Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
It’s a hot May morning, and Lee is sitting on her mat in a small yoga studio a few blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. There’s a window open on one side of the room, but the sultry breeze blowing in is doing little to disperse the heavy smell of Nag Champa incense that’s hanging in the air like a toxic cloud. It makes Lee happy that she stopped burning incense at Edendale, the studio she owns in Silver Lake – not for health reasons, but because it seems like such a tired cliché.
The studio is packed, as she suspected it would be, and buzzing with excitement. The teacher, David Todd, is someone she’s been hearing about off and on for months now but has been too busy to take a class with. He’s an itinerant, under-the-radar teacher with a loyal following but no home studio. He freelances all over town and has a reputation for being fiercely independent and somewhat eccentric, qualities that Lee usually approves of in a teacher, provided they don’t lurch into diva-dom. He’s famously antiestablishment and against the commercialization of yoga that’s going on all over these days, a fact that, oddly enough, makes him more commercially valuable and sought after by the establishment. To add to his status as master teacher, yoga is only one of the things he does. From what she’s heard, David Todd (DT to his followers) teaches martial arts to troubled teens in the public schools and is an accomplished sculptor.
Lee read about today’s class on a yoga blog called Asana Junkie. Lainey, the new assistant Lee hired to help her out at Edendale, has been insisting she read at least three of the infinite number of yoga blogs out there every morning, with an eye to getting herself and the studio mentioned in a few. Six months ago, Lee took out a lease on a former bookstore next to her studio, and the new and expanded version of Edendale is set to open in a month or so. They’ll need all the new business they can get to keep the bills paid.
DT is going to be in SM tomorrow morning, the blog read, and unless I’m in the ER or Johnny Depp finally returns my call, I am going to be there, Manduka eKO mat in hand. And as long as you don’t take my spot, you should be there, too.
Lee clicked on the link and signed up for two spots. Unfortunately, Katherine, her friend and the masseuse at her studio, canceled without explanation at the last minute. It took a long time to get from Silver Lake to Santa Monica this morning, but hopefully it will be worth the drive. It’s been ages since Lee had a morning to herself to go to a studio and be a student again.
Even though she arrived early, the room was already jammed. It’s an unassuming place, not much bigger than the current studio at Edendale. Since she’s in the process of decorating the new space and sprucing up the old, Lee pays special attention to the appearance of the place. The walls here are a washed-out blue, and there are a few posters scattered around in a random fashion of lotus blossoms and water imagery and unspecified purple deities. Lee has devoted her life to yoga and is thankful, on a daily basis, for her teachers and guides, but she has to admit that, on the whole, the yoga aesthetic on display in most studios is pretty discouraging.
Lee recognized a few familiar faces from conferences and could tell from the buzz in the air and overheard scraps of conversation that more than two-thirds of the people in the class are teachers themselves. There was all the nervous excitement about more new studios opening, the complaints about finding reliable volunteer studio assistants, and the usual discussions of enrollment figures in teacher-training programs. Lee, who has been resisting the idea of offering training programs herself, is officially tired of this particular topic.
‘I’m holding three teacher trainings this year. The demand is so high, I could probably hold ten if there were enough weeks in the year.’
‘We’re going to offer a full-day session at the end of our training program about how to use the training to get non-yoga-related jobs.’
‘That’s a great idea. A friend of mine is a consultant who works with teacher-training graduates, to help them transition back into the fields they quit in order to take the training programs. I’m sure she’d come talk.’
‘I tried to get Kyra Monroe to do a guest teaching spot at our training, but she gets a flat fee and seventy-five percent of the profits for that day.’
‘Well, her husband used to be a film agent, so –’
‘I heard they broke up.’
‘Someone told me she calls herself Priestess Kyra on her website.’
‘No surprise, given her looks.’
‘I heard she never even went to a teacher-training program. Can that be?’
‘She’s one of the headliners at the Flow and Glow Festival this year. I’m going if I have to sell my car.’
Lee ended up on the far side of the room, closer to a wall than she likes to practice, but she had an extra cup of coffee when she got to Santa Monica, and she’s a little jangled. The wall might come in handy for balance, all things considered. The woman next to her is doing a series of deep hamstring stretches when she looks over at Lee and smiles.
‘Lee,’ she says, beaming. ‘It’s Shelly Mance. I used to come to Edendale when I lived out in Silver Lake. You were my first teacher.’
