Page 29 of Just One Look
An Unexpected Encounter
On Sunday,she went to the gym. That was because she’d already walked Webster, eaten breakfast—yes, at Dizengoff this time, with Webster’s leash securely fastened to the base of the table and a whole lot of redirecting him to lie down again every single time he bounced up to greet a passerby, which was about once every thirty seconds, until she finally put a leg on either side of him and ate her breakfast like that. Which was intrusive and annoying, but this was something people did, right? Regular people, with regular lives. They sat at sidewalk cafés on sunny, breezy mornings after the rain had passed, with their dogs lying beside them. They probably didn’t have their dogs’ heads in a hammerlock, and they also probably didn’t watch videos on their cell phones from theJournal of Neurosurgerythat illustrated the possible pitfalls of ligation in dealing with large brain aneurysms while they consumed their scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, but … baby steps.
This time, Luka didn’t show up, but she didn’t expect him to, obviously, and she certainly didn’t want him to. What, he needed to be the witness to every one of her humiliating moments, including the Webster leg-lock? No. She was doing Real Life, and remembering that if other people were your audience, you were alsotheiraudience. She wasn’t actually lit up in glowing neon for everybody to point at.
Which was why, after breakfast, she went to the gym. She hadn’t been to one in a long time, not since she’d discovered the time-efficient joys of her own elliptical machine, and she was a little nervous, but that was what this year was supposed to be about, right? Broadening her horizons.
She got a tour, first. It was always good to start with a tour, so you knew where you were. The big gym area with its intimidating machines and stacks of weights, its clankings and grunts and men looking way too serious about the whole thing—that was a no, not without some serious guidance. The extremely cheerful young guy who was showing her around said, “You may want to set up a session with a trainer, get a routine,” and she said, “Yes. I’ll consider that,” meaning,I almost certainly won’t.
She was going for efficiency, not flailing around unsupervised and straining something. It was extremely difficult to perform extensive brain surgery with any part of your body strained, and she fully intended to be on the surgical board next week for something beyond a microdiscectomy. Also, surgeons didn’t keep appointments, with trainers or anybody else. Well-known fact.
Her guide took her upstairs next, past a series of glassed-in boxes where people were leaping around and smashing balls against the wall, and she asked, “What’s that?”
“Squash,” he said. “Heaps of fun.” When she stood and watched some more, he went on, “You can put your name on the board to find a partner, if you like. You haven’t played before, eh.”
“No. It would have to be a beginner, for a partner. Or a class, if you have them.” She spoke absently, because it did look fun, and fast-paced, too. You wouldn’t have any time at all, playing this, to focus on how you couldn’t breathe or your dinosaur plodding. It would vary in intensity, too, and interval training was excellent for cardiovascular fitness.
“Right,” the guy said. “I’ll ask around as well.” He took her back downstairs and through another door. “This is the pool, obviously. Do you swim? We also have Pilates classes.”
That was a big “No, thanks,” on the Pilates. She knew it would be good for her, but she’d tried it once, and it had been torture. There was one thing worse than being a plodding dinosaur, and that was lying on your back, your abs on fire, gasping like a beached whale, as a perky instructor called out, “Don’t stop! No giving up!”clearlyat you, and you thought,Call me out in front of the whole class if you want, but I’m giving up anyway. Ipaidfor this. You work forme,you sadist.
She went home instead, and got her swimsuit, which was a conservative navy-blue two-piece that she mostly owned for sitting in the hot tub up to her neck in the hotel after neurological conferences, but who cared, and then she came back and got into the pool. Maybe because she’d been thinking last night about that long-ago scuba session, and maybe because she didn’t know how to do much else they had on offer here, besides the cardio machines, and she hadn’t come all the way to New Zealand to get on another elliptical machine. Also, the only people in the pool area were other swimmers, and they’d be focused on their own workout, not wasting their time and energy on criticizing her form.
