PART TWO

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning for the past three weeks, Becky has been picking up Imani and driving her to a yoga class at a different studio somewhere in L.A. While Imani knew it was a big trend and “everyone” was doing it, she had no idea there were so many available options. Becky told her she knows of about 120 studios scattered around the city, and that doesn’t include the private places and the out-of-the-way classes taught in community centers and schools and gyms and the YMCA.

“How do you know all this?” Imani asked her.

“The old-fashioned way: Internet. I subscribe to about three dozen websites where they review studios and update classes and post gossip about teachers. Pictures, too, in case that’s your thing. And Twitter has been amazing. Every afternoon at five I get a tweet about the best classes and workshops going on the next day. Everyone fights for a spot, so you have to register in advance or try to bribe your way in. It’s worse than getting tickets for concerts.”

It doesn’t sound very om shanti to Imani, but she’s the novice here and, yoga or not, it’s still L.A.

“Can’t you just use your name?” Imani asks. “That ought to be enough to get you in.”

“Are you kidding? Everyone goes. If I won an Oscar, maybe I’d get moved up the list. Anyway, it’s embarrassing using my name like that. My screen name on these sites is ‘yoga roommate, ’ which I thought was kind of clever.”

“Cute.”

Becky is officially between projects and trying to get in shape for a movie that starts shooting in a few weeks. She has to do a sex scene and there’s nudity involved, so she wants to be in perfect shape.

“No body double?” Imani asks.

“Of course there’s a body double. That’s in all my contracts. But I don’t want anyone on the set to think I’m using one because I’m out of shape. I actually have to look better than the double to save face, so it would be easier if I just did the scene myself.”

Imani feels lucky nudity was never an option on network TV. If yoga helps Imani get Becky’s thighs and obliques, she’s willing to put up with gazing off into infinity for a couple of seconds at the beginning of class and pretending she’s visualizing world peace. At first she thought Becky was calling her because she happened to be available (most of Becky’s friends work nonstop) or because she felt bad for her. But it’s brought them a lot closer, and now she feels like a real friend.

The names of the places are what Imani loves the most. Yoga Bind, Yoga Bend, Yoga Hop, Yoga House. A few dozen clever uses of “mat” and “dog” and “down” and endless plays on branches and trees and limbs. A lot of dharma and karma. The names remind her of hair salons and how they’re always coming up with some new, nearly witty pun on hair, just when you thought they’d all been used up.

This Tuesday, Becky calls Imani at 8:00 a.m. and tells her she’s texting her the address of a studio in Santa Monica and she expects to see her there at eleven o’clock.

“Come on, Becky,” Imani says. “Can’t you find something a little closer?”

“Oh, my God, girl. This is Taylor Kendall.”

“I’m waiting to be impressed.”

“Honey, I was online at the dot of midnight when they opened the website to reserve places in his class. I got the last two spots, and according to my clock, it was twelve oh two. He is the best yoga teacher in the country. I mean, he trained with . . .”

This comment spurs another list of names Imani has never heard of, some of them unpronounceable ones with an Indian inflection, others those weirdly androgynous, soap opera names so common among yoga teachers, she’s discovering. Campbell Dylan. Chrysler Marks. Rand Bryce. And people criticize black women for the Africanish names they give their kids! (Imani was her manager’s choice; her mother had gone for Loretta, a fact not even Becky knows.)

What Imani is also discovering is that there are about six hundred teachers in the country who are, unquestionably, the best. Funny how they all happen to be gorgeous.

But, long ride or not, Imani agrees to meet her. She feels as if bumping into Becky in the cupcake bakery was fate. She’s had more fun over the past few weeks with Becky than she’s had since . . . well, for a long time. It’s all the driving around to parts of the city she’s never been to before, the hopping and jumping that she’s getting quite good at, even the fun new clothes that make her feel sexy and athletic. She’s always been fit, but she’s never felt athletic before. There’s always a moment in these classes when she finds herself rolling her eyes (“Take a few deep, poignant breaths and direct them toward that little storage space in your body where you keep your sadness”), but she does it anyway. And no matter how silly it sounds, it’s having some kind of effect. She doesn’t believe for one second that twisting her spine is helping to “wring out toxins” or whatever it’s supposed to be doing, but it is true that she’s started to feel as if a dark mood is being wrung out of her. Maybe she’s emptying out her “storage space.” Glenn has noticed a difference, too.

For months after the miscarriage, she couldn’t stand having him touch her. She felt betrayed by her body and detached from it, as if it had rejected her baby. She’d never felt quite so disconnected from herself. When she and Glenn started having sex again, she’d pretty much gone through the motions to please him. He was so good to her and always had been. If he knew she was using her acting skills more than her passion, he never said anything. But for the past couple of weeks, she’s felt connected again and in control. All that balancing on one leg has made her believe that she’s capable of mastering her stability, physically and in other ways, too. When Glenn put his arms around her a couple of nights ago, she felt as if she was responding in a way she hadn’t in far too long.

She goes to her closet and puts on a gray tank top edged in yellow and made out of a clingy material that absorbs sweat like a dream. Best of all, the deep V shows off her cleavage without looking as if that’s the point. How’d that happen? She tries on a few different pants (she’s been back to the store Becky took her to five times!) and goes with a pair of black crops. She can unzip them from the cuffs and show off her calves. Even the name of the company, which she initially found too cute for words, has begun to appeal to her. Lululemon. It’s kind of bright and whimsical, and in addition to everything else, that’s usually how she feels when she puts the clothes on.

The yoga studio is in a big white building a couple of blocks from the beach, and at 11:15 when Imani gets there, there’s a line around the corner. It’s kind of the way it used to be going to movie theaters in Texas when she was growing up, back when people went to movies. On top of that, there’s a line of paparazzi in the street, snapping pictures. It almost feels like a premiere. Goddamned bunch of vultures, but on the other hand, she does love the way she looks in this outfit, and she slings her yoga bag over her shoulder and does a little hop up to the sidewalk.

Becky’s near the front of the line, chatting with Sue Holland, child star turned alcoholic turned beloved teen idol turned serious actress, and Faith, one of the other leads from Roommates. They all greet with big, sisterly hugs, the unmistakable waiting-for-the-doors-to-open energy in the air. Imani can hear the paparazzi snapping pictures. “Imani, over here! Becky, how’s it going?” Her manager will be thrilled if these photos show up on the Internet. She knows she’s looking gorgeous.

“You didn’t tell me Johnny Depp was teaching,” Imani says, nodding toward the long line.

“I took a workshop with Taylor in Kauai,” Sue says, “and he kicked my ass!”

This starts a competition between Becky and Sue about who has taken the most difficult and exhausting classes and workshops and how close to passing out each came how many times. Imani thought the whole point of yoga was a lack of competition, but she’s definitely seen a lot of that over the last few weeks. She’s been surprisingly good at rising above it, though. Although come to think of it, maybe being a purist about not competing is just another form of competition.

“I kind of feel as if we’re dinosaurs,” Becky’s costar says, “and these guys are the real celebrities.”

Someone in the line behind them says, “On Taylor’s website, he said his agent is negotiating for a workshop in the Staples Center.”

“Agent?” Imani says. “Really?”

“It’s a big thing now,” Becky says. “They can negotiate amazing contracts with studios and for workshops at retreats all over the world. I was talking with Yram Tild a few months ago—”

“Yram?!” Sue screams. “She is incredible. I’ve been trying to get into one of her workshops for months. You know her?”

“A little. Anyway, she said her agent got it in her contracts she has to fly first class, which makes sense because she has to start teaching as soon as she lands. And a lot of teachers get TV and video deals so—”

“I cannot believe you actually talked to Yram!” Sue says.

Imani has a vague sense that once upon a time, fitness teachers crowed about knowing movie and TV stars as a way to make themselves seem more important. Crazy world.

“The really cool thing,” Becky says, “is that I got three adjustments last workshop!”

“From Yram?” Sue shrieks. “Oh, my God!”

“How are you spelling that?” Imani asks.

“Y-r-a-m,” says Sue. “She’s so ethereal and gorgeous, it’s unreal. She’s like a magic princess. She has American parents, but she was raised at a monastery in the Himalayas by monks who gave her her name and training.”

Imani is tempted to point out that “Yram” is “Mary” spelled backward but doesn’t want to burst anyone’s bubble. “I’d love to take her class,” she says, hoping it sounds convincing.

The inside of the studio is unexpectedly gorgeous, a lot of rose-colored wood and ivory walls. The room itself is heated, nearly hot, and there’s a lot of polite but tense jostling for position. Imani’s noticed this look people get when they’re claiming their territory with their mats. They plant their equipment with focused intensity, no looking side to side, no acknowledging anyone else’s presence even though the whole point of the intensity seems to be to keep everyone else away from them. They ought to just post a sign.

But today there are so many people, the mats are nearly on top of each other and half the people are sitting upright with their legs folded in lotus, looking as if they’ll explode if anyone suggests they move. Someone does. A perky little woman in a unitard.

“Sorry, folks, but I’m going to have to ask everyone to reposition a little. We have thirty more people coming in. There’s plenty of room in here if we line up properly. We’ll start in the left-hand corner and skootch everyone together.”

“I hope you’re not claustrophobic,” Becky whispers. “I’m so glad I took a hit of pot before I got in line.”

When Taylor Kendall comes into the room, there’s a round of applause and the kind of cheers that Mick Jagger would envy. He’s shirtless and wearing a pair of loose cotton drawstring pants that reveal a provocative hint of butt cleavage. He’s not tall, and he’s definitely not a bodybuilder, but there’s something undeniably sexy about his lean, perfectly proportioned torso and his confident ballet dancer’s strut, back arched and chest thrust out, as if he’s showing off a tattoo somewhere above his nipple. His arms are topographical maps of musculature and the circulatory system.

“Okay, folks. There are eighty-six people in this room. But do you know how many are on the wait list? One hundred and twenty-five. And how many were turned away completely? At least two hundred more.”

Inexplicably, this provokes another round of applause.

“So I hope you’re going to make good use of your time here and the gift of having gotten in.” This is the first time Imani has paid three hundred dollars for a gift. “You ready to begin?”

More applause, and this time Imani joins in—Taylor’s wandering the room and is now right next to her.

“Okay, before we start, I want to tell you one thing. I know I look like a big dummy, okay. But I am not as stupid as I look, okay?”

There’s a roar of laughter and applause, but in fact, Imani is relieved by the comment. You wouldn’t mistake him for a brain surgeon.

“I know a lot of you came here today because someone said to you, ‘You have to go out to Santa Monica and take this class. This guy is a pretty good teacher.’ Am I right?”

A lot of heads start bobbing. He lays a hand on Imani’s shoulder. “Am I right, girlfriend?”

For the record, Imani wants to say, not every black woman in America wants to be called “girlfriend,” especially by some scrawny white guy she’s never met before.

Instead she says, maybe a little too loudly, “Yeah, you right, girlfriend.”

Imani gets a big laugh, and he moves away from her quickly.

“The important thing to remember is that the class is not about me. It’s about you. Okay? It doesn’t matter how many people were trying to get in for my class today. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been on Larry King Live. (Three, okay?) It doesn’t matter that I’ve been on the Today show and that People magazine voted me ‘Sexiest whatever.’ Who cares? Maybe you heard that I sold more DVDs on QVC than any other yoga teacher. Ever! Big effing deal. It’s all about you. This class is only as good as you make it for yourself. And hey, you can buy the DVDs out front after the class anyway! I’m going to be signing them for an extra twenty-five dollars, three percent of which will go to the Taylor Kendall Foundation.”

Maybe she’s imagining it, but Imani could swear he’s giving her a cold, hard stare. He looks away and rubs his hands together.

“Are you ready? ” he shouts. “I said, are you ready? Okay, that’s more like it. I’m going to make you wet today. I’m going to stretch you open, and we’re going to go deep. You’re gonna need to make noise, so make some noise. Let go and let it out. Let’s go! Are you ready? Are you ready? Awesome. Now, everybody sit back down for a minute while I do a demonstration.”

By the middle of the class, Imani is indeed wet. Soaking, in fact, with sweat dripping down her face and even off of her fingertips. The fact that she’s sweating as much as she is makes her care a little less about the people on all sides of her who are dripping onto their own mats and, when they stagger their bodies and extend their arms, onto hers as well. Taylor has long curly hair that comes down past his shoulders. He started off class with it in a ponytail, and in the past fifty minutes, he’s had it up in a clip, wound into a goofy little topknot, and flowing freely around his shoulders. Imani wants to dismiss him as one more annoying narcissist, but he’s a great showman, and at least to some extent, this is show biz.