She scoots over and gives Lee a big hug. It isn’t that Lee doesn’t remember her; it’s just that she doesn’t remember her exactly. One of those faces that look familiar, like a tune you know you’ve heard before but can’t place. Like a lot of the women in the room, Shelly is all in white and wearing big silver jewelry. When did people start wearing jewelry to yoga class? Lee opened Edendale Yoga almost six years ago, and even though she remembers most of her students, there’s a certain amount of blurring in some cases.
‘You might not remember me,’ Shelly says. ‘I used to be a lot heavier.’
The fog starts to lift. Shelly definitely was a lot heavier, but Lee isn’t going to touch that topic. ‘Didn’t you used to have purple streaks in your hair?’
‘Don’t remind me, please.’
Lee remembers her as a diligent student with a lot of flexibility. Someone who’d obviously done gymnastics before adolescence and probably went through a lot of yo-yo weight shifts. Lee’s not in a position to judge in that area. ‘Do you still do those amazing splits?’ Lee asks.
‘God, I can’t believe you remember that. You inspired me so much. Actually, I’m a teacher now, too.’
‘Good for you,’ Lee says. There are so many people who claim to be yoga teachers these days, you always have to be careful about a follow-up question. It’s like asking an actor if he’s been on TV or a writer if she’s been published. ‘At this studio?’ she says.
‘No. I wish. This place is amazing. At YogaHappens. They hire a few big stars and then a ton of recent trainees like me to fill in the schedule. The pay is lousy, but it’s good on-the-job training.’
Lee nods. Shelly’s words confirm what she’s suspected for a long time. YogaHappens, the mega chain that tried to hire her last year, charges students a fortune for classes and mostly offers instructors who are learning as they go along.
‘You should come up to Edendale again to practice,’ Lee says. ‘We’re about to open a whole new wing. On top of that, we don’t burn incense.’
‘I know; it’s a little heavy today. It’s good I brought my inhaler.’ She slips this out of a pocket and takes a puff. ‘I’d love to come study with you again. I’d probably appreciate you even more now. Half the time I was in classes back then, I was staring at Alan. He’s so gorgeous, and you guys have such a great marriage. Everyone looks up to you. You do know that, right?’
Lee feels the familiar stab in her chest when she hears this, although it’s true the pain gets less sharp every month. It’s been almost a full year since they split up.
‘You don’t have to worry about being distracted by Alan anymore.’ She smiles at Shelly and decides to leave it at that.
‘Oh. Okay. Sorry?’
‘Don’t be,’ Lee says. ‘I’m not.’
The awkward silence is broken by David Todd’s entrance into the studio, and almost immediately, Lee feels the discussion drift away from her. He’s not tall – probably only a few inches taller than Lee. He has the sinewy limbs of a natural athlete and the huge, winning smile of a cartoon character. He’s wearing thin-framed eyeglasses, an improbable and endearing touch. His training as a master of some esoteric form of martial arts is clear from his posture and the solid, confident way he strides into the room. But at the same time, he manages to inject a note of self-mockery into his movements, which gives his walk an adorable puppy dog quality that Lee just falls for. A lot of teachers Lee’s interviewed for positions at Edendale present themselves with the grim seriousness of a funeral director. It’s nice to see a smile. He’s wearing an unpretentious T-shirt that makes him look completely unaffected and even more sexy.
Before he’s opened his mouth, Lee feels gripped by a sensation that’s so unfamiliar, she doesn’t recognize it at first. Oh no, she thinks. I’m falling in love.
He goes to one of the windows and opens it wider. ‘Let’s get rid of this smog,’ he says, batting at the incense smoke.
Lee is actually happy, for the first time in a very long while, that she and her husband are in the process of getting divorced. David Todd is exactly the teacher she needs at the studio to fill out her roster of instructors, and Alan was difficult about hiring male teachers at Edendale. They’re not worth the trouble, he always said. They hook up with students, and next thing you know, we’ll have a lawsuit on our hands. Too bad Lee didn’t realize sooner he’d been talking about himself. The last thing Alan wanted was competition for attention and students to seduce. If she’s felt a little overwhelmed by everything that’s been going on at Edendale recently, at least she’s able to make her own decisions about hiring. And suddenly, that seems like a very good thing.
