“Oh, I’m very aware she didn’t go.”
The bottle lowers. “How d’ya mean?”
“I took a yoga class today.”
Nax stares at me, and bursts out laughing. “Are you telling me you took her class? How the Tuck did that happen?”
Cringing at their name-game, I take a long drag, the chilled amber liquid not able to cool me off. “It’s not funny.”
He blinks, starts laughing again. “Yeah it is. But I’m wracking my brain for how you learned which of the yoga studios she teaches at. How’d you pull that off? There’s so many of them!”
Dumbfounded, I explode, “I didn’t go to her class on purpose!”
His head cranes back like I hit him, but his blue eyes never lose their humor. “Oh right! You thought she was off today. That she would have come with us to Central Park!”
Pushing off the wall I growl, “I had no idea she taught at that studio! Nax, why would I go to her studio when there are hundreds, and you know I avoid her?!”
“Because you wanted to see her.” His free hand flies up in a stop-sign. “I can see I was mistaken.”
“Delusional is more like it.” Walking to the couch — my apartment an open floor plan design — I flop onto it, grab the remote, pissed off, and no longer interested in talking.
Nax walks over, blocking my TV screen. “I need to hear the story.”
“No story.”
Grinning, “Tell me the story!” he takes a swig.
“No.”
In a flash he lunges for me, grabs the remote, hits the off button, and hurls it toward the hallway leading toward my bedroom and office. The batteries fly out, but that doesn’t bother him. Few things do. A fact I’m used to from years of knowing the guy.
“Nice,” I lean back on the couch, “If you broke that, you’re paying for it,” bottle on my thigh, legs spread in the jeans I put on after a hot shower, white t-shirt wrinkled over my six pack. “You want details?”
“Yep.”
“Well you’re not getting them.”
He holds his hands out, “Allow me to paint the picture then,” bottle gripped in one as he describes my hell like a scene from one of his movies. “Fade in. Yoga studio. Lights dim. We hear New Age music playing as an incredibly hot yoga teacher shows how limber she is in pants painted on her body.”
“Stop.”
“The yoga teacher is Tempest Tuck, late-twenties, bohemian style, beautiful, earthy, with a voice that could calm a hurricane.”
“Just stop.”
“Before her, we see students hanging on her every word. Among them is Joshua Arosio, early thirties, gym rat, tanned former model turned philanthropist, and he’s watching her like he shouldn’t want to bang her…but secretly does.”
Nax ducks as my bottle flies at his head. It crashes against the TV screen, glass shattering, beer sprayed everywhere.
Will’s bedroom door opens to my left, Nax’s right, and he peeks out like a war just started. “Dad?”
“It’s okay, Will. I just hit a sore spot in your lonely old man.”
I glare at Nax, but my face softens as Will asks, “Is it about Mom again?”
Nax loses the humor.
Mine was long gone.
I stand up. “It’s all good, Will. I’ve got some pent up anger, that’s all. Gonna take some time.”
He nods, and it doesn’t take a psychic to know that he wishes that time was over. It’s been hard on my son not only losing his mother, but losing me to depression as well.
From inside the room, Joe thinks we can’t hear him whisper, “Did your dad hit my dad?”
Will looks back. “No. It was just his beer bottle.”
“Is he drunk?”
“Are you drunk, Dad?”
“Not even close, buddy.”
He hesitates, then disappears, door a quiet click.
I lock eyes with my friend, “Ya done?” and head for a broom, garbage pail, and some rags — two wet, one dry.
We clean in silence, carrying everything back to where it goes, together. Nax runs hot water over the broom bristles so they don’t dry stuck. “I see the class really worked then?”
A grin spreads despite myself. “Yeah, it did the trick alright.”
“Better than therapy.”
“I feel so Zen.”
Nax shakes the broom and carries it to my closet. “You going back?”
“Never in a million years.”
Shutting the closet door, he grins. “I was joking.”
“I wasn’t.”
Chapter 4
Grandma Lily greets me with her slow Georgian drawl, “Tempest, what an unexpected delight!” front door widened for me to enter as she adds, “I’m so glad I was home when you called.”
Nervous about why I’ve come, I force a smile, “It’s so good to see you,” hugging her and not wanting to let go. But I have to be strong.
We separate and walk inside as Grandma asks, “Are you excited about your sister’s condition?”
“Condition? Grandma, they don’t call it that anymore.”
“In my day it was considered obscene to say the word pregnant, and I suppose I still haven’t adjusted.”
In their living room I glance to framed photos of our family above the darkened hearth clean of ash, and on Grandpa’s piano that he bought after retirement and is still learning how to play. Lifting a photograph of my mom and her sisters when they were little, it strikes me that my sister is going to have photos like this soon of her growing family.
A pang of longing hits me, but I shove it down. “I’m very excited about becoming an aunty.”
“And me a great-grandmother. Where does the time go? Let me pour you some lemonade.”
“That would be nice, thank you.” I watch her disappear down the hall leading to a kitchen they haven’t remodeled since the sixties, and my heart races at what I’m here to do. There’s a shake in my voice as I call out, “Is Grandpa Peter home?”
“No, dear, but