The students are mostly thin women in their twenties who’ve somehow or other perfected the skill of silently drawing attention to themselves while looking as if they’re completely absorbed in what they’re doing. The men mostly bear a striking resemblance to Taylor, same types of bodies from what she can see, and either long-haired or completely bald.

While Taylor has given Becky two adjustments already (funny how you catch on to this kind of thing quickly) and one to Sue, he hasn’t so much as touched Imani since their little exchange before class began.

Unfortunately, that’s about to change.

As far as Imani can tell, he’s putting the class through the same paces she’s been put through in almost every class Becky has taken her to. The big innovation is that he’s renamed every pose in a way that emphasizes parts of the anatomy. Not “down dog” (“too negative and demeaning”) but “up butt.” Not “child’s pose” (“children go into a million poses every hour”) but “knees spread.” Not “plow,” the pose they’re in now, but “crotch in face pose.”

“Drop your knees on either side of your ears and get your junk closer to your face,” he says. “You’re sweaty, you’re loose, here’s your chance.”

Imani doesn’t want a chance. Her back is starting to hurt and the combination of the heat, the sweat, and the imagery Taylor is using is beginning to make her feel a little ill. She stays in plow, legs straight. Plenty deep for her.

That’s when he comes over to her and kneels on her mat with the front of his body pressed against her back and his face practically between her legs. This feels like the closest she’s come to cheating on Glenn since she stopped doing love scenes on X.C.I.A.

“Lower the knees,” he says.

She shakes her head, too contorted to say anything. Plus he’s looking at her with more hostility in his gaze. Let him. She’s not budging. He takes his hands and puts them on the backs of her thighs and applies pressure. When she doesn’t move, he gives a little push.

That’s when Imani feels something pop in her lower back.

Lee’s Pose of the Month: April

Marichyasana

I’ve chosen marichyasana as pose of the month because, like all spinal twists, it’s detoxifying. And because there are a million variations on this one, there’s a version to suit every need. And let’s face it, who among us doesn’t need a little dextoxification every once in a while?

If you’re trying to manage a chemical addiction, this pose can help the liver and the spleen wash out all poisons you’ve built up in your system, making it look like an untended litter box.

But drugs and alcohol are not the only things we need to detox from. There are relationships that leave us so full of emotional and spiritual poison we need to purify on the deep level we get from really twisting and squeezing them out of our spines. (Kind of like the way we sometimes wanted to “wring someone’s neck,” back before doing yoga, when we still dabbled in violent metaphors.)

And sometimes we need to wring out whatever self-destructive patterns of behavior are making it impossible for us to accept that we do deserve a good relationship or a steady job or just a plain old break every once in a while.

But here’s the thing about twisting and detoxing—it isn’t as much about wringing out as it is about lifting up. Your head, your heart, your spirit. Because you can’t get into marichyasana, or any of the twisting poses, unless you have your chest lifted and your heart open and are ready to move into it.

And believe me, you can’t start clearing all that emotional and spiritual litter out of your life unless you’re first ready to hold your head high and open your heart and lift yourself out of the old patterns and the rehearsed reactions and expectations of failure.

Lift, open, twist. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Don’t overthink it. Just do it. Don’t get bent out of shape.

Namaste
Lee

 

P.S. Barrett’s Saturday morning “Good Doggie” classes have really started to take off. Tell your friends. And don’t forget: It’s not just for girls! My twins are having a great time!

Lee clicks the “post” button on her page and closes her laptop. Even though she’d hate to count up the number of hours she spends online—by necessity, for work, mostly—Lee has never been a big one for the computer. The “Pose of the Month” usually turns out to be the “Pose of Every Third Month if I’m Lucky.” It’s weird to think that as a yoga teacher she has to keep up an active online life, just to stay in touch with students and build her business. It seems counterintuitive. Still, there’s something kind of cozy about lying in bed and checking e-mail and ordering a delivery of groceries, as she’s started doing since Alan moved out. Adapting.

In the past month, life has settled into a groove of some kind. Lee can’t say she doesn’t miss having Alan around the house, because she does. She wouldn’t admit that to many people because as humiliating as it is to have someone walk out on you (with only vague plans for reuniting in the future) it’s even worse to feel their absence as strongly as she does. The whole incident with him has made her question the validity of working so hard to not feel angry all the time. Maybe a little righteous anger would help. Maybe she really should visualize wringing his neck. Or, more to the point, maybe she should not feel so guilty when she does visualize wringing his neck.

She always worries that she’s betraying her students in those moments. She feels like a hypocrite.

Last week, she lay in bed and thought about punching him, really laying into him and screaming at him. But those were extenuating circumstances.

He had come over to discuss the contract with YogaHappens and ask her if she’d come to a decision yet. Ever since the meeting with “the guys” at their house three weeks earlier, he’s been pressuring her into going ahead with it. There are still a few questions about the amount of money they’d actually be making, but one thing is certain: it will be a lot more than she’s making now, with Alan’s salary being a complete bonus.

“I’m thinking it over,” she told him.

“Yeah, I know. But they’re not going to give you forever to answer. It would be good for you, Lee, a real opportunity.”

She doesn’t mind that Alan is so behind this plan, and it isn’t as if she is dead against it, but it bothers her that instead of coming right out and being honest about his motives, about the advantages to him, he’s spending all this energy trying to convince her it’s about the benefits to her and her career. Why can’t he just tell her the straight-out truth for once? Is it really that hard?

“I’m thinking it over, Alan.”

They were sitting at the table in the dining room at the time, and the kids were at Barrett’s “Good Doggie” class. Alan had looked across the table at her, a little sad, a little pleading. And then a familiar gleam had come into his eyes, and Lee knew exactly what he was thinking. For a minute, she forgot that everything was different in their lives. All of a sudden, she felt that direct line between the two of them that they’d always used to communicate nonverbally. His obvious desire for her started to heat up her body, without a word being exchanged. She realized how much she had missed his touch and how much she missed the release she always felt from having sex with him, and she looked over at his dark, full lips and just wanted him. When she talked about it with Katherine later—and Katherine was the only person she discussed it with—she told her she’d been horny, which was easier than getting into the longing and loneliness.

She’d looked back at Alan that day and held his gaze for about one second too long, and next thing she knew, he had her backed up against the sofa in the living room and was running his hands all over her thighs. She hopped up and wrapped her legs around his waist and he carried her like that to their bedroom. Both of them seemed to be driven by so much more intensity and hunger than usual, and when their mouths came together, Lee heard herself sighing and felt her body melt in a way that she hadn’t felt in a long time. A little pulse somewhere in the back of her head kept repeating He’s back, he’s back, over and over, almost as if she needed to convince herself. Even her concerns that there could be someone else started to dissolve: he wouldn’t be like this with her if he was seeing another woman.

But afterward, he popped up off the bed and started pulling on his clothes. “That was fun, babe,” he said.

Fun? A sweaty ninety minutes of power yoga can be “fun” but that isn’t the word she would have used to describe what they’d just done.

“Think about the contract, okay?”

Two minutes later, he was gone. Not back after all, but gone again. That’s when she started thinking about slugging the guy.

Her cell phone on the table beside the bed rings, and she sees that it’s her mother. This is a call she isn’t ready for at this hour of the morning on a Saturday. But out of a sense of obligation, she reaches for it anyway. Except it isn’t only obligation. Lee feels a complicated combination of love and pity for her mother and is always hoping, with an explosive mix of optimism and magical thinking, that during one of their conversations, her mother will stop projecting her own doubts about herself onto Lee, and they’ll get to the love they feel for each other somewhere under the surface resentments.

In her youth, Ellen had aspired to be a writer. She’d taken an entry-level job in publishing right out of college and lived with a roommate on Bank Street in the West Village in one of those cheap sublets that were easy to find in the late sixties. If you believed Ellen’s version of her own story, it was one of the happiest times of her life. She liked her job, wrote on the kitchen table at night, and was receiving “promising rejections” from the New Yorker, McCall’s, and every other publication she sent her stories to. She’d felt with certainty that something was about to happen and her life was about to open up for her.

What happened was that she met Lee’s dad. He was twenty years older than Ellen and a legendary editor at Random House. Tall, handsome, intelligent—how could she say no when he asked her to marry him? She’d have that much more time to write once she quit her job and moved up to his place in Darien.

Except that isn’t how it had worked out. Probably that isn’t how it ever works out for anyone. Ellen just got lost in her husband’s life. Compared with all the famous writers her husband worked with, many of whom visited them and spent the weekend, her ambitions seemed ridiculous and all those “promising rejections” just reminders of what she lacked in terms of talent. She became a mom, a housewife.

“Oh, Lee-lee, I’m sorry, it sounds like I woke you up, honey. I’m never sure what your teaching schedule is.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I’ve been awake for a while now. How’s everything going?”

“It’s going great, honey. It really is, I haven’t been this happy in years.”

“I’m so glad, Mom.”

This is true. When her mother is depressed, she tends to be self-pitying and angry, lashing out at Lee and anyone else within earshot, excoriating them for not understanding her problems, not appreciating the sacrifices she made for her family, and sounding personally affronted by every piece of good news, even about her own grandsons. When she’s happy, there’s less lashing out, or at least it’s all done in a cheerier tone.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why, honey?”

I was hoping you’d ask about the twins, Lee doesn’t say. “I was just about to, Mom.”

“Oh, Lee. You are going to love this news so much. It makes sense on so many levels. It really pulls together so many of my interests.”

Her mother’s voice has that tone she uses when she’s imagining criticism and is trying to head it off at the pass. “I can’t wait to hear it, Mom.”

“I know you’re going to think it’s a little crazy, but really, I think this is going to make us even closer, honey. You know that’s what I’ve always wanted.”

“I know, Mom.” It’s what I’ve always wanted, too, Lee knows better than to say. If she did, her mother would interpret it as criticism of her, and there would go another half hour of her life.

“Well, you know that based on your inspiration, I’ve started taking yoga classes at the Y.”

“You told me. I think it’s great, Mom.” Last she heard, her mother had attended two classes and then decided that it was a waste of money. Maybe she started going again. A little wave of uneasiness is beginning to wash over Lee, and she really wishes she hadn’t taken the call.

“I’m sure you don’t believe me, but I’m really quite good. I’m able to do almost all those things where you bend over and whatever else it is.”

“You always were flexible.”

“You’re just saying that, but it’s true. Anyway, I made friends with the yoga teacher there, Laurence, this lovely young man who always smells so nice. And don’t call him Larry! Anyway, I invited him out here for dinner one night, because I wanted him to see the house. He showed up with his ‘friend’—Corey or something like that—very nice. And Bob didn’t mind at all about it being two men. I know you think Bob’s a big Republican, but he’s a supporter of Lieberman.”

Lee is having a familiar feeling, the one where she feels as if her mother just walked into her house with a huge trunk and told her she’s staying for six months. Oh, Mom, she wants to say, don’t tell me what I think you’re going to tell me.

When Lee was a kid and her flute teacher told Ellen that Lee had “promise,” Ellen went out and bought herself a tenor recorder and took two lessons. That was before the divorce, back when Ellen and Lee’s father had money. Ellen had never been supportive of Lee’s premed ambitions, but once she got into medical school, Ellen began researching nursing programs. When Lee’s sister got into Juilliard, Ellen began taking piano lessons. You could say it was all a flattering way for her mother to be closer to her kids and to find some common ground, but what it always boiled down to was her mother being disappointed in her own abilities and then willfully making everyone feel guilty about their own talents. It all comes so easy for you. You think you’re all so much better than me. You’re all laughing at me and don’t try to pretend you’re not.

So now it was happening again.

“Laurence thinks I would make an excellent teacher. Not on your level, honey. Don’t worry about me trying to compete. And anyway, since I’m back east, it’s not like we’d be going after the same students. Laurence says there’s a huge market for what he calls ‘old-lady yoga,’ which is apparently a much more affectionate and positive term than it sounds.”

It’s true that there is a need for more compassionate teachers to instruct older students who have different physical requirements. Her mother isn’t especially athletic, but she is fit. She’d benefit from a good mentor.

“Does Laurence offer teacher training?” Lee asks.