Between teaching, running the studio, and taking care of the twins, Lee doesn’t make it to more than one class a month, and that’s in a good month. She gets to Edendale as early as she can and does her own practice, but that often involves a rehearsal for the classes she’ll teach that day, interrupted by making notes on her sequence and alignment. As David settles onto his mat at the front of the room and does some exaggerated and amusing stretches of his neck that make him look like an elastic superhero, Lee remembers how much fun it can be to be in someone else’s hands.
‘I don’t know about you,’ David says, ‘but I am in a completely ridiculous mood today. I just got back from a visit to my family in Chicago, and I’ve got jet lag, family lag, and the sugar blues. I know, it’s too much information, but I’ll try to make it seem relevant in some way by the end of the class. So … stick around, folks.’
Sharing personal information is risky, but somehow his ironic tone and enormous grin make it work. He’s transformed himself from an intimidatingly fit and attractive teacher into the dorky guy with a complicated family everyone can relate to. And maybe fall in love with. Almost everything he says elicits the fond laughter that comes as much from being adored as it does from being funny.
The real magic kicks in when he starts to teach. He leads the class through one of the most original flows Lee has seen in a long time. He manages to incorporate traditional sun salutations with martial arts kicks and graceful movements that have a touch of Martha Graham in them. At the same time that he’s moving around the room and making people laugh together as a group, he’s offering such exact and detailed verbal cues for the poses that Lee finds herself slipping into dragonfly (always a tough one for her) and a floating half moon with more grace and ease than she’s ever felt. The good humor and the constant smiles he elicits just make everything a little easier and everyone a little less tense.
Lee’s often felt that the überserious, reverential tone some teachers adopt makes students feel constricted and, in some way that she hasn’t quite figured out yet, competitive. As if they’re striving to be the holiest, not aiming to have fun. She tries for a light, irreverent tone, but DT is pulling it off with more charm and less sweat than she’s ever managed.
What amazes Lee most is that at the end of class, when he has the group in savasana, their eyes closed and a folded blanket resting heavily on their stomachs, he circles the room offering adjustments and goes back to his opening comments about visiting his family. But this time in a more quiet and somber tone, appropriate to what he’s saying.
‘Because what I realized this weekend, is that no matter how much I love my family – and despite all of our differences, I really do love them – the people I feel closest to are you. Maybe you’re thinking that I don’t even know you. And in most cases, it’s true. But here, in a room like this, with everyone working together in the same spirit, breathing in unison, wrestling with gravity, and reaching a little bit past their limits, I feel as if we’re connected in spirit, if that makes sense.
‘And so the truth is, I don’t know what else to do but to keep coming back to all of you, here and everywhere else I teach, because even if it sounds dumb, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense, you feel like my real family.’
Lee can hear his footsteps getting closer to her, and then she feels the warmth of his hands pressing lightly against her forehead.
‘This is what I believe in and love, and this is what keeps my life on track.’
It’s not that this is so unusual or so profound, but he says it with such sincerity that Lee finds herself genuinely moved. It’s as if all the losses she’s felt over the past year sweep over her along with the wound that Shelly opened at the start of class, and she’s forced to acknowledge, finally, that what’s kept her going, even more than her twins (though she hates to admit that), is the feeling of connection and love she gets from her students and the studio. She can’t imagine what she would have done in the past year without that. Lying on the floor with her eyes closed and tears running down the sides of her face, she knows that she will do whatever it takes to make the expansion of the studio a success. She has to. There just isn’t any other option.
And right now, she knows that convincing David Todd to give up his nomadic ways and come teach at her studio is a big part of that. It’s meant to be.
‘He’s amazing, isn’t he?’ Shelly says to Lee as she’s rolling up her mat.
‘He is,’ Lee says. She feels as if she’s been on a long, thrilling ride at an amusement park, but without the dizziness and nausea. She’s physically energized and a little spent emotionally. ‘Do you come to his classes a lot?’
‘As often as I can. If you want, I can introduce you to him. I always have questions.’ Shelly rolls her eyes.
Lee looks to the front of the room, where there’s a long line of students waiting to talk to DT or, for all she knows, get his autograph. There’s no chance that it’s a fast-moving line, and she has to get back to Silver Lake to teach. She goes to the cubby wall in back and scribbles a note on one of the business cards Lainey insisted she have made up. Maybe they weren’t a complete waste after all.
‘If you can hand this to him,’ Lee tells Shelly, ‘I’d be really grateful.’
