Page 68 of Talk Data To Me
See you today.
“…and sitting tall on your mat, hands behind your thighs, curl your tailbone under your body and take a half roll-down until those arms are straight.”
Muscles trembled in her core. Her fingers dug into the backs of her legs.
“Roll back up, using your abdominals, leading with your belly button, not your head…”
She tried not to groan.
On a mat beside her, Martina’s face was pink, sweat beading into the curls making damp snarls around her temples. When their instructor passed back to the front of the exercise studio through the class’s supple, suffering ranks and away from their struggle with six repetitions of the half roll-down routine, she hissed out the universal words of a Pilates devotee:
“I think I’m dying.”
“Join me in hell.” Erin’s jaw ached with effort. Heat radiated from her cheeks. “I’m already there.”
She was. She’d slept no more than a few minutes at a time last night, and she’d even bruised a knee against her headboard with her turning and thrashing.
Would you like to meet for coffee or a drink?
Bannister.
But:Please go.
Ethan.
She’d tied herself into knots in her sheets.
Not to mention, she’d spent a whole day in heels—well, almost a whole day, except for that brief barefoot moment in the Modern Physics building after hours—no! focus, roll down again—which had left her toes blistered and her hamstrings so tight that she could’ve plucked them like piano wires. Her muscles continued to scream at her.
“Lie back and press your palms to your mat. It’s circle time, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! Extend your right leg with a flexed foot. Lift your left leg toward the ceiling. Remember to turn out that thigh. Good. Now circle your left leg toward your midline. Five reps. Here’sone.”
Circle. Circle.
Barefoot. Lamplight. Harsh breaths. Ethan. Please go.
Circle.
Breaths. Ethan. Go—
“Andfive. Release down to the mat. Right leg up.”
“How can you be in hell?” Martina hissed. “You got one-onone time with—”
“Circle toward your midline…”
“—the Director of the Office of Science, and I heard from a barista at Blue Bottle that you sent someone from the security team over for danishes—”
“Less talking, more circles!”
Their instructor punished them with the shoulder bridge, swimming, and saw exercises, leaving Martina with no breath to probe for details and Erin with none to answer her. Despite the lactic acid coiling in her body, however, she was reluctant to descend from her swan dive pose, huffing into her mat hard enough to fog her glasses but remaining balanced on her chest and stomach with her legs lifted behind her even after the instructor released them to their cool-down. Cool-down meant that class was over, which meant that she and Martina would be headed to brunch soon, which meant more questions.
Reasonable questions. Questions about the Department of Energy’s visit—which Martina had missed due to a blue-moon schedule of three consecutive days off—that she didn’t particularly want to discuss.
She rolled up her Pilates mat, rinsed off her sweat in the bathroom, dropped a twist-back tank top over her sports bra and leggings, then shoved her blistered feet into a pair of sandals, pulling her ponytail so tight against her scalp that her eyelids stretched. But these were bearable discomforts, like the swan dive pose. She twisted her hair elastic even tighter.
“Ugh. I’m never wearing heels again,” she groused as she and Martina left the studio. They passed a barre class in the next building, a paint-your-own-pottery shop, and several young families with luxury strollers and designer dogs while they threaded their way onto Santa Cruz Avenue.
“Friday was that bad, even with the adhesive strips and your fabulous suit?” Martina directed them off the sidewalk and flagged down a waiter at Founder’s Toast for a table. “Morning, Jess.”