“In other words, you think he’s just flattering me to get some money out of me for the training. Reeling in some foolish old woman. Next thing I know, you’ll be accusing me of having a crush on him. As if I don’t know that he’s gay and, even if he weren’t, it’s highly unlikely he’d be attracted to me. Have a little more faith in me than that, Lee!”

“I didn’t say that, Mom. I was just wondering . . .”

“Anyway, that’s not the main thing. The main thing is, he fell in love with the house. He’s been looking for a place to use as a yoga retreat center, and he thinks this would be perfect. Can’t you imagine it, honey?”

“I guess I hadn’t thought about it much, to be honest.”

“Oh, now you’re trying to discourage me, but I think he’s right. We could have people put those mats out on the side porch in summer. And he thinks the barn could be converted into a big yoga studio or whatever for under a hundred thousand. We’ll have to get another mortgage to put in extra bathrooms, anyway.”

“I thought Bob was feeling pinched during the recession.” Bob was an ineffectual man who retired from the insurance business at exactly the wrong moment. Lee had been hoping that he had invested at least some of his portfolio wisely and had a good portion of it locked away.

“When you decided to go into this yoga business, Lee, I didn’t discourage you.”

True, assuming you don’t consider “Yoga is a freak thing. You’d be better off joining the circus” discouraging.

“Honestly, Mom, if you’ve thought it through and you really think it would be a good idea, then I’m behind you, one hundred percent.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear, honey. All I want is your support. I don’t want or need or expect anything else but that. Oh, one more thing: Laurence wants to do a little benefit weekend here to get things off the ground and help raise some money for the blocks and belts or straps or whatever it is. And he asked me if you and Alan could help him launch it. It would be such a huge, huge boost to us if you did—a big yoga instructor and her rock star husband from Hollywood. We could use the names of some of the celebrities you teach. Who’s going to know if it isn’t true? It would be incredible. He tried to get that Asian one with the long hair? I forget his name, but he wanted to be paid! Can you believe it? The whole point is it’s a benefit. And he wanted us to pay for his plane ticket! Even after I told his ‘agent’ he could have our bedroom and we’d sleep in the guest room. I told him I’d make him breakfast, too.”

“I’ll think it over, Mom, but to be honest, now isn’t the best time.”

“I know I’m completely insignificant in your lives, honey, but I helped you out when you needed money. You’ll be coming east to visit us anyway, no?”

“I’ve been meaning to talk with you about that.” She had hoped Alan would be back home before it ever became necessary to discuss any of this with her mother.

“Is something wrong?” Ellen asks. “It’s not the twins, is it? I know you don’t believe me, but I have a sixth sense about these things.”

“It’s not about the twins, Mom. They’re fine.”

“Thank God. I knew it couldn’t be. I would have had an intuition.”

But Lee still can’t bring herself to mention it, so she tells her mother that she’s been given a very nice offer to work at a big yoga studio, health benefits and all, and she probably shouldn’t leave L.A. for a while.

“In other words, you’re saying my little retreat center is too rinky-dink for you now. Well, I never pretended it was a big deal like your life. Give me credit for something, Lee.”

“Please don’t, Mom. It isn’t that. It’s just . . . Alan temporarily moved out, Mom.”

There is a long moment of silence from the other end of the phone, and then, in a different tone of voice, one full of warmth and the kind of compassion that Lee knows—has always known—her mother to be capable of: “I’m so, so sorry, honey.” It’s almost as if the petulant, insecure child she was talking to a few minutes ago passed the phone to an adult. “What happened?”

Lee tells her a version of the story that almost makes sense to her as she’s saying it. She emphasizes that no one’s planning any drastic moves for the moment, but everything’s a little complicated now. It’s not as if they’re breaking up, it’s just a little breather. Her mother sobs audibly. She mumbles something about the twins, and Lee is happy that she’s told her, and, in this moment of shared sadness, she feels closer to her mother than she’s felt in a long time.

Ellen blows her nose. “I’m so happy you felt you could tell me, honey. It makes me feel so much closer to you. So . . . maybe Alan would come play at the benefit alone while you take care of the kids out there.”

Stephanie is nursing her second Diet Coke and finishing her pitch of Above the Las Vegas Sands to Sybille Brent. Sybille appears to be listening in a vague, wine-soaked way, sprawled back into the cushions of a banquette in the Sky Bar at the Mondrian Hotel, her very thin legs wound together tightly. It’s nearly dusk, and from where she’s sitting, Stephanie can see miles of Los Angeles down below, bathed in the faint golds and yellows of twilight, the sickly hues of the unhealthy air pretty, soft, and languid. Like something from a fever dream, which is how the sprawling, overstuffed city often looks to Stephanie at this aching in-between time of day. Stephanie can’t decide if Sybille’s little nods and eye-widening gestures in reaction to what she’s saying represent genuine interest or condescending detachment. The bar is one big outdoor room, and a cool but pleasant breeze blows through the bougainvillea and Sybille’s soft white hair moves slightly.

Stephanie’s manager set up the meeting. Sybille, a woman of a certain age—although no one’s certain what age that is—recently made a vast fortune in a spectacularly ugly divorce from her husband, a high-profile real estate developer in New York. She’s spending a few months at the Mondrian to get away from New York, and she’s looking for projects to invest in. At one time, she apparently had acting ambitions, and this is a way to connect with the business later in life without looking ridiculous. It would give her something to do, a hand in movies, and a screen credit her friends can applaud at the premiere.

It’s a fairly common way to raise money for a project, but it’s not the easiest way. In some respects, it cheapens the project—everyone knows this is no one’s first choice for funding—and usually these folks expect something in return—a role for a friend or a hand in the shooting. Over the past few weeks, Stephanie has had four such meetings with four such people, all pretty discouraging. No one has read the book; no one seems especially interested in the story. They all want to talk about casting (without really knowing the roles) and dropping the names of people they allegedly know or supposedly worked with or hope she knows. One guy even asked her if it could be shot in 3-D.

“I hadn’t considered it,” she said.

All the mutual pretending makes her feel a little crazy at times, although certainly less crazy than she was before the shameful intervention at her apartment. And since nothing else has worked out for Stephanie, it’s worth a shot. Claiming she’s raised a certain percentage of the budget will make it more likely for others to invest, and in any case, it beats lying around her apartment with a bunch of empty bottles and used kitty litter. But she’s not going to go there right now.

“I like the way you describe the plot,” Sybille says.

“It’s an amazing novel, and the author is incredibly talented.”

“I read the book last week, as soon as we had the meeting arranged. I found it interesting and passionate but overwritten in places. A young writer using language like a new toy and a little too in love with the sound of his own voice.”

“There’s some of that,” Stephanie says. She’s always felt this way, but it was never discussed in any of the reviews, so she’s kept her reservations to herself. Stephanie is impressed that Sybille read the novel and that she’s put her finger on a stylistic weakness. She has a velvety voice, a little smoky, like Lauren Bacall’s, and one of those carefully trained and modulated ways of articulating every word.

“It sounds as if you read a lot,” Stephanie says.

“Yes, but don’t tell anyone. It makes you look out of touch these days. I studied literature at Vassar, another piece of information I don’t toss around since I look enough like a dilettante already. Your description of the book makes more sense to me structurally than the book itself,” Sybille goes on. “I like the way you emphasized the sister’s wedding. I think that could be a frame for the whole piece. Set it up as the place the story is going, right from the first scene.”

When Stephanie mentioned this very idea to the author, he was insulted and refused to talk with Stephanie for two weeks. “I’ve always thought that’s how it should be done, but the author didn’t agree with me.” Stephanie finishes the Diet Coke, and a waiter materializes at her side and asks if she’d like another. “Please,” she says.

Sybille observes this over the rim of her wineglass, and Stephanie has the feeling she’s attaching exactly the right significance to it. One of the worst things about not drinking is that everyone immediately assumes you’re a drunk. A few weeks ago, she would have been on her third glass of wine by now, and Sybille wouldn’t have batted an eye. But “I’ll have a Diet Coke” is treated as if it’s synonymous with “I’m an alcoholic.” Well, if the shoe fits. And after struggling with this escalating drinking problem for the past year, she’s willing to admit that it does fit. As bad as it all was, the worst for her was realizing afterward that she had Silver Linings playing on the TV with the sound turned off. Oops, not going there, either!

Sybille has that sleek, carefully tended rich-lady hair and the figure of a one-time trophy wife. Someone named Anderson, a much younger man with beautiful eyes, occasionally appears and hands her a message or discreetly asks a question. Stephanie is guessing he’s a gay assistant, but hasn’t entirely ruled out the possibility that his duties include more than arranging her calendar. Sybille gives off an air of intelligence and genuine compassion, but there’s also the aura of refined decadence that sometimes surrounds people with lots of money and equal amounts of free time. She’s wearing a subtle, intoxicating perfume that isn’t quite like anything Stephanie has ever smelled before. Probably made with the glands of an endangered animal and costs in the five-hundred-dollar-an-ounce range.

“Have you thought about writing the screenplay yourself? ” Sybille asks. “You have good ideas, and you’d have more control over the project. I think you have integrity.”

“The author wants to write it. Although I’m not sure that’s working out very well. Promising him he could is how I got the option, and it’s in his contract.”

“You could buy him out, I’m sure.”

No doubt she could, assuming she had the money. The Diet Coke arrives, and Stephanie can feel Sybille’s eyes on her as she sips.

“You don’t drink?” she asks.

“Not today,” she says. “I’ve been to a yoga class and might attend a second one later tonight.” Nothing untruthful in that.

“There’s lots of that here, I’m told. Yoga. New York as well.”

“Everywhere these days.”

Sybille shrugs. “Everywhere” is not of great interest to her. Her sleek, aging body indicates pretty clearly that she works with a private trainer, probably at home. Pilates, no doubt.

“You know a lot about it?” Sybille asks. “Yoga?”

“I’ve been doing it for a while,” Stephanie says.

“Well, that is perfect. I’m interested in putting a yoga element into the script.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Your expertise would undoubtedly be useful.”

“To be honest,” Stephanie says, “I’m not sure how much I know about anything these days.”

Sybille leans forward, puts down her wineglass, and pats Stephanie’s knee. “Sometimes you need to feel that way. I suspect you know more about a lot of things than you give yourself credit for.”

Stephanie is suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude and looks off into the sweet melancholy of the dusk, the fading sunlight, the twinkling buildings. What was it Dorothy Parker said? If you can make it through the twilight, you can make it through the night? Something like that. Well, she’s almost made it through the twilight of one more day. Three cheers.

“I like you,” Sybille says. “You have smarts and courage. Vulnerability, which always helps balance things out. I watched Silver Linings. Anderson told me you’re rumored to have done a lot of the writing on it.”

“The screenwriter had a breakdown during rewrites, and I took over.” It’s a relief to finally admit this to someone since, for years, she’s been protecting the writer’s interests.

“Let’s be blunt with each other, shall we? I want a project, and I like the sounds of this one. I like you. I feel I can push you a little bit, although I count on you to call me on it if I go overboard. Basically, I don’t know much about the business, but I’m ready to start writing checks.”

“All right.” The advantage of working with people who are new to this is that they haven’t yet figured out how much they can get away with and get for free, since everyone is so desperate to get something under way.

“I’m impatient, though. I don’t want to invest ten years in this. We can have my lawyer deal with the author. But I’d like you to start on the screenplay immediately.”

“I’m ready to do that.” The idea of having something concrete to do is hugely appealing to her.

“I have a request, however,” Sybille says.

“Of course.” Here it comes, Stephanie thinks.

“The father is divorced, correct?”

“He is.”

“I think it would be interesting if we could beef up that role a little. Give him more money and stature and make him more the villain of the piece. I’m all for subtlety, but everyone loves a villain. We can have him starting to do yoga, in a completely humiliating and age-inappropriate way. The tight little pants, the claptrap, the whole thing. I think we’d want to make him look especially foolish. The piece needs comic relief in moments, and he can supply that, too.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

“We can show him trying to get in touch with his ‘spiritual side,’ which amounts to nothing more than accepting the fact, after forty years of deceit, that he’s attracted to men. We don’t need to hit it over the head or offend anyone, but perhaps he can show up at the wedding at the end with his new boyfriend, a frail thing in his twenties who teaches yoga, a complete embarrassment to the older man, although he doesn’t realize it and even seems proud of his little friend.”