‘I’ll tell him it’s from the best teacher in L.A. And that includes him.’
Katherine is in her sewing room, flowing through a few sun salutations, trying to work off her frustration about having killed the entire day waiting for her landlord to show up. She was supposed to go to class in Santa Monica with Lee, but she had to cancel. She knows that having a home yoga practice is, in many ways, the ideal, but she’s never been able to stick with it for more than twenty minutes at a stretch. As soon as she gets to a pose she doesn’t like, she either skips it or goes for a snack. When she hears people talking about their amazing home practices, she suspects they’re talking about ten to fifteen minutes of honest effort that devolves into a nap or masturbation.
As she’s trying to motivate herself to do at least one boat pose (her Pose of Dread), she hears a rapping on the window. She pops up and sure enough, there’s her landlord standing on the deck out back, peering through her window, hands cupped around his eyes.
Tom (she refuses to call him Tommy, as he keeps suggesting she do) doesn’t seem to understand the basic concept of ringing a doorbell. He’s always appearing around corners and looking in windows and arriving unannounced. At least today she was expecting him to show up, even if she was expecting him hours earlier. She’s known for a long time that he has a crush on her, and since he’s married and basically harmless, and the crush has worked in her favor for the entire time she’s been renting her perfect little Craftsman cottage, she’s never objected too much. There’s something creepy about his random appearances at the house and his slumped posture, but he hasn’t ever crossed into Major Problem territory, and the fact is, she’s dated a lot of guys who were way creepier than Tom.
She points toward the front of the house and meets him at the door.
‘The doorbell wasn’t working, Tom?’ she asks.
‘Oh, well, I thought I heard you out back, so …’
She leads him into the kitchen and pulls out a chair for him at the little vintage dinette set she got for a song on Craigslist. It would be a lot more comfortable to have him sit in the living room, but the view of the hills and the distant reservoir from the huge wall of windows there is so stunning, she worries that it will remind him of how far below market value her rent has been for the past three years.
‘Nice table,’ he says. ‘Was this my mother’s?’
‘No,’ Katherine tells him. ‘I put most of her furniture down in the basement over a year ago. I was worried about the wear and tear.’
‘Not that it matters to her anymore, but thanks,’ Tom says. ‘New tattoo on the shoulder there?’
‘Not that I know of. Nothing new in that department in a long time, Tom. No plans, either.’ The tattoos stopped right around the time she finally quit drugs, and even though she was tempted to get a tiny fireman’s badge with Conor’s name on it somewhere on her right arm, the whole process is so closely associated with the most miserable period of her life that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. On top of that, she knows her own track record with men too well to believe that inking a guy’s name (even an amazingly great guy’s name) into her skin would be a good idea. ‘You want some mint tea?’
‘Yeah, why not?’ Tom says. ‘So fucking hot out there, I can’t breathe.’
His shirt is soaked with sweat. When she first moved into the house, Katherine tried to get Tom to go to a yoga class. It definitely would have helped his lungs and, for better or worse, he probably would have enjoyed the sight of all those leggings and halter tops. But of course he never went, and Katherine decided it wasn’t her business to push. She pours him a glass of cold mint tea and sits opposite him at the table.
‘Thanks for coming by,’ she says. And then she launches into the speech she’s been rehearsing all day: ‘So a couple of weeks ago when we had that freaky rainstorm, I noticed a little damp spot on the living room ceiling. I had Conor go up on the roof with me, and he thinks a lot of it looks pretty tired. He and I can do some patching, but I think you should have a look. It might be time for a bigger job. And if it is, I’m happy to help with some of the cost.’
Tom peers down into his glass distractedly. ‘So that thing with Conor is working out okay, then?’
Harmless enough as a question, even if it is beside the point. ‘It’s working out fine.’
‘It’s been almost a year, right? I’m happy for you, Katherine. I always thought you deserved a nice guy. I knew one was going to come along one of these days. He live here now?’
‘No, Tom. Just me. I’d tell you otherwise. Conor and I are both pretty independent.’
‘No plans to move in together?’
‘I’ve never been a big one for long-term plans.’
‘At a certain point, though, you have to think of the future, Katherine. We all do. Like it or not.’
There’s a tone in his voice that makes Katherine a little uncomfortable, as if he’s crossed into preachy generalizations that are clearly about something other than her relationship with Conor. The fact that he’s stopped looking her in the eye is another worrisome sign. She’d always rather hear the bad news first, so she says, ‘Something on your mind?’