Her father was wrong. People weren’t always judging you, seeking out your imperfections and pouncing on them. They had their own lives to lead, and their own imperfections, too.
And maybe she went swimming most of all because she’d spent all that time in the water at one glorious New Zealand beach after another, when she was eighteen, wearing men’s swim trunks and a tankini top, showing as little of her body as possible. And her body, she’d realized only a month ago, while she was stowing away her personal items in preparation for her house swap, hadn’t deserved all that loathing.
She’d rested the shoebox of photos on her lap and held up the pictures Lauren had taken. Of the three of them cooking sausages and vegetables on the barbecue on Christmas Day, of her sitting on the deck at twilight reading a book, or coming out of the water just after dawn, sweeping her hair back with one hand. She’d looked at that picture and thought,That was a great vacation, actually. Or it would have been, if I could have focused beyond myself and enjoyed it.The water had been cool up there, and so clear that you could see the sandy bottom, the humped domes that were buried sand dollars, the shadow left behind by a darting fish. The sunrises had tinted the sky and the sea in a different show every day, all of it visible from the little room with its twin beds where she’d slept with Piper.
And she’d looked fine. No, she hadn’t been five-four, slim, and blonde like her stepsister, and maybe she hadn’t been beautiful, either, because she’d had so much …face,but she’d also had a tumbled mass of dark hair, rounded thighs, and a waist that nipped in hard between her considerable breasts and hips.
It might not have been fashionable, but there’d been nothing wrong with that body. Why had she spent so much time ashamed of it?
She put on the swimsuit, gave Webster a pat, went back to the gym, got in the pool, and swam. And afterwards, she met somebody.
She was wrapped in a towel, her muscles feeling pleasantly shaky, drying her hair in front of the mirror, when a towel-clad woman arrived next to her and started combing her own hair, which was as thick as Elizabeth’s own and even darker. The woman said in the mirror, “Hi. How ya goin’?”
Elizabeth turned off the hairdryer in surprise, but then, this was New Zealand. Friendly by definition. “Great. I saw you out there. Nice work on the swimming. When is that baby due?” Because, yes, the woman was pregnant.Extremelypregnant, in the way short women tended to be, when there was no place for the baby to go but out.
“A couple of weeks. No, uh … ten days. Nine. Not such nice work on the swimming, because I couldn’t do much.”
She was frowning, and Elizabeth wanted to retreat into the hairdryer, but she didn’t. “Are you all right?” she asked instead.
Now, the woman smiled, but it was pained. “Headache, that’s all, and a bit sick, too. Never mind. Soon be over.”
She shouldn’t intervene. Not everything was a medical issue, and even if it was, it was so rarely serious.When you hear hoofbeats,the saying went,you look for horses, not for zebras.Every doctor had heard that one since medical school, and late pregnancy was an uncomfortable time.
“Is that all of it, or is anything else going on?” All right, she asked anyway. That frown wasn’t a don’t-bother-me frown. It was a serious-headache frown, and this woman didn’t seem like the complaining type, or the not-cheerful type, either.
“I got a bit dizzy out there, that’s all,” the woman said. “And sick, like I said. That’s why I got out. Your fitness shouldn’t drown you, eh. I’ve been trying to do it anyway, because running’s off the list, obviously. Not that I’d be running anyway, because I hate it.”
“Me too,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve been trying to do it, and—ugh. Are you evernotpanting and suffering, when you’re running? I realize I haven’t been doing it that long, but still. Should it feelthatawful?”
The other woman smiled. “I’m the wrong person to ask.” Then she winced and put a hand to her head. “Ouch. I think I need to sit a bit. Want to come do it with me? I’m Nyree. Meeting my husband eventually, but he won’t be here yet. Come distract me, if you have time. You could have a beer, and I could wish I were allowed a couple of Panadol.”
“It’s barely two o’clock,” Elizabeth said.
The woman—Nyree—looked at her oddly. “Yeh. Why?”