“We might want to make the young boyfriend somewhat likable,” Stephanie says. “Give him a few redeeming qualities.”

Sybille thinks this over, sips her wine. “We’ll give him eyeglasses. It’s a walk-on role.”

This is not as bad as Stephanie feared. The father, she convinces herself, is an underdeveloped character anyway, and the whole thing could be a good treacle-cutter if done properly.

“I can work with that,” Stephanie says.

Graciela is woken up by the sunlight streaming in the windows of the loft in downtown L.A. she shares with Daryl. She keeps meaning to get blinds or curtains or something to keep out the light, but the windows in the converted office building are huge, and from a practical and financial point of view, the whole process seems a little daunting. She buries her head under the covers and curls up against Daryl’s back. He was deejaying at a private party last night and didn’t get in until almost four this morning, only a few hours ago. He’s in a deep stage of sleep, his breath sonorous and his knees pulled up toward his chest like a child. If she saw that he was sucking his thumb, it wouldn’t be a complete shock. This, she is certain, is the true Daryl, sweet, childlike, innocent. Because he’s such a lean, handsome man—half African American, half Dominican, with perfect smooth brown skin—Graciela was surprised when they first made love at how inexperienced he seemed. Not suave and practiced, despite the many girlfriends he’d had and the way his looks might suggest, but eager and hungry, like a teenager. And almost in disbelief that he was in her bed and she was in his arms. Even after all this time, he looks at her when they’re fucking and he’s getting close to coming and says, “Oh, my God, you’re so beautiful. You’re so fucking beautiful!”

Despite everything, how can she resist that? Something in his intensity is so real, so genuine, it takes her to a place where there’s nothing but the two of them and the overpowering passion of the moment. There’s no modesty or shame between them, nothing that’s taboo, no need to hide anything.

She can feel the sun on the back of her neck. One day, one of them will have a big break, and they’ll hire someone to come in and deal with the windows.

That’s when it hits her. The big break. Today’s the day that could open a door to everything she’s been waiting for. Her audition for the Beyoncé video. She feels a kick of panic and excitement in her stomach and slithers out of bed without waking up Daryl.

Under Lee’s ministrations, her injury is about eighty-five percent healed. She was hoping she’d be even further along, but in most ways, she’s in much better shape than she feared she would be back when it happened. Not perfect, but she can work around that. She’s promised herself she’s going to give it everything, but without blowing out her injury again. She feels more acceptance of the fact that she’s genuinely good, and all she has to do is show her real self, without being crazy and desperate.

She’s worked up an audition piece with her friend Lindsay and has the choreography down pat. Lindsay spliced together clips from YouTube of Jody Watley in her Soul Train prime, and they studied them for hours and put together a routine that’s got elements of hip-hop and popping, mixed in with classic funk and even disco, so the routine should be surprising and different from whatever everyone else is doing. For music, she’s using Marilyn Monroe’s version of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” remixed with a deep funky groove prowling underneath that Daryl helped her put together. It’s a subtle nod to the fact that Beyoncé recorded a version of the song for a commercial—referencing her without using one of her tracks.

After she’s showered and dressed, she notices that her phone is blinking. She checks it out and sees it’s another text message from Conor. This is the third time he’s tried to get in touch with her in the past two weeks. She was grateful to him the day he showed up at Stephanie’s with Lee and Katherine. He confirmed Graciela’s opinion that Stephanie was severely dehydrated, in addition to everything else, and convinced her to go to the hospital. He and Katherine had gone to the hospital with Stephanie, and she’d called later in the day to make sure everything was okay. She didn’t expect he’d keep her phone number, and she certainly isn’t going to call back. Nice as he is, she’s not interested. That’s number one. Number two is that he’s Katherine’s boyfriend or possible boyfriend, depending on how far that’s gone. And number three, if Daryl ever got wind of it, he’d be furious, especially if she told him she’d returned the call, or the text message, even to tell him to stop getting in touch.

As she’s deleting the message, Daryl silently comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her. “Who’s that from?” he asks sleepily.

“Lindsay. She’s coming in an hour to pick me up for the audition.”

“I’m gonna drive you,” he says, his face buried in her wet hair.

“No, you’re not. You’ll make me too nervous. I have to get completely focused.”

He accepts this, probably because he’s still exhausted and wants to go back to sleep. “Use some of your yoga. I’ll come pick you up afterwards.”

She isn’t going to refuse this. It’s one way to satisfy him, and if she screws up in the audition, he’ll be there to scrape her back together.

“You’d better not come before four,” she says. “These always take longer than they’re supposed to.”

“You’ll be amazing,” he says. He spins her around, and it looks as if he has tears in eyes although it might just be sleepiness. “I want you to be great,” he says.

“Thanks,” she says. “I’ll do my best.”

He gazes into her eyes. “Look at me, baby. I want you to get this!”

This isn’t exactly an apology for what happened, but at least it’s an acknowledgment that for a moment there was some doubt about how completely he was supporting her success.

“I know that,” she says. “And you know what?”

“What? ”

“If I do get it, I’m going to buy us some blinds!”

As Lee is about to go into the studio to start teaching, one of the assistants calls her over to the desk. Lee has a pretty good idea of what’s coming. Standing in front of the desk is Evelyn, a woman in her thirties who comes somewhat erratically. She has a fairly advanced practice, although she tends to treat classes more like endurance workouts and goes into certain postures with thrusting moves, almost as if she’s bench-pressing a barbell when she’s reaching up into warrior 1 or a crescent lunge.

What Lee finds annoying is that Evelyn always has an issue with paying for class. Either she’s forgotten her credit card or lost her wallet or has an elaborate story about having walked out of a class halfway and therefore is eligible (she believes) for a freebie.

Today, according to the studio assistant, the problem is a ten-class card that expired back in January. It still has three unused classes on it, and Evelyn feels she should be allowed to continue to use it. Lee is willing to go the distance for anyone who can’t afford classes or is in a temporary financial fix, but in Evelyn’s case it feels more like a game. Evelyn is a lawyer and is wearing a pair of designer yoga pants that Lee knows for a fact cost close to two hundred dollars.

After the assistant has explained the matter, Lee says, “Okay, Evelyn. I see what you mean, but I remember talking about the terms and expiration date of the pass when you bought it. You said the expiration would help motivate you to come to class more often.”

“It’s possible we said that, but that’s not how it worked out. So I really think the responsible thing to do is to let me use it up, Lee. There are three classes left on it. I mean, I hate that yoga is now all about money.”

It’s so unappealingly manipulative to try to guilt-trip Lee with this line, especially given the expensive pants. A surprising number of students insist that yoga should not be about money, which usually boils down to yoga not being about them spending money on classes. Although the whole thing feels like a game, there’s a little pleading in Evelyn’s voice that makes Lee think she partly just wants to be taken care of. It’s probably why she started coming to yoga in the first place, and while it isn’t exactly appealing, it’s a lot more forgivable than anything else.

“How about we compromise,” Lee says. “Use it today, and then we start fresh next time you come.”

“You’re a champ,” Evelyn says. “I knew you’d do the right thing. I’ll just hang on to the card as a souvenir.”

Certainly the card will reappear at the studio sometime in the near future.

There are about twenty-five people in class today, a good group, although Shane is at the front of the room. He’s a tall, hippieish guy with a bit of a paunch who seems to be allergic to deodorant. Other students have complained about him, but Lee hasn’t figured out how to address the issue without being insulting. It’s probably best to just come out and say something, but the thought of it fills her with embarrassment and dread. An anonymous letter would be convenient. Of course, Lee does wonder if there’d be so much objection to his hygiene issues if he were twenty years younger and had a six-pack.

Money and body odor—it would undoubtedly be nice to have someone else deal with things like this.

No Katherine in class today. Again. She hasn’t been practicing at the studio since Alan confronted her and suggested she’d been tampering with the books. Lee can understand why she’s upset, but the truth is, she misses her presence in class, and Katherine is an anchor for Lee, someone she knows is into the deeper connections of mind and body than a lot of the students. It’s because Katherine is completely immersed in the breathing.

There’s a great split Lee has noticed among students in any given class. There are the ones who actually make an effort at breathing and understand that it’s the center of yoga and others who ignore it completely and complain that they find the discussion of breath “irritating.” I know how to breathe! students will sometimes complain. But of course, they don’t really.

“Let’s make it all about breathing today,” she says. “The harmonizing music of your body, the element that can balance out your emotions in a matter of minutes, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. So let’s all sit comfortably and begin there. A long, slow, steady breath in through your nose.”

At this suggestion, she sees the woman sitting beside Shane move her mat a few feet back.

Lee has arranged a date for a tour of the YogaHappens Experience Center in Beverly Hills and to give a class. They told her they would promote the class on their website and promised she would have a large group of students. After class, she logs on to the YogaHappens website in her office at the studio. It’s an elaborate site with music and animated images and, underneath it all, the sound of soft rain. On the Upcoming Events page, there’s a picture of her taken by a photographer they sent out to Edendale last week. It’s probably the most flattering picture of herself Lee has ever seen. There’s some kind of perfection to her complexion and teeth that probably means the picture’s been retouched. It would be nice to believe it didn’t require a seriously heavy hand, but she suspects otherwise. In the last year or so, she’s begun to notice lines and dark shadows and maybe a little bit of hardness that’s been etched into her face by trying to manage everything all at once. Aging, she keeps reminding herself, is not a disease. She knows that the key is finding something to love in the new creases and to view the circles under her eyes as signs of character, but as she stares at the soft, smooth face on the YogaHappens web page, she can’t help but want to see that when she looks into the mirror each morning.

Deep Flow Meditasana is described as “a unique blend of poses and yogic traditions that defy conventions and expectations and take you on a strange and beautiful journey far from the stresses and pressures of your daily life. Like a soft breeze that caresses your face and brings with it the scent of something exotic yet strangely familiar. Allow yourself to take the trip, to be carried away, to be transported to the heart of your yoga practice and, very possibly, to the depths your soul.”

Purple, that’s for sure, and not very specific, but it does sound appealing, and oddly enough it does capture something true about the way Lee thinks of her classes as journeys, with a beginning and a destination.

Lee herself is described as “one of the hidden gems of the L.A. yoga scene, a teacher of unparalleled talent and uncompromising integrity, with a background in medicine and credentials as a one-time fashion model.” At least it doesn’t claim that she was a brain surgeon. And she did pose for some photographs for a designer friend one time, making the model claim technically accurate, she supposes. Still, it’s a little worrisome they feel they need to promote her with hype. The description she provided emphasized her experience as a mother and founder of a studio.

Alan is mentioned briefly in a corner of the page as Lee’s husband and described as “a rising star on the L.A. folk scene and one of the emerging voices in the spiritual music movement, which he partly founded.” It continues, “Alan will be playing live at select classes to create an aural ambience that will open up new doors of perception and feeling in those lucky enough to reserve a space. Extra fees will apply.”

Lee sees Katherine talking to a client and ushering him out to the sidewalk. In many ways, she thinks of Katherine as one of her best friends. She stands in the doorway to her office and waits for Katherine to come back into the building.

“Busy day?” she asks.

Katherine smiles. “I can’t complain. Tomorrow’s a little slow, so it balances out.”

Lee follows her back to her massage room and watches as Katherine strips the sheet off the massage table.

“Can I help you with that?”

“I’m fine,” Katherine says.

Lee wants to believe this, but she finds herself saying, “If that’s true, why do I feel as if you’re dodging me or trying to get away from me? I’m sorry Alan talked to you about the books. He just flies off the handle sometimes.”

“I’d rather not get into it. I know I don’t have the cleanest record in the world, so when something comes up, it doesn’t surprise me if someone like Alan questions me.”

“It has nothing to do with your ‘record,’ Kat.”

“Really? It never crossed Alan’s mind that I might have started using again and dipped into his pocket to pay for my habit?”

“You’ve never liked Alan.”

“I’m not sure how my opinion matters one way or the other. Besides, that really isn’t the point. We were talking about how he feels about me.”

“He likes you, you know that. He’s been spending more time at the house lately.”

Katherine nods and turns away, begins to line up her bottles of oils and creams. “By ‘lately,’ you mean since you agreed to the YogaHappens thing?”

Lee is stung by the comment, especially since it’s true. But she understands that Katherine is threatened by the possible changes. She decides to let it pass. Their friendship is strong enough to withstand a few bumps.

