Mary looked puzzled. “What’d he agree with? The cases weren’t any help.”
“Who knows? He bought the argument. I have to go, I’m really late. I just thought I’d say good-bye.” Anne edged out of the office and faked a final smile. “Happy Fourth of July. Have a great weekend, guys.”
“You probably have plans. Dates, right?” Mary asked, and Anne nodded.
“Yep. See ya.”
“Tonight, too? Because I—”
“Yes. Big date tonight. Gotta go now.”
“Okay, well, happy Fourth.”
Judy nodded. “Have a good one.”
But Anne was already out of the office and down the hall, padding quickly away. An hour later she was dressed in an oversized T-shirt, baggy shorts, and Reeboks, and standing in a practically empty gym, squaring off against a Life Fitness elliptical exerciser, a costly machine that simulates running for people who hate to run for free. select workout, ordered the display, and tiny red lights blinked a helpful arrow that pointed to the enter button.
Anne hit the button, cycling through fat burn, cardio, and manual, until she got to random, which resonated. random would place huge hills in her path without warning. random would keep her on her toes. random equaled life.
She hit the button, grabbed the handles, and started fake-running. The gym was deserted except for a muscleman on the leg-lift machine, watching himself in the mirror, Narcissus on Nautilus. It was so quiet she could hear the
She had won, after all.
The thought made her smile. A baby hill rose ahead of her, and she fake-jogged up its simulated incline, her eyes on the TV. Across the bottom of the screen slid two stacks of stock quotes, with their mysterious acronyms and red and green arrows. There were lots of red arrows, pointing down. If Anne had money invested in the market she’d be worried, but she invested in shoes.
“Hi, Anne,” said a voice beside her, and she looked over. It was a girl climbing on the exerciser next to her and selecting fat burn. The chick was too thin to need fat burn, but it was the only lie bigger than one-size-fits- all.
“Hi,” Anne said, wracking her brain for the girl’s name. The girl started walking at a leisurely pace, with her eyes focused at some imaginary point in the wall, and Anne finally remembered it. Willa Hansen. Willa was a brooding artist-type and she’d dyed her hair again, this time a normal human-being color. It was even a red shade close to Anne’s.
“I like your new haircolor, Willa,” Anne blurted out, after a minute. She gathered she was trying to strike up a conversation, but wasn’t sure why. Maybe to prove she remembered Willa’s name. Mental note: It is pointless to remember someone’s name and not get credit for it.
“Thanks.”
“How’d you get the blue out?” Anne asked, then wanted to kick herself. Somehow it sounded wrong. She’d always had a hard time talking to women. Men were so much easier; to talk to a man, all she had to do was listen, which they counted as the same thing.
“The blue came out right away. It was Kool-Aid.”
“Huh?” Anne tugged out her silent earphones. Maybe she hadn’t heard right. “You put Kool-Aid, the
“Sure.” Willa smiled. “Just add water.”
Anne wasn’t sure what to say, so she fake-jogged for a moment in silence. There were things she would never understand about her generation, and her experiments with haircolor tended to the more conventional. When she started practice, she dyed her hair Professional Brown, but it had proved futile. She’d remained Unprofessional, only with really boring hair, so she’d gone back to her natural Lucille Ball Red. She took another conversational stab. “I didn’t know you could put Kool-Aid in your hair.”
“Sure,” Willa answered, strolling along in her T-shirt and shorts. “I used to use Manic Panic, but Kool-Aid works just as well. The blue was Blueberry, and to get rid of it, I just put Cherry on top, and my hair turned black.”
“Blackberry?”
“I guess.” Willa didn’t get the joke. “Then I hennaed it, and it turned out kind of coppery.”
Anne fake-scaled another hill and kept going. The lighted display on the treadmill told her she had fake- jogged for only 2:28, which meant she had approximately 3 years and 23 hours left. She let her glance slip sideways and checked Willa’s display. Willa didn’t have any hills ahead, which meant she lacked sufficient stress in her diet.
“What are you doing for the Fourth, Anne?”
“I have to hole up in my house and work all weekend. I have a big trial on Tuesday.”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re a lawyer.”
Anne felt the urge to tell Willa about her big victory in court today, naked man and all, but it would be pathetic. She didn’t know Willa very well and they’d talked only a few times about their respective personal lives, or lack thereof. Like Anne, Willa lived alone and wasn’t from Philly. Anne sensed that she had a trust fund, which was where the similarities between the two girls came to the proverbial screeching halt. “Do you have plans for the holiday?”
“Not anymore. I was gonna dog-sit this weekend for this couple, but they broke up.”
“The couple?”
“The dogs.”
Anne didn’t ask. She was fake-puffing too hard anyway. “I didn’t know you dog-sat.”
“I do, sometimes, for fun. I love dogs. When I dog-sit, I use the time to sketch them.” Willa strolled along on her machine. “There’ll be a lot else to sketch this weekend, I guess. There’s something called the Party on the Parkway, and fireworks at the Art Museum on Monday night.”
“Oh, no. I live right off the Parkway.” This would be Anne’s first Independence Day in Philly, and she hadn’t thought of it. How would she get any work done? Damn. Kilimanjaro loomed on her Life Fitness display. Another example of random. “I have to work this weekend. How am I gonna do that?”
“Don’t you have an office?”
“Yeah, but—” Anne didn’t want to run into Mary and Judy. Or worse, Bennie. Work would be okay if it weren’t for coworkers.
“Offices suck, right?”
“Exactly.”
“So why don’t you take off?” Willa’s saunter slowed to a crawl. Soon she would be going in reverse, and the gym would have to pay her.
“Take off?”
“Aren’t you single?”
“Very.”
“So go to the Jersey shore. I was on North Cape May once, and there’s a national park there. Very quiet and peaceful. I got a lot of sketching done.”
“Down the shore?” It was code for the Jersey shore. Everybody in Philadelphia vacationed in South Jersey. Unlike L.A., Philly wasn’t a summer-in-Provence kind of town, thank God. “I suppose I could go.”
Willa resumed her slow walk, and Anne fell instantly in love with the idea of a weekend getaway. What a way to celebrate her big win! She didn’t own a car, but she always rented the same convertible, mainly to go food- shopping on the weekends. The manager at the Hertz in town usually saved it for her; it was a fire-engine red Mustang that would embarrass most pimps. She planned to buy it as soon as she got out of credit-card debt and hell froze over.
