CHAPTER NINETEEN
It turned out that the gym was located on the second floor.
Joan exited the elevator and followed the winding hallway past the closed doors of the men’s and women’s locker rooms, the pool, and the massage room, where according to the small sign hanging from the doorknob, a massage was currently in progress. “Didn’t even know we had a massage room,” Joan muttered as she proceeded around a curved corner, past the two guest suites, toward the recently renovated gym. Even before she reached it, she could hear the hum of the equipment radiating down the hall.What am I doing?she wondered as she raised her fob to unlock the door. She was seventy years old and hadn’t exercised in years. Nothing she put herself through now was going to make a whit of difference. Her rear end wasn’t going to get any higher or plumper no matter how many squats she did. Her stomach wasn’t getting any flatter no matter how many sit-ups she performed. Her waist wasn’t getting any smaller no matter how many weights she managed to hoist above her head. She should just go back upstairs and moisturize.
Not that almost fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of expensive creams was going to make a difference either. Whatever had possessed her? She’d never been someone to throw money around carelessly. Unlike her late husband, who’d been as profligate as he was generous. Her eyes teared up with the memory of his handsome face. Even days away from death, he was handsome. At least in her eyes.How dare you go and die on me,she thought, hearing the click that unlocked the gym door and pulling it open. She might as well go in and have a look around.
The combination of smells hit her first—the newly installed gray carpet, the machines, the sweat, the Lysol. A white-haired man was doing a gentle jog on the second of four treadmills. He was dressed in blue gym shorts and his white T-shirt was spotted with perspiration. Thin wires connected his earphones to the TV attached to his machine, and he was watching one of the all-news channels. Joan recognized the picture filling the screen as the young woman who’d gone missing the previous week, although she couldn’t remember her name. From what she could gather from the information scrolling across the bottom of the small screen, the girl’s mutilated body had been discovered just hours ago in a landfill on the outskirts of town. There was speculation of a possible serial killer.
Poor girl,Joan thought, her eyes skipping down the row of machines—in addition to the treadmills, there were several elliptical and rowing machines, as well as two medieval-looking contraptions connected to an assortment of weights and pulleys—along the mirrored wall. She caught the reflection of an attractive older woman—still at least a decade younger than me,Joan thought, wistfully—doing a side plank at the far end of the rectangular room, under the supervision of a good-looking young man who was probably her trainer. The man was tall, tanned, and appropriately muscular, with closely cropped dark hair and an engaging smile. The black T-shirt stretching across his expansive chest readINSPIRATION, PERSPIRATION, VALIDATION.Really?Joan wondered.It’s as simple as that?
“Well, hello, Joan,” the woman called, scrambling to her feet and wiping the sweat from her forehead. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How’ve you been?”
Joan fought to remember the woman’s name, but it wouldn’t come. Just another one of the great things about aging—the loss of easy recall. Names, dates, places, all once readily available, now gone. To be replaced by what? Chatter. Noise. Insignificant nonsense. And so arbitrary. Why could she remember the name of Kim Kardashian’s second husband—Kris Humphries, for God’s sake!—and not the name of people she saw regularly? Why did she even know who Kim Kardashian was? “I’m so sorry,” she said, approaching the woman. “I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Give me a minute,” the woman said with a laugh. Then, “It’s Linda.”
Joan smiled, noting that Linda was wearing the latest in workout attire—navy leggings and a tight, hot-pink T-shirt that matched her equally hot-pink sneakers. She felt instantly self-conscious about her own pair of loose-fitting yoga pants, old white T, and dirty white running shoes. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Please,” Linda said. “It happens to me all the time.” She checked her watch, then turned to her trainer. “We done here?”
“We are.”
“Good. I’m running a little late. Do you mind if I take off?”
“Pretty sure I can find my way out,” her trainer said.
“Well, nice seeing you again,” Linda said to Joan, wrapping a towel around her neck. “This is Rick, by the way. If you’re ever in the market for a good trainer, he’s your guy.” A second later, she was gone.
Joan noticed that the man on the treadmill had also left the gym during the last few minutes. “I am, actually,” she heard herself say.
Rick was checking his cellphone. “Excuse me?”
“In the market for a good trainer,” Joan explained, although she hadn’t been. “That is, if you’re free…”
“You mean right now?”
“If you’re free,” she said again. What was she thinking? It was Saturday night. He was a good-looking man. Of course he wouldn’t be free.
Rick shrugged, tucking his phone into the back pocket of his black sweatpants. “Well, my girlfriend just canceled on me, so, yes, as a matter of fact, I am free.”
“Oh. Well. Good.”
Neither moved.
“I charge a hundred dollars an hour,” he said.
“Sounds reasonable.” She had no idea if it was reasonable or not, but if she could spend almost fifteen hundred dollars on moisturizers, she could spend another hundred on a trainer.
“Okay. Well, then. Great. Should we get started?” He smiled, an expansive grin that drew his mouth up toward his eyes. “What are your goals?”
“Goals?”
“What you’d like to achieve,” he explained.
“Let’s see,” Joan said, mulling through a variety of options. “I guess I’d like a flatter stomach, a plumper backside, and a smaller waist.”
Rick paused a moment, his smile wavering. “Would you settle for better shoulders and arms?”