“Today is Graciela’s big day,” Lee says. “I told her to call me after her audition, but I haven’t heard anything yet.”

“Let me know when you do,” Katherine says. “Sorry, Lee, but I have a client in five minutes.”

What Lee really wants to ask her is how things are going with Conor. Katherine hasn’t mentioned him in days, and he hasn’t been at the studio. With her history of self-sabotage, Katherine’s track record for this sort of thing isn’t great. But that gets back to “records,” a topic best avoided. She goes back into the office and checks her phone for a message from Graciela. Nothing yet.

I’ll admit,” Becky says, “that Taylor Kendall was a little extreme. I don’t remember him being so self-centered, but you can’t help him for having an ego with that kind of success.”

“Honey, I met Barack and Michelle at one of the inaugural balls, and they have less ego. Plus all he talked about was how we were supposed to let go of ego.”

“That’s true. ‘Stop thinking about yourself and spend more time thinking about me!’ ”

The good thing about Becky is that she has a sense of humor about all this. It’s one of her many saving graces. It’s what got her through her divorce and the assorted ups and downs of her career. She keeps her head down and does her job, enjoys the perks, but doesn’t take herself too seriously. She once described herself as “a female Hugh Grant—not exactly great range, but appealing and unthreatening.” And she is completely fine with that. Versatility can make you a great actor, but Julia Roberts didn’t get where she is doing accents.

They’re driving downtown in Becky’s Prius. Imani’s all for saving the planet, but the way the car goes silent without any warning gives her the creeps. It’s like being with a friend who all of a sudden stops breathing. Imani didn’t have any major back pain after the incident with Taylor Kendall—just a few days of a dull ache every time she moved a certain way. She played it up in front of Becky, but Becky didn’t seem to be impressed.

“The truth is,” she said, “I’m a little addicted to a few aches and twinges somewhere in my body after a class. I figure if I don’t feel that, I haven’t worked hard enough.”

Imani is tempted to tell her about the class she took up in Silver Lake. Maybe it’s just because it was the first class she ever took, but Imani still thinks she felt better afterward than after any of the classes she’s been taking with Becky. More centered, if that’s the word. But Becky would probably consider the class too “easy” or low-key, and she’d end up feeling like a lightweight and a wimp for suggesting it. Maybe one day she’ll head back up there solo and check it out again.

Today they’re headed to a studio that Becky promises has been around forever (whatever that means) and offers a style of yoga people swear by to cure a variety of joint and muscle problems. Supposedly it’s another heated class. Imani’s not thrilled about that, but it can’t be any worse than that sweat lodge workshop with whatshisname, the Narcissus de Sade.

As they’re about to get out of the car, Becky turns to Imani and says, with more seriousness than usual, “What are you doing about work?”

It’s a sore subject, and one Imani has been avoiding for months now. Somewhere back in the middle of her X.C.I.A. days, Imani felt almost invincible. Everything was going so well, it was hard to believe sometimes. She had a great role on a hit TV series; she was married to a guy who was kind, gorgeous, and completely supportive. Offers were coming in for other series and there was a buzz building about movie offers. Even if TV is definitely where all the energy is today, the prestige is still in movies. There’s still the feeling that you’re not a “real” actor unless you’re on the big screen. Getting pregnant was the final event in what felt to her like the world’s longest winning streak. She sometimes worried that she didn’t deserve to be this happy, but every day she woke up and did her best to enjoy it. Taking a break from the show was the right thing to have done, especially since the writers had figured out a way to explain her character’s absence and eventual return.

And then it all began to come apart. She has only a vague memory of the morning she lost the baby, one that’s somehow connected to the scent of the geranium oil in the moisturizer she was using when it happened. Every time even a fragment of memory gets triggered, she hears a faint ringing in her ears and feels herself beginning to shut down. She remembers Glenn cradling her head in the hospital and trying to help her stop crying. She threw out the moisturizer a long time ago.

In addition to the sadness of losing the baby, she felt a weird vulnerability she’d never known before. For a while she didn’t want to leave the house, couldn’t get behind the wheel of a car, was terrified of loud noises. If she could lose the baby, just like that, suddenly, without any warning, what else could happen? The thought of standing in front of a camera, something that had always felt so natural to her, something that made her feel most like herself, was intolerable, like being in front of a firing squad.

Becky’s question about work is like a metal probe hitting the nerve in a tooth. A jolt runs through Imani’s body. But this is something she’s begun to worry about herself. She left the show almost ten months ago now, and in this business, that’s the equivalent of five years.

“Some days I think I’m ready to get back to work,” Imani says. “But some days, it still terrifies me. I think I need more time, but I wonder if the longer I stay out of it, the more afraid I get.”

“After the breakup,” Becky says, “I just wanted to run away. I didn’t care where I went or what I did, as long as no one knew me. What I really wanted was to be invisible. But we can’t ever have that again, honey. Anonymity’s like virginity—when it’s gone, it’s gone. This is what helped me the most.” She nods toward the yoga mat flung across the backseat. “I just kept coming, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. And it helped.”

“Why?” Imani asks. “How?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Becky says. “And you know what? I don’t care. As long as it does. Let’s go. This place is notoriously harsh if you’re late.”

The studio is on the second floor of a yellow brick building downtown, and Becky, who has a phobia about elevators, races Imani up the staircase. They’re laughing when they open the door to the studio and panting a little bit. That’s when the smell hits Imani.

“Something’s not right,” she whispers to Becky. It smells as if someone is marinating dirty laundry in a vat of warm vinegar.

“It’s just the carpet,” Becky tells her. “There’s a lot of sweat, and I guess it gets ground in. Someone told me to expect this.”

“Oh, okay. Did they also tell you to expect me to run in the other direction?”

“It’s not about the carpet, Miss Lang. Just focus on the benefits.”

“If they supplied a gas mask, I might be able to. And we’re not even in the room yet.”

The man behind the desk is so cheerful and welcoming, Imani feels a little relieved. He recognizes them—not virgins and not anonymous—but he’s being equally nice to everyone. Probably has to be to compensate for the stench.

Imani nearly swoons as soon as she walks into the yoga room. It’s a big, open space with an industrial feel to it, and it’s crowded with people, pretty much all of them wearing what look like bathing suits. Surely the heat can’t be as bad as it seems. She must be imagining it. Or maybe there’s some system malfunction, because if it is as bad as it seems, it surely can’t be intentional. She and Glenn went to Egypt, and the temperature in Aswan was almost 110 degrees. That’s what it feels like.

As for the smell, she isn’t going to think about it. If all these people can stand it, she supposes she can, too.

It starts out easily enough, some waving of the elbows and the usual loud breathing, but about fifteen minutes in, Imani is drenched in her own sweat and beginning to feel irritable. The instructor is standing on a little podium, and even though there are maybe fifty people in the room, he seems to know everyone’s name. There’s something a little creepy about that.

“Hold it, hold it, hold it, Thomas. Higher, higher, higher. If you can you must, Barry. Thirty more seconds on the clock. Higher, Amy.”

She’s all for encouragement, but the combination of the extreme heat and the smell and the militaristic monologue of the instructor is making her want to shout out a big fat Shut up!

But maybe the worst part of it is that the walls are covered in mirrors. The problem is that they make the room seem like a locked little ecosystem and, worse still, make it impossible for her to look away from her body, dripping in sweat and teetering through half the poses.

Every time she thinks she really is going to lose it completely, she thinks about what Becky said to her: It works. No idea why. All she has to do is believe it. Show up. Do it. Pose by pose. One drop of sweat after the next.

But she tries to imagine that there’s a little reservoir of fear inside of her, a pool of it, a finite amount, and that every time more sweat runs down her limbs, she’s getting closer to draining it dry. Let the carpet seep it all up. As long as she leaves some of it behind when she walks out of here, she’s going to consider it a win.

When the music stops, Graciela is, as choreographed, suspended in midair. Only for a half second, of course, but long enough to make the point that she is capable of some breath-taking leaps that make it look as if she’s able to float through the air in slow motion. In the silence, she lands back on the floor as softly as a cat.

There are three people watching her: the choreographer, the director of the video, and a small woman who looks as if the skin of her face has been pulled back and tucked into the elastic of the big flying saucer beret she’s wearing.

“Thank you,” the choreographer says, dry as sand. “Interesting choice of music.”

“Especially for this decade,” the woman with the hat says, and the choreographer gives a little snort.

Graciela never has a clear idea of how she’s done at any audition. There’s too much tension in the moment and she’s so focused on what she’s doing and, at the same time, so inside the music, it’s never entirely clear what she looks like. She didn’t miss anything she had planned today, didn’t pull any muscles, and for the most part, was perfectly relaxed. They let her dance for the full two minutes, usually a good sign.

But the current reception, bland and slightly sarcastic, isn’t very reassuring.

“We’ll be in touch,” the director says.

“You have my—”

“Yes, yes, yes. We have everything.”

The whole thing feels like a massive anticlimax, after all the preparation, the injury, the weeks she’s put into taking it easy, trying to heal. All for this. Yes, yes, yes, we have everything, see you later. Don’t call us.

“Thank you for the opportunity.”

“She’s polite, anyway,” the little woman says, as if Graciela isn’t standing right there. The woman reaches up to her beret and really does look as if she’s tucking her skin under her hat.

Crossing the floor to the exit feels like a classic walk of shame, but she does it with as much dignity as she can muster. As she is about to leave, someone’s cell phone rings, and the director calls out to Graciela, “Hold on.”

She doesn’t stop so much as freeze, her hand reaching for the door, unable to turn around. She can see the three of them in the mirror on the wall in front of her, huddling over the table, chatting into the phone, and looking over the notes they took. The director finishes the call.

“Graciela, isn’t it?”

She turns. “Yes.”

“She’d like to see you perform that again.”

Graciela looks around the room. None of the mirrors looks suspicious, but you never know. There’s no question about who “she” is.

“Can you do that for us? Run through it again?”

“Of course.”

“If you were cast in the video, would you agree to cut your hair? ”

“I would,” she says.

The little woman wags her head in a sassy sort of way. “Right answer. We’re planning on long hair anyway.”

When she steps out of the building and onto the street, Graciela has the distinct impression that her life has changed. She wasn’t given any assurances, but after her second run-through, the phone rang again, and this time they asked her if she knew how to do the Charleston. “We’re using a lot of surprise elements,” the choreographer said.

When Graciela was a girl, she was obsessed with Josephine Baker—her elegance and glamour and that crazy dance style of hers that wasn’t like anything anyone else did before or since. She had only a faint memory of a grainy black-and-white video she saw of Josephine Baker doing a Charleston in a documentary, but, filled with hopefulness and optimism and a touch of pure joy, she launched into twenty seconds of what she hoped was a close approximation.

Now that “she” had given her nod of approval, “they” were downright friendly.

You’ve got such great spirit.

Doesn’t she? I saw that immediately.

And the smile! Of course, we won’t use that, but it’s priceless.

Lindsay is waiting in the lobby of the building. She silently asks Graciela the inevitable question. Graciela shrugs and then can’t help but burst into a huge grin. Lindsay screams and runs toward her, arms open.

“You got it?”

“It wasn’t a ‘no’ anyway. I’m pretty sure it was a solid ‘maybe.’ ”

“Did they love the routine?”

“ ‘She’ did.”

“She was there?”

“Not exactly. In another room, I guess. Anyway, she saw it. And called them.” And then, Graciela can’t help but scream: “She thought I was great! Is Daryl here?”

“He called. He’s on his way. I can’t believe your feet are actually touching the ground. Why aren’t you floating?”

They step out onto the sidewalk, arm in arm, and that’s when Graciela sees the big hulking frame of Conor, leaning against the building. He nods and smiles at her and starts walking toward them.

“Hey, Graciela,” he says.

Graciela smiles at him. She has done nothing wrong, she reminds herself, has not encouraged him in any way. Maybe she should have just talked to him when he first started calling, but that’s past, and she has to let go of it.

“Hi, Conor,” she says, trying to make it sound cool but not unfriendly. “What are you doing down here?”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a while now.”

“I just had this audition and . . .”

“I know.”

“Katherine told you?”

“No. Chloe, up at the studio. How did it go?”

Lindsay has stepped aside in a discreet sort of way, pretending to do something with her cell phone. It makes Graciela feel even more uneasy, as if she’s picked up some vibe between them.

