Treading Lightly. Elise Lanier
weather, THE WEATHER” to him. But did he listen? No. He said, “Because it was delayed.” That wasn’t an answer. It was the question! Repeated! She’d been totally disgusted, concluding that that’s the problem with the world today…nobody listens.
She looked over to the sweating, panting man and wondered if he really cared to hear what she had to say, or if he was like everyone else in this world today and didn’t listen. He was still looking at her and was still smiling. Or grimacing. She still couldn’t tell which.
Oh well, what the hell. It wasn’t like she could hear the TV or anything, and she had to do her walking, even if it was in public, or Harvey would call Martin or her mother. Plus, she had to pass the time somehow. “I’ve had a bad couple of weeks,” she blurted out.
At first she didn’t know if he had heard her, because he didn’t answer, but when she stole a sideways glance at him, he smile-grimaced again.
“What happened?” he said between huffs. Apparently he too had trouble breathing while doing this torturous contraption. The only difference was that he was running while she was walking.
Looking at him, measuring whether she should she tell him or not, she let the question war within her head for a while. Should she tell him? Shouldn’t she? On the one hand, why should she? On the other hand, she’d only be there one week, tops, so what difference did it make? Once her treadmill was fixed, she’d be back home again. Alone. At least that’s what Ben Franklin had promised. She’d thought a week to fix the thing seemed an exorbitantly long amount of time, but he’d said something about getting a special part, which might take a while, so what could she do? That’s when she’d called the manager at the closest gym and arranged to do her walking there for a week.
The manger had tried to sell her a full membership, but when she remained adamant that she only wanted to use the treadmill, and that was all she wanted to do at the gym, he gave her a quote for a price that she felt was reasonable, and asked him to put it in writing, saying she’d be there early the next morning to sign it and pay him in advance for the week’s treadmill use.
The manager had laughed when she arrived that morning. “I thought you said you’d be in here early,” he’d said with a teasing gleam in his eye. He was a young man, built like a brick house (no mice getting in there!) with arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.
“This is early!” she’d said as she yawned for emphasis.
“We’re open at four in the morning for the early birds,” he’d said before laughing at her horrified expression. “But this is a better time. It’s much less crowded now. Most people are off to work by now, so it’ll be easier for you to get a treadmill.”
He was right. It was easy. Besides Grunting Red-faced Man, she was the only one interested in the treadmills.
“So, what’s happened these last two weeks,” the heaving, crimson-cheeked man puffed out, drawing her attention back to the present.
She looked at him again, noting his flaccid cheeks bouncing with each step, his thinning wet hair plastered against his scalp, and the sweat pouring from him like Niagara Falls. Oh, what the hell! What could it hurt? “My son’s getting attitude,” she blurted then inhaled. “My agent is ignoring me—” another breath “—my treadmill broke—” another gasp “—I’ve got osteoporosis—” a gulp “my stalker may be back,” another wheeze for breath, “—the IRS thinks I’m cheating them—” some panting “—my mother thinks I’m raising my son wrong—” a small hiss of air “—oh yeah, and I have a bastard of an ex-husband who is trying to make my life a living hell.”
“Wow,” he said, slowing his machine to a walk. “I’d call that a bad couple of weeks! Want to talk about it?” His breath was becoming lass ragged now that he was walking instead of running.
“No. That’s okay.” She breathed. She was still hoofing it at an alarming pace (for her). That was quite typical of her. No warm-up, no cooldown, just jump right in at the maximum speed until she got it done and hit her goal, then stop. It was the way she had done everything her whole life.
She’d like to say that she admired people who warmed up and cooled down as he was doing, but honestly? She didn’t have the time for that. For her, life had always been “get in, do it as fast as you can, and get out.” It’s how she shopped, worked, played, ate and even now, as she’d recently discovered, exercised.
Martin used to say, “There are shades of gray, Janine. Everything’s not always black or white,” but she seemed to see everything as one way or the other. Good or bad. Love it or hate it. Take it or leave it. Black or white. On or off. She’d never been wishy-washy about anything. Anything.
She looked up at the TVs and winced. Talking, walking and breathing were causing enough problems for her; trying to ignore all that noise, when she was used to only one form of stimulation at a time, was really grating on her nerves.
“You want them off?” he said, following her gaze, his breathing now regular since he was cooling down.
“You can do that?”
“What?”
“Shut them off?” she said with amazement.
“Well, sure,” he said with a hearty chuckle.
His deep chuckle unnerved and annoyed her. She hadn’t noticed the deep timbre of his voice before, which might have been because he was gasping, snorting, panting and making other disgusting noises, but now that she’d noticed it, she wasn’t too pleased. She was more comfortable with him when he was offensive and disgusting.
And also, who had died and left him boss of the gym televisions? And more irritatingly, why, in God’s name, hadn’t he offered sooner?
He picked up a remote, turned his back to her—a nice back with broad shoulders, she noted for the first time—pointed the remote at the left-hand set and pressed. With a blip of static, it shut off. Ah.
And now there was one. He turned to her and held out the remote.
It must be some kind of gym etiquette thing. The person on the side of the television got to decide what to watch or when to turn it off.
“The power button’s on the top right,” he offered while still holding the little device out to her. “The channel buttons are on the lower right. And the volume controls are on the lower left,” he said, without looking at the remote control. He’d obviously used it before.
Truthfully she would have grabbed the thing and shut it off in an instant, but at the moment—as with all the moments when she was aboard a treadmill—she was hanging on for dear life and couldn’t let go of one hand without spinning out of control like a demented top gone berserk before falling off the damn machine.
Think of rowing a boat with only one arm. You would just spin in a circle. Except on a treadmill, you would spin for a millisecond before you got thrown like a rodeo rider off a bronco. Don’t ask how she knew this. She just did. She still had the black-and-blue marks to prove it. Although they were a purplish-yellow by now. So she shook her head. “No. You do the honors.” Unquestionably in system overload, she choked on her last breath. “Please.”
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