‘Not mine,’ he says. ‘My sister’s.’
Katherine takes a long, deep breath. This, almost certainly, is the bad news she’s been dreading ever since she fell in love with this house and moved in at a crazy-low rent with the understanding that once Tom’s mother’s estate was settled, it might go on the market, and she might be asked to leave at a moment’s notice. Strangely, though, she feels calm. She’s faced worse things in her life than this and she’s learned that freaking out isn’t going to change anything. All the deep breathing, all the vinyasas really have helped her cope.
Tom still isn’t saying anything, isn’t able to glance up from his mint tea – which, after one tentative sip, he hasn’t touched. Lack of sweetener, no doubt. Despite Tom’s pop visits in hopes (she’s sure) that he’ll come across her prancing around the house naked (as if she ever does that!), she feels bad for him and decides to help him break the bad news to her.
‘You’re putting the house on the market,’ she says. ‘Am I right?’
He nods, still without looking up. Katherine can see so much discomfort in his posture, she feels she ought to defend his actions. She’s always been better at defending others than defending herself.
‘It’s your house,’ she says.
‘I know, but –’
‘No buts. I’ve been the luckiest tenant in L.A. the whole time I’ve been here. Don’t think I don’t know it. Look at this place. I knew the terms when I moved in.’
‘You’re an amazing girl, Katherine, you know that?’
‘I’m a realist,’ she says. ‘Let me get you some sugar for that tea.’
‘You know, the one thing I got out of my sister is an agreement that you can stay for another three months. And also that we’d sell the place to you without the Realtor. That way you’d save all those fees. Could be a major help.’
Katherine nods. Big help, she’s almost sure. ‘Just out of curiosity,’ she says, ‘any idea about the asking price?’
‘We don’t know exactly yet, but definitely under two.’
It’s pretty much what she figured whenever she thought about the house, not that they’ll get what they want in this economy. Not, frankly, that she’d be able to afford it even if they cut the price in half and then divided by two.
But she meant what she said about having been lucky all these years. It’s that – the positive – she focuses on the whole time Tom is sitting at her kitchen table, sipping the tea, making small talk that starts tiptoeing into awkward territory only as he’s about to leave. (‘All that yoga must be doing something for you. Look at those legs. Wow.’)
When Conor knocks at her door about an hour later, she’s in a surprisingly cheerful mood. After Tom left, she went out and spent too much money at the Cheese Store, not that she and Conor really know that much about cheese. Still, if you can’t afford a two-million-dollar house, it’s nice to know you can at least (almost) afford some really good French Comté to put into the soufflé.
‘Something smells good,’ he says and wraps his arms around her. ‘And I’m not talking about dinner.’
Conor would compliment her if she’d just come in from running a marathon, and he’d mean it. Katherine never knew men could be so genuinely nice until she met him. They’ve been seeing each other for a year now, and she still hasn’t uncovered any flaws. Although in a pinch, perfection sometimes comes close to being a flaw.
‘You’re in a good mood,’ he says. ‘Did Tom show up?’
‘He did,’ she says.
That’s when she throws herself into his arms and starts bawling.
Graham, the architect who designed the new studio space for Lee and is serving as the project manager on the renovation, is standing in what will be the new reception area. He’s examining the detail work on the river stone wall he more or less insisted Lee put behind the desk.
‘I’ll have the contractor come back and reset a few of these stones,’ he tells Lee. ‘Some of the work they did is a little sloppy.’ He taps something into his iPad, which is encased in black leather. Everything Graham wears or carries is either black or white.
‘Really?’ Lee says. ‘They look perfect to me. You were right about putting those in. It changes the whole feel of the entrance.’
Lainey gives Lee a nudge that’s about as subtle as everything else she does. ‘I was wondering about those stones, too,’ she says. ‘The row at the top. I have them on our list of questions.’
Graham looks at Lee and winks. ‘If there’s one person I want to be happy, Lainey, it’s you.’
Graham is a tall, lean man who shows up at the studio in freshly laundered white shirts and black jeans that look as if they’ve been ironed. His graying hair is always slicked back tidily – literally, not a hair out of place – and he gives off the faint smell of woody aftershave. When Lee first talked to him about the job, she was reassured by his meticulous appearance; a sloppy architect wouldn’t cut it. So far, he’s proven to be as careful and detail oriented as his perfect hair and starched shirts suggest, and even if the project is running forty percent over budget and a month behind schedule, she’s delighted with the results. When the new space opens, Edendale is going to be a much larger and more beautiful place than the funky little studio she opened when she and Alan first moved to L.A.