“It went okay,” Graciela says. “I’m sorry about the calls, but I’ve been really busy . . .”

She lets her voice trail off. There’s no good way to finish the sentence. I didn’t want to encourage you? What made you think I was interested?

“Yeah, you yoga girls are pretty bad about returning phone calls, I gotta say.”

Graciela looks him straight in the eyes. It’s always best to just get it said. In the end, it makes things easier, doesn’t it?

“I live with someone,” Graciela says. “On top of that, Katherine’s become a good friend of mine.”

“I know you’re Katherine’s friend,” Conor says. “I didn’t know about the boyfriend, but . . .”

“But now you do know.” It’s Daryl, standing behind Graciela. He puts his hands on her waist. “Now you do know, okay?”

If there’s an upside to not having taken any of Lee’s classes since Alan’s insulting comments about the money, it’s that Katherine has been spending way more time on her pink bicycle. She’s been working off her stress and anxiety by pedaling it up and down the streets of Silver Lake until her thighs are aching, and then around and around the reservoir until she feels some of the emotional release she usually feels after taking a class. And these days, there’s a lot she needs to release.

Today, as she pedals around the reservoir for the second time, she starts to feel a little giddy. Probably the bad air she’s sucking into her lungs, or maybe just an overwhelming sense that things aren’t going the way she’d like. The funny thing is, she can’t really blame Alan for questioning her about the accounting. As much as she resents, maybe even loathes, Alan for his assumption that she’s a weak person who, based on her past actions, is destined always to fuck up, she can’t help but think he’s got a point. Maybe all the fucked-up shit that happened to her as a kid really did mess up her brain chemistry forever.

As she’s rounding the north side of the reservoir, a hot wind kicks up a storm of dust, and she decides to take a break and sit on one of the benches that look up toward the hills. She opens up the little leather pack strapped in under the bicycle seat and takes out her eyeglass case. Too bad she doesn’t wear eyeglasses. She takes out the joint she put in there this morning and lights up. One good hit of it, and the rough edges of the day start to smooth out. The idea that pot is a gateway drug is a joke; with her, life was the damned gateway drug.

By the third or fourth hit, the sky has turned an amazing shade of yellow, and she’s feeling so lazy and languid, she can’t imagine getting on the bike again without first dozing off for a second with her face turned up to the sun. Nothing much strikes her as all that important, not even the thing with Conor. She takes her phone out of the pocket of her skirt. No calls. Well, she can’t really blame him for giving up after she told him she didn’t think they should pursue a relationship. “Pursue a relationship” are the exact words she used. Nice and technical and void of all emotion. He’d admitted to her that he’d left Boston because his previous girlfriend had ended things suddenly, for reasons that didn’t make a lot of sense to him. After two years of living together, she came to the conclusion that their backgrounds were just too different—a polite way of saying she wanted someone with a college degree and a tidy, well-heeled WASP family. The last thing he needed now, when he was trying to get over her, was to get involved with someone with her own history of instability and problems committing.

Selfishly, she admits it’s too bad. She can still taste his mouth—spicy with the good-boy tastes of toothpaste and Juicy Fruit chewing gum—and she can still feel his big hands all over her, warm and tender. As soon as she saw him with Graciela—sweet, pretty Graciela—she understood that that was the kind of relationship that made sense for Conor. Not Graciela herself, of course, but someone like that, instead of a world-class fuckup like her.

She dozes off and has a vivid dream that a tall, red-headed guy is burying his face in her neck, murmuring something about how she’s perfect as she is. She wakes with a jolt and realizes that someone is sitting beside her on the bench, brushing her neck with his fingers.

Not a tall redhead: Phil Simone.

“Scared you, didn’t I?” he asks.

“You know I don’t scare easily, Phil.” Phil is one of those guys who seems to materialize and disappear into thin air with equal ease. And half the time, you can’t be sure how present he is, even when he’s standing in front of you. “I thought you moved to Seattle.”

“Yeah, I was there for a while. I had a job with Boeing, but it didn’t really work out. I decided to come back down here. Fucking rain and clouds got to me.”

“That can happen.” In the six months or so Katherine dated Phil, she came to realize that about one-quarter of what he said was true. The rest was an elaborate web of exaggerations and lies that he spun together for no discernible reason. She was long past the point of caring one way or the other. Now it was more amusing than anything else.

“You back in that apartment?”

“Nah. I gave that up. I’m crashing with a buddy of mine.”

“Lucky guy.”

He shakes his head. “Still there with the sarcasm, huh? You better be careful, Kat—nobody likes a bitch.”

“You know what’s surprising, Phil? That isn’t true—a lot of men love bitches.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not one of them.”

“Better find another bench then. As I recall, you told me I was ‘born a bitch’ and would ‘die a bitch’ once every couple of weeks.”

This conversation pretty much sums up the tenor of their relationship for the whole time they were seeing each other. A lot of snarky back-and-forth that went around in circles until they got sick of the game and wandered into the bedroom.

Phil Simone is one of those smarmy, skinny guys incapable of honesty, fidelity, and sobriety for more than twelve hours at a stretch. Not fully employable, not handsome, with bad teeth and questionable hygiene. And yet, no one ever asked Katherine what she was doing with him. The answer was written all over his long face and wiry body: amazing fuck. He has one redeeming quality, and even though he’s childishly proud of it, he does know how to use it.

Eventually that gets tiresome, too, and when Katherine stopped answering his calls or letting him in when he knocked at her door at midnight, she saw it as the cornerstone of the self-esteem she was trying to build up. It was over a year ago that she broke it off and she’s been happily chaste since. It can’t be a good sign that she’s finding his greasy hair and mocking tone just a tiny bit exciting. She made a vow to herself that she’d never fall for Phil again or any of his brothers of spirit—the boozers, the users, the losers.

“You still giving back rubs?” he asks.

“Only to the paying customers, Phil. And I’m not cheap.”

“Wasn’t always the case, as I remember.”

“I wouldn’t trust my memory if I were you. It might be a little impaired.”

“Probably not as impaired as yours, though, right?”

Of course he’s right. Who’s she trying to kid? She figured she was too good for guys like Phil, but it turns out she can’t quite bring herself to believe she’s good enough for someone like . . . the fireman. That doesn’t leave much. She fires up what’s left of the joint and takes a hit. “You got a point there,” she says and passes the roach to him. “Interest you in a little more impairment? ”

He takes it from her and finishes it off. “You still living up off Dexter?” he asks.

“I haven’t been evicted yet.”

“You should invite me up. I miss that little house.”

“I’ve got my bike,” she says.

“Yeah. I noticed. Gone all outdoorsy and athletic, huh?”

“Nah. I just use it to pick up guys.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s it working out?”

“Better than I planned,” she says. She stands up, feeling more sad and defeated than she’s felt in a long time. Let’s get this over with, she thinks and gives him an inviting nod.

Graciela feels the incredible high of the audition melt away. What is Conor doing here? And how much trouble is his presence—not her doing, not her desire—going to cost her? He looks completely unruffled by Daryl and keeps grinning in that boyish way of his. He sticks out his hand to Daryl.

“I’m Conor,” he says. “I know your girlfriend from up in Silver Lake.”

“Yeah, okay,” Daryl says, “so what are you doing down here? ”

“I wanted to ask Graciela a couple of questions.”

He looks so relaxed and nonplussed as he says this, Graciela starts to wonder if maybe she has it all wrong, and she should have answered his calls in the first place. But Daryl is beginning to puff his chest out in that way he gets when he feels threatened. Can he really think she’d cheat on him or even flirt behind his back? If this gets ugly, she gives Conor the advantage; he towers over Daryl and has that brick wall kind of stance you see on bouncers.

Lindsay sprints over and says, “You won’t believe it, Daryl—Graciela made it through!”

Daryl spins Graciela around. He looks a little stunned, but genuinely happy. Hopefully all this other nonsense will blow over. “You did? They liked you?”

“They loved her. Beyoncé loved her!”

“You met her?”

Daryl looks so genuinely excited and happy, Graciela decides not to completely contradict Lindsay. “I sort of met her. I mean, they all said she liked what I did, so . . .”

“Graciela, that is fantastic news. Congratulations.”

This is Conor and, happy as Graciela is for the vote of confidence, she wishes he hadn’t said anything. Daryl turns around and puts a hand on his chest. Daryl has that temper, size difference or not. But please, she thinks, let me enjoy the moment. Don’t let it get ugly.

“So these questions you want to ask? ” Daryl says. “Why don’t you ask me?”

“I’m not sure it concerns you, my friend, but if you’d rather I ask you, I have no problem with that. In fact, if you’d all like, I’d be happy to buy you a drink, help Graciela celebrate her good news.”

“You know, I think I can buy her a drink myself,” Daryl says.

“Fair enough. How about I buy this lady a drink, and we’ll all be happy.”

“I’m Lindsay.”

Perfect, Graciela thinks. She can tell from the tone in her friend’s voice that she’s a little smitten already. Lindsay hasn’t been dating anyone since her last boyfriend revealed he was married with two kids.

There’s a bar Lindsay knows about a couple of blocks away, and as they’re walking, Conor asks a lot of questions: Was she happy with her performance? Did she get nervous before? Does she think when she’s dancing or is it mostly muscle memory? He has a way of asking that makes him sound genuinely interested, not only in her, but in the whole topic. It shows a genuine concern for and curiosity about other people that’s pretty rare. Daryl, to be honest, rarely asks questions like that. She wants to believe it’s because he’s polite and a little shy, but it’s probably true that there are so many things about other people that make him feel envious or threatened, he prefers to skim along the surface.

“What about you, Daryl?” he asks. “What do you do?” And when Daryl tells him, Conor says, “It’s kind of perfect then, isn’t it? The two of you? You probably give her a lot of musical inspiration.”

“He does,” Graciela says. And it’s true.

It isn’t until they’re seated in the bar and have toasted Graciela’s success that Conor brings up Katherine. He turns a little serious and melancholy when he does.

“It’s not that I’m expecting you to have any answers,” he says. “I’m just looking for a few clues or a little insight. I’m not the world’s greatest catch, but she and I had a real connection, and then, boom, she slams the door shut in my face. Maybe she said something to you? Or she’s got someone else?”

Graciela doesn’t really know Katherine all that well. It’s not like they share a lot of personal information. But because she’s got that pretty, funky style and radiates a lot of sexual energy, people do talk about her. Stephanie has filled Graciela in on a few surprising facts about Katherine’s past, although how much of it is true and how much is rumor is not clear. It’s probably best to say nothing. But in the dim light of the bar, there’s so much genuine disappointment on Conor’s face, Graciela says a little more than she probably should.

“What I heard,” she says, “is that she thinks you’re too good for her.”

“Me? Funny thing is, my last girlfriend thought I wasn’t good enough.”

“I guess she’s got kind of a rocky past.”

“And she thinks someone from a housing project in South Boston has been clean and squeaky his whole life?”

“I don’t know,” Graciela says. “But she knows you’ve been hurt and doesn’t want to disappoint you. And as far as I know, there isn’t anyone else.”

Lindsay has been keeping quiet the whole time. She’s one of the more generous people Graciela knows, and, once she got wind of Conor’s feelings, she bowed out. Graciela is going to work on finding her someone, but it certainly isn’t going to be Conor.

“Have you gone and knocked on her door?” Lindsay asks.

“Not really my style,” Conor says.

“Aw, come on. Maybe you need a new one.”

“Plus I don’t have her address.”

Lindsay sighs and pulls out her iPhone. “You technophobes,” she says. “What’s the spelling of the last name?”

As soon as Katherine saw her little Craftsman cottage on Redcliff Street, tucked away, high in the hills above the reservoir, she fell in love. Head over heels. The first time she crossed the long wooden walkway that leads from the street to the front door, she felt as if she was coming home. Sort of a ridiculous thing, really, since she’d never spent a lot of time thinking about where she lived or where she wanted to live. It was just a reaction deep in her gut to this particular place. The reaction most people have when they see it is: Oh, my God! You live here? How did you find it? When they say that, what she hears underneath is: I figured you’d live in some shabby studio above a restaurant. Sorry to disappoint, but no, she lives here.

By the time she and Phil walk up to the house, it’s dark out, and the lights of the city down below are spread out like a glowing blanket. She always leaves a light on, so when she comes home, the shingled cottage has the same magical welcoming feel it did when she first saw it. She pushes her bike across the walkway, with Phil behind, and locks it to the railing. She should probably bring it inside, but it’s hidden from the street by the leaves of an overgrown bird of paradise, and it’s just easier.

