Topped Chef(56)

17


“I love you,” Elizabeth said, and I started to cry all over again.

In the oven, the chocolate soufflé began to burn.

—Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers



My heart was beating like a kettledrum as I parked my scooter in front of the We Be Fit gym the next morning. Couldn’t I have thought of an easier way to squeeze information from Mrs. Rizzoli? Like follow her to a coffee shop? A bakery? A diner? Anywhere but here.

Leigh, the trainer, was waiting for me inside the door, looking hungry as a German shepherd in front of his food bowl. She showed me where to store my helmet and backpack in the ladies room lockers at the back of the gym. Next she pointed out the cooler containing stainless steel bottles of water and had me choose a colored band to identify my bottle.

Nothing I couldn’t handle, so far.

I asked questions about the workings of several of the machines, but then I could tell from the steely flint of her blue eyes that I’d procrastinated a whisker too long. She herded me through a series of what were supposed to be regular warm-up moves that I’d never remember and then led me toward what she called a “TRX machine” at the back of the small gym.

“The rack,” I muttered. “I’ll be lucky if I don’t hang myself on this thing.”

“Let’s start with some push-ups,” she said, in a pleasant voice.

All she needed was a black hood and a mace.

“Isn’t that old-fashioned? I haven’t done a push-up since high school.”

Leigh just laughed and showed me where to place my hands on a bar eighteen inches from the floor. After eight repetitions, every muscle fiber in my arms was trembling.

“Two more,” said Leigh with an inscrutable smile.

As I finished the final grueling couplet, Mrs. Rizzoli and the friend I’d seen hugging her at the memorial yesterday bounced into the gym wearing tight, bright spandex. They went right to a nearby rowing machine where they were greeted by a male trainer with bulging muscles who looked like he’d just come from a photo shoot for Muscle & Fitness.

“Morning, ladies,” Leigh called.

I tried to follow their conversation but Leigh was killing me by placing ten-pound weights in my hand and forcing me through a series of squats, and then a return visit to the scene of the push-ups. When she finally granted me a short rest, I sank gasping to a nearby bench, gulped a stream of water, and mopped my sweating face. Ten feet away, the two friends were zipping through a routine of weights and planks that would have brought me to my knees.

“We’ve got perfect weather today,” said Mrs. Rizzoli’s friend. “Even our old dog felt frisky this morning.”

“Nice,” Mrs. Rizzoli agreed, but without much enthusiasm.

“You had a fabulous turnout at the memorial service yesterday. How are you feeling?” the friend asked her.

“Honestly?”

The friend nodded.

“I would have liked to have killed that bastard myself,” Mrs. Rizzoli said. “But someone got to him first.”

The other woman looked at her like she didn’t believe the bravado. “You sound so angry. And sad.”

Mrs. Rizzoli’s lower lip quivered. For a moment, only the click clack of their weight machines broke the silence. “We’d been having trouble for a long time. You know that. But…” She choked back a sob. “The morning of the day he died…”

A tear leaked down the side of her face and splashed onto her bosom, darkening the purple stripe on her fashionable yoga top. Lucy brand. Expensive, I thought, my mind pushing away from her obvious pain.

The friend reached over to smooth a wisp of hair off Mrs. Rizzoli’s face. She tucked it behind her ear and nodded with encouragement. “Something happened the day he died?”

“Let’s try a plank on the exercise ball,” Leigh suggested to me. “Forearms on the ball and then straighten your knees and draw your navel in tight. We’ll start with thirty seconds.” I stretched into the position, my arms quivering. It hardly seemed fair to say “we” when one of us was doing the work while the other held the stopwatch.

“He admitted that he’d been having an affair.” Mrs. Rizzoli barked out a harsh laugh. “Not that that was breaking news. Him being faithful—now that would have been worth a special marital conversation. But he admitted this new relationship had gotten more serious than he ever intended. It wasn’t his fault, of course. It crept up on him. He actually cried about not knowing what to do.”

“You’re joking,” said her friend.

“I wish,” said Mrs. Rizzoli. She picked up a couple of heavy-looking free weights and began to execute bicep curls, her muscles bulging gracefully with each rotation. “And then he told me how torn he felt and how he couldn’t bear to lose either one of us. Really, it was as though I should comfort him for getting in too deep with his girlfriend.”