‘I’d like you to look at the doors to the bathrooms, too,’ Lainey says. ‘I’m not sure that frosted glass gives enough privacy.’
‘But they’re beautiful,’ Lee says. She was a little worried about the glass, but didn’t want to risk sounding prudish by bringing it up.
‘They make the hallway back there look bright and twice as big,’ Graham says. ‘Anyway, Lainey, it’s a yoga studio. People are half-naked in class with their butts in the air. The most you’ll see is a few distorted shadows. Trust me, no one will care.’
‘I’m going to be using the bathrooms, too,’ Lainey says. ‘And trust me, I do care. And I think we should look at the exhaust fans, too. Someone might need to take their medical marijuana before class, and those fans need to suck out the smell completely.’
‘We’ll take another look,’ Lee says.
It’s important to placate Lainey. In the month and a half since Lee hired her, she’s come to rely on her judgment and advice more and more. Lee has started to wonder if her frequent references to the benefits of legalizing marijuana are motivated by more than an impersonal interest in the California economy, but even so, her ideas tend to be solid. ‘When do you think we’ll be able to open?’
Graham puts on a pair of round black-framed glasses that make him look like an aging Harry Potter. He goes over a few notes and shrugs. ‘Right now, I don’t see any problems with sticking to our target. Eight weeks from today should be good. We’ll still have a few rough edges, but nothing anyone will get hurt on.’
‘If we schedule the opening for then,’ Lainey says, ‘we’re going to hold you to that date.’
‘I wouldn’t cross you, Lainey,’ Graham says, taking off his glasses. He winks at Lee again. These conspiratorial winks at Lee have become a habit when Lainey is around. In private, he’s more serious and businesslike, although it’s true he has managed to slip the fact that’s he’s divorced into the last couple of conversations they’ve had. He invited her out for a business lunch one afternoon, but fortunately, Lee got out of it gracefully. The meticulousness that makes him so good at his work and so attractive as an architect makes him less attractive to her in other ways.
Lee is not looking for more complications right now. Although it would be nice if David Todd at least responded to the message she left for him.
As soon as Graham has gone, Lainey gives her a talking-to about being too eager to please. ‘He’s working for you,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to be so agreeable and yoga-ish about everything.’
‘We make a good team,’ Lee says.
‘You let me be the bitch, in other words.’
‘I wouldn’t put it in those words, but …’
‘Don’t apologize. I’m comfortable in that role.’
Once it was clear that Lee wasn’t going to be able to run an expanded business the loose way she’d run Edendale since the start, she hired Lainey to oversee the books, run the registration desk, and play ‘bad cop’ with the volunteers and other teachers when a little discipline is called for. Lainey made it clear in her interview that she’d never done an asana in her life and had no interest in starting. Sometimes, Lee suspects Lainey’s lack of experience in yoga is one of the reasons she hired her. She’d prefer not to think about the kind of stereotyping on her part this suggests, but truthfully, there are times when there seems to be some correlation between budding yogi and flakiness in practical matters.
They head back to Lee’s office in the old wing of the studio, and Lainey drops herself into a chair. She gives Lee a penetrating look that almost makes Lee wince. A pronouncement, suggestion, or scolding is coming.
‘Whatever it is,’ Lee says, ‘I’d prefer you tell me right out.’
‘I’ve been working on something for a couple of weeks,’ Lainey says. ‘Yesterday, I finally got a contract for you. I told them you’d give an answer by the end of the week.’ She starts to casually pick at the sleeve of the blouse she’s wearing and adds, ‘Don’t let me down on this one.’
‘Okay. Do you tell me what the contract is for, or would you rather I just sign without knowing?’
‘The latter, obviously, but I’ll fill you in anyway.’
Lee meets her gaze, briefly distracted by trying to see if her eyes are red.
‘I’ve been talking to the organizers of the Flow and Glow Festival. I’m guessing you’ve heard of it.’