“I forgot how sweet this place is,” Phil says, peering over the side of the walkway to the steep hillside below.

“It is that,” Katherine tells him.

Technically, there’s no way she should be able to afford the rent on a place like this. But the house was owned by a divorced woman in her late fifties who died of breast cancer, and it’s tangled up in the messy settlement of her estate. The woman’s son is renting it to her and gave her a deal because he thinks she’s hot (he lives in Los Feliz and comes around unannounced every once in a while to check up on her in the hopes, she suspects, of catching her sunbathing) and, more to the point, because she agreed to rent it without a lease, furnished, with the understanding that she might have to move out with no more than a week or two notice.

Despite falling in love, Katherine came close to not renting it. She didn’t want to fall in love with a place she was destined to lose, and on top of that, it seemed a little too spacious and wonderful for . . . well, for her. The kind of place that probably ought to go to a nice couple, maybe with a kid. Or maybe two gay guys with great taste and a well-behaved dog. Not to her, in any case.

Lee was the one who talked her into taking it, and for the past two years, the house has been one of the great sources of consolation in Katherine’s life.

“Yo,” Phil says when she turns on the light in the living room. “You’ve done some big cleaning in here.”

“Not really. Just no boyfriends coming around to mess things up.”

After she kicked Phil out of her life, she did do some cleaning. Some big cleaning. She actually unpacked more than she had in all the time she’d been in the house until then. She rearranged the furniture and put some of the pieces she didn’t like into storage. She uncluttered it and made it feel like home. Her home. She even bought a sewing machine (thirty-seven dollars on Craigslist) and made curtains for her bedroom. Who knew she hadn’t completely obliterated everything her grandmother had taught her about sewing back in that previous life of hers? Once she decided to stop courting disaster with a series of bad boyfriends—Phil, for example?—she discovered she loved having everything orderly and clean, the counters spotless and the huge windows with a view of the reservoir sparkling. And not because she’s expecting anyone to show up to inspect the place, but because that’s how she likes it.

“Have anything to drink?” Phil asks.

“Water, juice, and, if you make it yourself, coffee.”

“That’s it?”

“Sorry. I finished the last of the milk with my Cheerios this morning.”

“Oh, I get it. Still on the wagon.”

“I’m an addict, Phil, and yeah, aside from the very occasional joint, I’m happy to say I’ve been sober for two years now. Your move to Seattle didn’t send me rushing for bad stuff.”

“Jesus, Katherine,” Phil says. “I know you think I’m a big loser, but don’t pretend you’re not happy to see me. Just a little bit?” He sidles over to her and presses himself against her suggestively. “Just a little bit? Not Romeo and Juliet, but we had a few good times, didn’t we?”

For her, the “good times” they had together served pretty much the same function as the drugs—a way to numb out any thoughts or feelings she didn’t care to deal with. And one or two hours of Phil’s lean and hungry charms, if you could call them charms, certainly did make it near impossible to think of anything else. It was when she realized she actually could deal with the feelings, live through them and get past them, without any substances or distractions, that she stopped returning Phil’s calls.

So what does it mean that she actually invited him here tonight?

“You look so fucking good in this skirt,” he says, sliding it up higher and running his hands up her thighs. “Oh, man, I forgot how smooth your legs are. Silk,” he whispers into her ear.

Katherine’s a big girl and she knew what she was getting into, but she didn’t exactly know how she’d feel about it when she got it. She backs away from him a little and says, “Speaking of cleaning up, Phil, I’ve got some towels in the closet outside the bathroom just in case you want a shower.”

He lifts his arm up and sniffs. “Got a little sweaty walking up here, huh? I thought you liked that.”

“Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.”

She leads him toward the bathroom, past the guest room that she’s emptied of furniture altogether and made into a little yoga and meditation room. Her mat is in the middle of the room and there are some pillows against the wall. She’s in here every morning when the sun comes through the windows and warms up the floor.

Phil struts into the room and stands on the mat, folds his hands into an approximation of prayer. “Namaste, baby,” he says.

“Don’t, Phil. Just don’t.”

“Hey, what? Am I insulting your spiritual trip? I thought fucking was your religion.”

He lifts up his right foot, trying for something like tree pose, and falls out. Not pretty. It looks kind of pathetic, really.

“To hell with it,” he says.

When he’s in the shower, Katherine faces it head-on. Having him come to the house is more or less the same thing as using again. Go numb, don’t deal with it, block it out. She shouldn’t have lit up the joint, either. It was all part of the little pity party she’s been throwing for herself the past couple of weeks. Poor Katherine can’t deal with a little accusation of financial misdemeanor. Can’t deal with a decent, respectable guy showing some interest. Can’t face the possibility that he might disappoint her or, way, way worse, that she might disappoint him. She didn’t really think he’d hook up with Graciela, but seeing them together made her realize he belonged with someone like her, some sweet girl he could bring home to his family, someone who was guaranteed not to have any skeletons popping out of her closet or showing up in her shower at the most inconvenient times.

Except really, brushing off Conor is just the coward’s way out. The old Katherine’s way of dealing with things. Or not dealing. Trying to control everything when in fact she’s just being out of control in a different way. And it isn’t as if she’s been able to get him out of her mind anyway.

She goes into her meditation room and looks out at the lights of the city, benign and gentle from up here. All those people going about their lives, making their own mistakes, angry or happy or lonely. Funny how there’s really only one person she wants to be with right now, and he isn’t in the shower. She pulls her phone out of the pocket of her skirt. At least she didn’t delete his number. She’ll call. She’ll be a grown-up. As soon as she gets rid of Phil.

He comes out into the living room, conspicuously naked except for the towel he’s using to dry his hair. “Great shampoo. Tea tree or some shit like that?”

“Phil,” she says. She takes the towel out of his hands and wraps it around his waist. “I don’t know how to say this to you, but . . .”

“Aw, fuck me! Are you gonna tell me I came all the way up here for nothing?”

“I’m sorry. It’s been kind of a strange year for me, and I’m trying to keep myself together.”

“Spare me the therapy session, okay? You really are messed up, Kat, you know that?”

“I do know that, Phil. But I’m working on it.”

“Whoopee shit.”

“Your clothes in the bathroom?”

“Yeah. ‘Here’s the door, what’s your hurry.’ You could at least suggest we watch TV.”

“I don’t have one.”

“What a bitch.”

She knew they’d get back to that sooner or later.

“You owe me, Kat. I’m taking the rest of that fucking shampoo. It’s the least you can do.”

When he goes back into the bathroom, Katherine hears footsteps on the walkway outside. And then her bell. Lee sometimes drops over at this hour, on her way from the studio.

Except it isn’t Lee, it’s Conor. Not his usual grinning self, but stern in the yellow glow of the light beside the door. Katherine feels a wave of calm disappointment wash over her. She has the worst timing in the world. It’s always been this way. Maybe she could dash out of the house with Conor. But no, that wouldn’t work.

“Mr. Ross,” Katherine says, resigned to the disaster about to occur. “Passing through the neighborhood?”

“I just saw Graciela,” he says. “Since you wouldn’t return my calls. To try and figure out what happened here. Are you going to let me in?”

“Let me call you tomorrow,” Katherine says. “It’s not the best moment.”

“Come on, Brodski. Let’s get this settled.”

That’s when Phil walks up behind her, hair wet, shirtless, holding the bottle of shampoo. “Not tea tree,” he says. “It’s black fucking walnuts. Who’s this guy?”

“I rang the wrong bell,” Conor says.

Lee has never had the teaching equivalent of stage fright. She’s never lost her place in front of a class or found herself wondering what it was she wanted to say. Still, she feels a mild, low-grade anxiety about her upcoming class at YogaHappens. It will be the first time in a long time she’s given a class off her own turf and the first time in a very long time when she will be, she knows, evaluated as she goes along.

She’s made detailed notes on the flow she wants to use, the physical focus of the class, and the way she wants to introduce a short, deep meditation. But somehow it all feels forced and false to her, and sitting at the table in her dining room, with the kids wrestling in front of the television, she keeps tearing up her notes.

Lee was twenty-four the very first time she took a yoga class. She was living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a rambling prewar apartment that was officially rented to someone who hadn’t lived there in almost a decade. There were four bedrooms—five if you included the little maid’s room in back that was about the size of a closet—and eight people sharing the place. They deposited their rent checks into the account of a woman who, rumor had it, was living in Berlin and was supporting herself largely on the profits of the sublet. One bedroom was shared by a girl whose name Lee can’t remember and a guy the girl barely knew. He worked nights and she worked days and the two roommates rarely crossed paths, even in the kitchen. Someone lived on the sofa in the living room, and there were usually two or three people visiting from out of town who overstayed their welcomes and had to be asked to leave.

Initially, none of the discomforts of the place (there were only two bathrooms, for starters) had mattered to Lee. Her life, her real life, was lived in the lecture halls and on the floor of the hospital where she had labs and volunteered so she would get more exposure to patients. Everything else she did was preparation and study for those classes or recovery from the rigors of sleepless nights related to them. What did she care about how long she had to wait to get into the bathroom or how little room there was in the refrigerator? She had never felt quite so alive or quite so clear about where she was heading. She’d been dreaming of becoming a doctor since she was a kid, and she had buried herself in premed classes for most of the time she was an undergrad at Wesleyan University. Even the constant headaches and the stomach problems related to all the studying she was doing in med school didn’t bother her. It was all in the service of something that mattered deeply to future goals.

But somewhere in her second year at Columbia Medical, something began to change. All the praise she’d received her whole life for her studies began to be meaningless to her. She was turned off, nearly repulsed, at the way the human body seemed to be reduced more and more to chemistry and science, with less emphasis on human beings, on whole human beings, on people. Healing was a completely fragmented study here, in which specialties had to be chosen and referrals made to other specialists, until all sense of a person and a life was lost. The doctors she met kept talking about the pressure to reduce their time with patients, to run the minimum number of tests, prescribe something, and be done with it.

It all seemed so far removed from what she’d been planning for her whole life, she began to feel completely lost. The magical world of the classes and rounds began to feel like protracted torment. For the first time in her life, she began skipping lectures. She started smoking, and, with a combination of confusion and despair, more or less stopped eating. What was the point?

Lee tries not to think about that period very often, but when she does, she thinks mainly about the horrible cold she always felt. Even when she was in the big, overheated, overpopulated apartment. When her weight dropped below one hundred pounds, it was as if there was nothing between the raw wind and her insides, and no matter what she did or how many clothes she piled on, how many cups of chamomile tea she sipped, she could never get warm. The more she felt herself slipping away, the less she cared what happened to her. If anyone commented on her pallor or weight, she’d turn on them with the ugly defensiveness of someone who understands she’s in the wrong. And yet, underneath that, she had an inchoate longing to be rescued.

Rescue came in the form of Jane Benson. Plain Jane, as the roommates in the apartment called her, a Columbia Law student who was so ordinary and unmemorable, people pretended to forget she actually lived there. One Thursday afternoon when Lee was folded into a ball on the living room sofa nursing a cup of tea, Jane asked her if she’d like to go to a yoga class with her. Lee had known some dancers who did yoga, or claimed to, but the word still had a slightly exotic and esoteric sound. When she thinks about it now, Lee can hardly believe that she went with Jane, and she doesn’t know what motivated her to do so. It seems as if fate lifted her up off the sofa and pushed her toward the door.

There were yoga studios in the city in those days, although nothing compared with the number and variety that have arisen since Madonna and Gwyneth made yoga mats and sun salutations trendy. But the class she went to with Jane was held in the drafty meeting room of a Presbyterian church off Amsterdam Avenue. There were maybe six or eight students sitting on blankets on the floor, none of them especially fit looking, and Lee felt too young and physically out of place, gaunt and drained. The teacher herself looked like a glamorous former dancer with long gray hair she had woven into a braid draped across her shoulder. She had beautiful blue eyes that Lee still remembers to this day, and when she first cast eyes on Lee, Lee felt as if she was seeing right through all of her defenses, as if there was no point in trying to hide from her. Lee let her vulnerabilities show.

