-in.” She waved her hand for me to follow her.
We entered his bedroom. It was clean with blue-gray carpet and matching plaid comforter tucked impeccably over a single bed. He had a Foster the People poster on his wall. My presence invaded this museum of adolescence. I was seeing a side of Beau that I had no right to see. Carol gestured to a picture frame on his cherry wood dresser drawers.
I bent to take a look. It was the cocktail napkin from the night I got Preeti’s autograph. He had framed it. I had drawn on the napkin to be silly and disposable like most of my ideas. That my silliness turned him sentimental lit internal fireworks. “I’ll be damned.”
His sentiment hit me harder than a cartoon piano. This meant... Beau loved me. Maybe not now, but he did once, and I ran his feelings through a paper shredder.
“Thank you for showing me this,” I said.
She shrugged. What had he told her about us?
“He said he loved me. I didn’t believe him,” I confessed.
Carol crossed her arms over her chest. “He majored in acting because someone thought he was cute. He wasn’t that good at it.”
I gaped at her, not sure if her brutal honesty made her the world’s worst or best mom.
“He hasn't started filming for the app yet. He’s spending the first month teaching classes at the San Francisco gym. That is if you want to know where to find him.” A knowing smirk emerged from her lips. I’d seen a similar quirk of the mouth from Beau, usually when he was being smart and cute at the same time. Carol was meddling alright.
That night, I drew a picture of me and the cartoon baby swinging on some swings in Sequoia Station Park. We faced the sun set, our backs to the viewer. My speech bubble said, I think I fucked up my second chance at love.
A situation like this needs a grand gesture, the baby answered. The next frame, the baby spread its arms and smiled, facing the viewer. How about changing your own diapers!
After I uploaded that cartoon to my social media account, I had a notification, which told me more traffic than usual came to my page. Apparently, the cartoon where I embarrassed myself in front of a professional illustrator took off. It latched on to a few millennials in arrested development meme compilations, and I was finally getting my art viewed. One comment read, I need this on a T-shirt.
But my favorite hearts of them all came from a username littlebeaublue . He liked the one where I made a personal trainer look like a shining superhero saving me from the doldrums of a corporate gym.
I continued to draw until my eyelids drooped. The last drawing was me and the baby under the shade of a sycamore tree. I think I love him too.
When I love something, I never let it go , the baby said. The next frame, it was back in the grass, baby feet displayed for the reader to see. Either that or I puke on them.
It took the cartoon manifestation of my baby, but I realized I loved Beau too. Did he still love me?
It would take a grand gesture.