‘I have.’ Flow and Glow is an annual four-day yoga festival that takes place in the Sierras. Thousands of students attend and scores of teachers are enlisted to instruct. It started out modestly but quickly became the main yoga event of the year, with teachers lobbying madly to get invitations and students saving up for months in advance for the enrollment and lodging fees. Lee has been listening to students and teachers rave about it since it started, four years ago, and even though she’s been tempted to go, she’s never had the time. Besides, it’s the kind of mass gathering that she’s always stayed away from. She doesn’t much like crowds, and she isn’t crazy about classes in the bright sun, and from what she’s heard, there’s a huge amount of competition among the teachers for top billing, as if it really is a rock festival. It’s the kind of thing someone like David Todd would never participate in.
‘I have a feeling I’m going to disappoint you on this one.’
‘You haven’t even heard me out,’ Lainey says.
Lainey is a large woman, older than Lee by about five years. Lee feels protected by Lainey’s practicality, her efficiency, and even her controlling streak. She was an administrative assistant in the biology department at UCLA before the university started trimming staff. This job is a step down for her in terms of salary, prestige, and benefits, but she appears to be completely committed and even happy. ‘Talk to Lainey’ has become Lee’s favorite phrase. She only wishes she could say it to Michael and Marcus, her twins, when all hell breaks loose at home.
Lee wanted someone to take over more of the business matters, but occasionally she feels as if she’s at Lainey’s mercy.
Lainey hauls herself up from her chair. She has a habit of wearing corduroy dirndls with peasant blouses, outfits that suit her personality somehow, even if they don’t flatter her bulky body. She digs through some papers on Lee’s desk and hands her a brochure for Flow and Glow.
‘Five thousand people attended this thing last year. This year? Maybe double that. If you perform here, or teach, if you prefer –’
‘Teach sounds more up my alley.’
‘I figured. You teach in front of hundreds of students over the course of the weekend. Your name and your picture are seen by tens of thousands of people who visit the website and the Facebook page. These brochures are sent out to every yoga studio in the country. Being one of their teachers immediately gets you on the road to stardom.’
Stardom. Lee flashes briefly on an uncomfortable moment she had last week as she was teaching, a moment when she felt a swell of pride and ego about the fact that thirty-five people had crowded into the studio to take her class. She felt energized by the crowd and by what she sensed was an eagerness on the part of students to do their best to please her. She used the moment to warn students against the perils of letting ego steer the ship, a reminder to herself.
She opens the brochure and sees that half the middle page is devoted to pictures and a biography of Kyra Monroe, referred to here as ‘the international yoga priestess’. She feels her face getting a little warm, and it’s not from the heat of the day. The bio lists a series of accolades and honors Kyra has received from assorted publications and yoga alliances, and mentions her bestselling videos, podcasts, and The Inner Outer, her ‘groundbreaking’ book on ‘spirituality and the eroticism of the asanas’. If all that isn’t enough to make you believe Kyra is going to completely rearrange your DNA, there’s the fact that ‘Priestess Kyra will be introducing a new line of franchise opportunities for the trademarked Kyra Monroe Harmonic Balance Explorer Yoga System’. Whatever that means.
Lee doesn’t remember Kyra as blond, but it has been a long time.
‘I’m not saying you’re wrong,’ Lee says. ‘I’m just saying it isn’t for me.’
‘I’ve spent weeks negotiating this,’ Lainey says. ‘You can spend a couple of days thinking about it. They’ve offered you seven classes, the same number as Baron Baptiste, and only one less than Kyra Monroe.’
Kyra Monroe is getting more exposure than Baron Baptiste?
Lainey turns at the door. ‘Let me know by Friday, okay? Until then, I’ll assume it’s a yes.’
Of all the things Graciela has missed about L.A. in the past six months, the one she’s probably missed the most is heading up to Silver Lake for Lee’s yoga classes. This isn’t what she expected. She lived her whole life in L.A., and before getting the job as a backup dancer on Beyoncé’s concert tour, she’d barely left Southern California. She would have guessed she’d miss the crazy sprawl of the city; the hot, dry air; the view of the Pacific from Santa Monica Pier; the sad, sweet yellow sunsets; even the constant hum of the insane traffic. If nothing else, she would have guessed she’d miss Daryl a whole lot more than she has. At least more than she’d miss a funky yoga studio in Silver Lake. And she definitely wouldn’t have guessed she’d miss that funky yoga studio at this moment, as she’s in the last third of a class with Richard Pale, one of New York’s hottest yoga teachers. Mr Intensity.
In the five days she’s been in the city, Graciela has heard about this class, Intensity Plus, from half a dozen different people.
