added clips to secure them. We were comfortable working with weights together; Bobo’s first job had been here at the gym, and he’d spotted for me many a time. This morning, he took his position at the front of the bar and I straddled the seat, leaning over the padded rest, the backs of my hands toward the floor so I could grasp the bar to curl up. I nodded when I was ready, and he helped me lift the bar the first couple of inches. Then he let go, and I brought it up myself, squeezing until the bar touched my chin. I finished my ten reps without too much trouble, but I was glad when Bobo helped me ease the bar down into the rack.
“Toni, are you here for the rest of the week?” I asked, making an effort to be polite for Bobo’s sake. He slid the clips off, raising his blond eyebrows interrogatively. “Dime again,” I said, and together we prepared the bar.
“Yes, we’ll go back to Montrose on Sunday afternoon,” Toni said, with equal politeness and a tiny, clear emphasis on the
I nodded to show I was ready, and Bobo gave me a little boost to get the bar off the stand. With a lot more difficulty, I completed another set, making sure to breathe out as I lifted, in when I lowered. My muscles began to tremble, I made the deep “uh” that accompanied my best effort, and Bobo did his job.
“Come on Lily, squeeze, you can do it,” he exhorted sternly, and the bar touched my chin. “Look at Lily’s definition, Toni,” Bobo said over his shoulder. Behind his back, Toni looked at me as if she wished I’d vanish in a puff of smoke. But I was honor-bound to complete the next two reps. When they were done, Bobo said, “You can do another one. You’ve got it left in you.”
“I’m through, thanks,” I said firmly. I rose and removed the clips that secured the weights. We began putting the discs back on the rack.
Toni wandered over to the water fountain.
“I need to talk to you this weekend,” Bobo said quietly.
“Okay.” I hesitated. “Saturday afternoon?”
He nodded. “Your place?”
“All right.” I was doubtful about the wisdom of this, but I owed it to him to listen, whatever he wanted to say.
My forehead was beaded with sweat. Instead of searching out my towel, I lifted the hem of my T-shirt and dabbed at my forehead, ensuring Bobo saw the horrendous scars on my ribs.
I saw him gulp. I went on to my next exercise feeling obscurely vindicated. Though Bobo was handsome and wholesome as a loaf of good bread, and I had once or twice been tempted to take a bite, Toni was from his world. I intended to see he kept my age and bitter experience in his mind.
Janet was doing shoulders this morning, and I spotted for her while she worked on the Gravitron. Her knees on the small platform, the counterweight set at forty pounds so she wouldn’t be lifting her whole body weight, Janet gripped the bars above her head and pulled up. She was working pretty hard the first few reps, and by number eight, I wandered over to hold her feet and push up gently to lighten the strain on her arms. When she’d finished number ten, Janet dangled from the bars, panting, and after a minute she slid her knees off the platform and stood on the uprights. Stepping off backward, she took a few more seconds to catch her breath and let the muscles of her shoulders recoup.
“Are you going to the funeral?” she asked. She moved the pin to the thirty-pound slot.
“I don’t know.” I hated the thought of dressing up and going into the crowded Shakespeare Combined Church. “Have you heard if the time’s certain yet?”
“Last night, my mother was over at Lacey and Jerrell’s when the funeral home called to say the coroner’s office in Little Rock was sending the body back. Lacey said Saturday morning at eleven.”
I considered, scowling. I could probably finish work by eleven if I got up extra early and hurried. If I ever got around to getting my clients to sign a contract, I decided one of the clauses would be that I didn’t have to go to their funerals.
“I guess I should,” I said reluctantly.
“Great!” Janet looked positively happy. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll park at your house and we can walk to the funeral together.”
Making that little arrangement would never have occurred to me. “Okay,” I said, struggling not to sound astonished or doubtful. Then I realized I had a bit of news I should share.
“Claude and Carrie got married,” I told her.
“You’re… you’re serious!” Janet faced me, astonished. “When?”
“At the courthouse, yesterday.”
“Hey, Marshall!” Janet called to our
“Claude and Carrie got married, Lily says!”
This caused a general burst of comment among the others in the room. Brian Gruber quit doing stomach crunches and sat up on the bench, patting his face with his towel. Jeri yanked her cellular phone from her workout bag and called a friend she knew would be up and drinking her coffee. A couple of other people sauntered over to discuss this news. And I caught a blaze of some emotion on Bobo’s face, some feeling I found didn’t fit in any category of comfortable response to my trivial piece of gossip.
“How did you know?” Janet asked, and I discovered I was in the middle of a small group of sweaty and curious people.
“I was there,” I answered, surprised.
“You were a witness?”
I nodded.
“What did she wear?” Jerri asked, pushing her streaky blond hair away from her forehead.
“Where’d they go for their honeymoon?” asked Marlys Squire, a travel agent with four grandchildren.
“Where are they gonna live?” asked Brian Gruber, who’d been trying to sell his own house for five months.
For a moment, I thought of turning tail and simply walking away, but… maybe… it wasn’t so bad, talking to these people, being part of a group.
But when I was driving away from the gym I felt the reaction; I’d let myself down, somehow, a corner of my brain warned. I’d opened myself, made it easy. Instead of sliding between those people, observing but not participating, I’d held still long enough to be pegged in place, laid myself open to interpretation by giving them a piece of my thoughts.
While I worked that day, I retreated into a deep silence, comforting and refreshing as an old bathrobe. But it wasn’t as comfortable as it had been. It didn’t seem, somehow, to fit anymore.
That evening I walked, the cool night covering me with its darkness. I saw Joel McCorkindale, the minister of the Shakespeare Combined Church, running his usual three miles, his charisma turned off for the evening. I observed that Doris Massey, whose husband had died the previous year, had resumed entertaining, since Charles Friedrich’s truck was parked in front of her trailer. Clifton Emanuel, Marta Schuster’s deputy, rolled by in a dark green Bronco. Two teenagers were breaking into the Bottle and Can Liquor Store, and I used my cell phone to call the police station before I melted into the night. No one saw me; I was invisible.
I was lonely.
Chapter Six
Jack called Friday morning just as I was leaving for my appointment with Lacey at Deedra’s apartment.
“I’m on my way back,” he said. “Maybe I can come down Sunday afternoon.”
I felt a flash of resentment. He’d drive down from Little Rock for the afternoon, we’d hop into bed, and he’d have to go back for work on Monday. I made myself admit that I had to work Monday, too, that even if he stayed in Shakespeare we wouldn’t get to see each other that much. Seeing him a little was better than not seeing him at
