"And good luck to you, my friend."
I lifted my butt onto the hot seat of my bike and began to pedal off. But when I saw the Morgan's transom once again, I felt another pang, another primal wish that Kenny Lukens' vanishing might not be quite so total. Pointing, I shouted to the new owner; "You'll keep the name, I hope?"
He looked at me with kind indulgence for my ignorance of nautical traditions. "Oh yes, of course. Must always. Is werry bad luck to change the name."
8
"Now, on the inhalation, tighten down the anal sphincter.... That's right, clamp it down and hold it with the breath…Picture it as a flower closing tightly for the night. . . . This is called the Root Lock pose. If there's any weakness in those muscles, if they start to loosen, just focus your attention on the third-eye center and clamp them down again. . . . Feels strange, I know, but it'll save you problems when you're older.... Inhale, squeeze... Exhale, release ... Inhale, squeeeeeeze ..."
Was I really doing this? Sitting painfully cross- legged on a folded towel, eyes closed and hands resting on my knees, trying to locate some mysterious symbolic place between my brows while slamming my asshole shut among a bunch of strangers clamping theirs?
Yes, I really was. Five o'clock yoga at the Leaf Shed, the one-time cigar factory whose pine walls, a century later; were still faintly redolent of the hemplike musk of raw tobacco. A class taught, in a soft and breathy voice, by Maggie, with whom I seemed, quite suddenly, to be a little bit obsessed. But wait—did this fascination really have to do with her, or was it just an aspect of the nagging itch I felt about the unresolved affair of Kenny Lukens? Besides, could you be a little bit obsessed? Wasn't that against the whole concept of obsession? With obsession it was all or nothing, wasn't it?
And weren't these exactly the kinds of nattering, willful things you shouldn't be thinking about in yoga class?
You should be clamping down the butt hole but freeing up the mind. Letting thoughts go. Declining to hold on. Allowing the breath to carry off the poisons of desire and self-consciousness. Not to mention guilt and bafflement and wondering if the police or other friends of Lefty Ortega would soon be coming after me.
So I tried; I really tried. I stretched and grunted to touch my shins while others palmed the floor. I cramped my toes and strained the brittle sinews of my insteps in an earnest effort to do a kneeling back bend. And, at moments, I did, I think, pay a visit to a different realm, transported there by a heady blend of joint pain and humiliation. Not that yoga is competitive. Absolutely not. Still, I could not help noticing when everybody else's forehead was squarely on the ground, while my face jerked and wiggled like that of a blind chicken pecking after unseen feed.
At least, between my travesties of poses, I got to look at Maggie, who, in a simple blue leotard, was grace itself. Her back was amazingly long and straight, as if her torso were exempt from gravity. When she breathed deep, her rib cage swelled and lifted above a plain of lean, lithe middle. Her arms were the slim but sculpted arms of a dancer, and when she raised them in undulating, all-embracing arcs, the untamed hair beneath them glistened slightly in the dusty light. When her arms were at her sides, reddish wisps poked through the dimpled creases between her shoulders and her chest, and looked just like—well, we all know what it looked like. It looked like something you shouldn't be thinking about in yoga class.
Somehow I made it through the ninety minutes.
At the end I rolled my towel, retrieved my sneakers, and bided my time. When most of the others had drifted off, I went up to the front of the mirrored studio and suavely said, "Yo, Teach."
Maggie was sitting on the floor, pulling on a pair of baggy drawstring pants, seeming to levitate when she needed to get them past her hips. "So," she said, "you came to class."
"You told me I walk funny, so here I am."
"I didn't say you walk funny. I said you walk stiff."
"I walk stiff because everything hurts. Would you like to have a drink?"
She seemed a little bit uncomfortable with that. She scanned the emptying studio, and, too late, I thought that maybe it was dumb, unfair to ask her here. Her workplace, after all. "Look," she said, "if the only reason you took class—"
"Is to see you? Should I lie?"
"No. But when I'm teaching—"
"It's my turn to need to talk," I said. "It's only fair."
She pulled a rumpled turquoise sweater down over her head. The collar flattened the fringe of hair at the nape of her neck. She reached back and popped it free again. "Okay," she said. "Okay. Anything but grappa."