Oh, you have to try Richard Pale’s class when you’re here. It’s unbelievable.
I almost died halfway through.
He kicked my ass.
It was so hard, I started crying. I loved it.
I couldn’t move the next day.
For a lot of yogis she’s met lately, the best classes are the ones that make them cry and send them running to an acupuncturist. She’s not really into that, but on the other hand, she couldn’t resist the challenge. It’s part of what her friend Zana calls ‘the insane-ification of yoga’, the trend to push endurance, strength, and flexibility to the limit.
And then there’s Mr Pale himself – insanely fit, insanely handsome, and oozing an insane amount of sexual energy.
Richard Pale is such a movie star, she’s heard.
He’s a rock star.
He’s gorgeous.
Or, the highest compliment you can pay someone these days: He’s a yoga star!
Studio number seven in this Midtown yoga palace is filled with a group of the most hard-core yogis Graciela has ever seen. More well-earned New York hyperbole. Women – and a surprising number of men – with serious expressions and equally serious muscles. To warm up, about two-thirds of them were levitating up into handstands and then effortlessly floating their feet through their arms with their legs hovering off their mats or doing complicated scissor arm balances or folding in standing forward bends with their heads between their legs. Everyone is pretty much in his or her own world, but there’s still a feeling of competition in the air that’s undeniable, even if you’re not supposed to acknowledge it. She’s noticed a lot of this at the studios she’s visited in her travels. So many people seem eager to establish their credentials before class begins, doing their best moves before the teacher arrives – just in case those postures aren’t part of the flow – and trying to pass them off as mere warm-ups or preparatory stretches. A year ago, Graciela would have been so intimidated she would have left, but now she knows she can keep up with the best of them if she wants to, and more important, that she doesn’t have to try.
Thank you, Lee.
Graciela used to think L.A. was full of hyperbole, but it’s nothing compared with New York. Everything here is ‘the best’ or ‘the most delicious’ or ‘the most expensive’. The funny thing is, she’s bought into all of it. From the minute she got out of the limo in front of the Four Seasons, she was in love with the city. It helps that it’s May, and that everything is in bloom and the weather has been a balmy dream, day after day. But there’s more to it. There’s a mixture of beauty and sophistication that she knows she doesn’t fit into, but she loves it even so.
Richard Pale, with his milky skin and jet black hair and eyes, is flipping up into a one-armed hand balance and lowering his feet toward his head, all while instructing the class to follow suit in a voice so calm and steady he could be sitting in a rocker. Insane. But what can she do except try it out? When she did street dancing, she did moves like this, only more quickly and with less graceful balance. She pops up into an approximation of the pose, and Mr. Intensity comes over and adjusts her slightly. ‘The more intense the effort, the brighter the enlightenment,’ he says. ‘I want everyone to come and check out the alignment of this yogi’s shoulders.’
He keeps his hands on her hips as the rest of the class gathers around.
‘This looks great, right?’
A murmur of approval.
‘Beautiful woman in beautiful pose.’
Graciela’s shoulder is starting to tremble and she wants down.
‘Unfortunately, this is all wrong. This is how people develop major injuries over time.’ He helps her down, and she folds over into child’s pose, trying to catch her breath. ‘Now we’re going to rebuild this pose from the ground up. With our beautiful, raven-haired yogi as our model.’
Later, as she’s leaving the class, Mr. Intensity pulls her aside and says, ‘Thank you for being such a good sport. I only picked on you because you’re so strong. You must be a dancer.’
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I’m a dancer, but I’ll be an unemployed dancer soon.’
‘Come back and see me,’ he says. ‘I’m doing a teacher training next month. You’d be an amazing teacher.’
Ever since rehearsals for the tour started, about eight months ago, Graciela has been getting compliments. She’s never had so much attention from so many people, heard so many men and women – musicians and other dancers, complete strangers, even a few genuine celebrities who came to the concerts – tell her how talented she is. And how beautiful. They’ve been on the road for more than six months now, and at some point, several months ago, back when they were in Brussels, she finally let the praise sink in and allowed herself to accept that maybe some of it was true, and that just maybe she wasn’t going to be punished for allowing herself to believe it. She doesn’t have to resort to hearing the constant drone of her mother’s verbal abuse, telling her she looks like a puta, can’t dance, ought to have had two kids by now. She can listen to these other voices. Or try to.