She had had no idea what to really expect, but somewhere in the middle of class she felt more challenged than she’d felt in a long time, not because the physical demands were so great but because for the first time in a long time, no one was demanding anything of her, no one was judging her. The teacher saw through her, all right, probably knew exactly what she was feeling, how cold and numb she felt, but she neither pitied her for that nor condemned her. She only asked her to sit and experience herself in the moment. She only asked her to be still and—and here was the most difficult piece—to have compassion for herself.

It would have been nice if Lee’s life had turned around right there and then. It would have saved a lot of time and a lot of anguish. It was a slow and gradual change, so slow Lee didn’t even realize it was happening until she woke one morning and understood that she had let go of one dream and had started to pursue another.

She’d studied enough to know that the chemistry and science behind a lot of the claims made by yoga teachers was shaky and insupportable. According to the textbooks, the body and the inner organs just did not respond the way the instructors said. And yet, she herself was experiencing a transformation, born of the connections she was beginning to feel between body and mind and spirit that simply could not be denied. If the holistic attitude toward the body expounded by her yoga teachers made no sense to her brain, it made complete sense to her gut. She felt it.

And this, she realized, was what she’d been looking for all along—not a science to help people cure their diseases, but a system to help them live their lives in a way that made sense.

The foundation of everything she does in classes, the core of everything she teaches, is what she learned from that very first yoga teacher—compassion for self, flaws and all. Flaws especially . Everything she has to teach starts there.

She hears a shriek from the next room and runs in. But it’s just the twins playing in a gleeful way with a big balancing ball. Michael actually helped his brother get up on it and is pressing into his back so he doesn’t fall. Unnervingly atypical, but best to leave well enough alone.

Plain Jane never commented on how bad Lee looked at the start or how she began to improve, but Lee knew she witnessed it. She went on to finish law school and moved to New Orleans, and then Lee lost track of her. Two years ago, Lee started to look for her online, to thank her for what she did for her. Eventually she learned that she’d been in a car accident and had died after a long struggle. She wished then that she’d hunted her down sooner, so she could tell her how she’d helped her.

She goes back to the dining room table and takes out a fresh index card and starts all over. She’ll begin with love and compassion as guiding principles. She’ll start with that simple, clear feeling she had at the beginning of that very first class in the church basement. She’ll begin with Jane.

When Imani first started going to yoga classes with Becky, she was a little turned off by the conversations. “Conversasanas,” as she called them.

I felt incredibly open in dancer’s pose this afternoon.

Fascinating!

I loved when she had us open our arms wide in tree pose.

Me, too! Only I think those were “branches” we were opening.

My ardha chandrasana was off tonight.

Honey, my ardha chandrasana’s been off for years!

It reminded her of how she feels when people sit around a dinner table and discuss their dogs for thirty minutes. Or when she hears traffic reports in a distant city. Dogs? Love ’em! But what the hell is a follow-up question to a report that Dippy was a little moody this morning? And sorry to hear that the I-95 connector in Denver is backed up. And that’s relevant to my life how?

And so Imani surprises herself when, over coffee, she hears herself telling Becky, “You know, I really loved the way I felt in utkatasana today.” (What? Who said that?)

“You’re kidding,” Becky says. “I have never liked that pose. I always feel so cramped and boxed in somehow. And I hate sticking out your butt like that. My knees go out of alignment, and I feel as if I’m going to tip forward onto my nose and land on my ass at the same time.”

“I know, but when I tucked my pelvis and dropped my shoulders, I felt my whole back straighten out.” She keeps thinking of how Lee, in that very first class, kept telling her to “knit her pelvis and her lower rib cage together.” It made no sense at the time, but she keeps coming back to the image as a way to better align her body.

“It was wonderful,” she goes on. “Like when you’re listening to a piece of music and it ends with this chord that pulls everything together. Just . . . click, and . . . ahhhh. It all made perfect sense.”

“I always feel that way in trikonasana. I love it when I reach, reach, reach and then just lower my arm down. Everything feels as if it falls into exactly the right place. And your thighs feel great! ”

“That’s the triangle one? I could use a little more practice there.” Okay, she really is having this conversation. These words really are coming out of her mouth. And she even means them!

“Not that I was noticing, but your crow is just getting so freaking good, I might have to kill you,” Becky says. “Not that there’s any competition.”

“Hell, no. None. And just FYI, I held that damned stick thing, warrior three, for the entire time. Arms straight out in front of me.”

“Uh-oh,” Becky says. “You are officially hooked! I can so tell! ”

“No way! Or maybe just a little. If you promise not to tell anyone . . . I dreamed I was doing poses last night. How sick is that? I used to dream about Hugh Jackman. And the worst thing is, when I woke up, I felt all off balance because I hadn’t done them on both sides.”

“Oh, my God. I’ve created a monster. I have never dreamed about yoga. Or about Hugh Jackman. Those tiny little eyes? No, thank you.”

For an awful long time now, Imani has been using her cynicism and irony as a shield. She’s been in enough therapy to know that. So it’s a little strange to her to be talking about this in such an earnest way. Not that she objects. A couple of days ago, she was in a class in which the teacher was talking about “letting go.” Nothing unusual there, since they all seem to talk about “letting go” at some point or other in class, at which point, Imani usually expects to hear a chorus of farts.

But that day, her defenses were so broken down from fifty minutes of going into poses, the words sank in in some way they hadn’t before. And she did let herself drop the tension in her muscles and sink into the floor, and she did think that if she could take this feeling with her somehow (“off the mat,” as they were always saying, another expression that had initially set her teeth on edge and now makes a lot of sense to her) her life would be better in some small but significant way.

“When does that movie start shooting?” Imani asks.

“Two weeks,” Becky tells her. “But there are a few readthroughs next week.”

“I’m losing my yoga friend!” Imani says. “What am I going to do?”

“It’s a temporary loss. Why don’t you start reading some scripts? You have the time. You don’t know when you might find one that’s really good. You have to get back on track.”

“Before I’m forgotten, you mean.”

“Look, we all run that risk. If you’re out of the public eye for more than ten minutes, you start to grow mold. It happens to everyone. Just begin. Don’t have any expectations; do as much as you can do.”

“It’s beginning to sound like conversasana.”

“Right. And you’re the one who started singing the praises of your chair pose. So use it. And listen, you don’t need me hauling you into yoga classes. I got a tweet last night about a class at the YogaHappens in Beverly Hills. Some hot teacher is giving a ‘Deep Flow’ Something or Other class. Everyone’s talking about it. You should go.”

“I’ll take it into consideration,” Imani says. “As long as I don’t get my back knocked out of joint.”

“The teacher is a woman. And the whole thing is described as a journey . . . oh, I don’t know . . just go. I’ll send you the link. And remember to book it in advance. It’s definitely going to sell out. There’s a huge amount of buzz.”

Stephanie heard about Lee’s class at YogaHappens from Graciela. Graciela and Katherine are going together to support Lee since she’s a little nervous about the class. New studio, high stakes, Beverly Hills, all that. It strikes Stephanie as a little odd that Lee never mentioned it during any of the classes she’s been attending at Edendale, but then, she might not want to give business to a competing studio.

Ever since that day, Graciela has been calling Stephanie pretty much on a daily basis, usually with some little piece of news or some question that is clearly an excuse to check up on her. Not that Stephanie minds. She appreciates the attention, and in a way, it makes her feel less ostracized by the events of that day, as if it’s just one more mistake that no one is going to forget but everyone is going to get past.

On the whole, Stephanie has been doing amazingly well at getting past things in the last few weeks. Past the shame, past the anxiety, and past the little waves of desire for a drink that occasionally wash over her. True to her word, Sybille Brent cut her a check for writing a draft of the screenplay, and so, for the moment, Stephanie’s life has fallen into a nice, simple, well-funded rhythm. Up at dawn, write for two hours at the table in her newly spotless living room, yoga class at her gym, writing and lunch in a funky hamburger joint around the corner from her apartment, drive up to Silver Lake and take another yoga class with Lee. Coffee and a little more writing, if she has the drive. And then, turning in early with a book.

She has a rough draft of the first act of the screenplay, and she’s ready to dig into the second. Within a month, she should have the whole thing completed, assuming she can keep everything together. As for buying the author out of the option to do the screenplay himself, Stephanie is letting Sybille’s lawyers handle that. At the start of every yoga class, Lee advises her students to “choose an intention.” In the past, Stephanie pretty much skipped over this one. Her intention was always to get through the class with a minimum number of times taking child’s pose and not too many memories of Preston and how pissed off she still was at him. But now, she breathes into a few new mantras: It is what it is. . . . One day at a time. . . . and Don’t micromanage. Nothing terribly original, but all surprisingly effective.

She meets Graciela and Katherine at a juice bar down the street from the YogaHappens studio. She has the same reaction to seeing them she always has—a muted happiness that feels real and consistent (she’s never not happy to see them, even on that day) but is somehow limited to their shared experience of yoga classes. It’s not as if she has a whole lot in common with either one of them, and it’s hard to imagine she’d be friends with someone like Katherine under any other circumstances. But there’s something about being in a room with these women and breathing in unison with them and struggling with the same shared physical challenges that makes her feel connected. It doesn’t matter that both of them are more skilled practitioners. There are at least a couple of poses she knows she does as well as anyone else, and the rest she’s working on. Everyone has at least one pose, as Lee often reminds them, meaning that in a ninety-minute class, there’s at least one moment of expertise, even if it’s corpse pose.

She gets her juice and joins them at their table and decides to ask Katherine a question that’s been bothering her since she first heard about this.

“Why is Lee teaching a class here? What I heard is that everybody gets exclusive contracts at this studio. So is she thinking about giving up Edendale?”

“Oh, come on,” Graciela says. “Lee wouldn’t do that. It’s her place. I mean, look how full her classes are. She’s got to be doing okay.”

They both look at Katherine, who, Stephanie thinks, is keeping suspiciously quiet. Katherine has on a vintage yellow sundress that would look totally ridiculous on anyone but her, with her big, round eyes and the notes of irony and hard experience implicit in the punky haircut and the tattoos.

“Well?” Graciela says.

“It’s not so simple,” Katherine says. “Lee has a big following, but there’s a lot of overhead. If a couple of classes are light, it hurts. And she’s always offering a sliding scale or coming up with some way to let someone take classes for free.”

“Now I’m feeling guilty,” Graciela says. “All that help she gave me leading up to the audition.”

“Don’t feel guilty, honey. That’s what she loves. It’s what gives her the most pleasure. It just doesn’t pay the bills. Two kids? Alan off doing whatever.”

Stephanie lets this new information sink in and then says, “So it sounds to me like she is thinking about closing Edendale. We’re going to find out anyway, Kat.”

“You have to ask her. But do you know how much health insurance costs? For four of them? And let’s say you’re right. It’s just a change of venue.”

Stephanie is getting a bad feeling about this. She’s never been great with change and the thought of losing the anchor of Lee’s classes at the homey studio in Silver Lake makes her feel slightly ill. On the other hand, if Lee has always been there for her, she owes it to her to keep her best interests in mind rather than her own selfish interests. Maybe she’ll stay open until she’s finished the screenplay and landed on completely solid sobriety.

“True. We could always come to her classes here,” Graciela says.

“It’s a little steep,” Katherine warns.

“I have to admit,” Stephanie says, “that I hate chains. Book-stores, grocery stores, pet stores, movie theaters. Now yoga studios? A few years ago, it would have been a joke—a chain of yoga studios running the little guys out of business.” It’s partly what’s happening in the movie business, too—all the money going to the top and less and less for the independents and the middle rung. Even all those supposedly independent and small production companies are now just subsidiaries of the big guys. But everyone has a right to make their own deal, and if she’d gotten an offer from Paramount, it isn’t like she’d have had to sleep on it before snatching it.

When it’s time to hit the road, they hitch their mats up to their shoulders and head out. Katherine seems quieter than usual, and Stephanie’s tempted to ask. But she’s one of those people who have a low privacy fence built around themselves, and there are a lot of subjects you don’t bring up and questions you don’t pose. It’s easier to gossip about Graciela’s good news and speculate on how close she is to getting the role in the video.

When they get to the YogaHappens Experience Center, all conversation stops.

“Jesus,” Stephanie says.

The building is set impossibly far from the street, with a rosewood walkway leading to it, covered by a trellis with an orange trumpet vine woven into it. Stepping under the trellis feels like entering a magic kingdom. By the time you get to the front door, you already feel as if the traffic and noise of the street are fading into irrelevance. There’s a soft sound of trickling water that Stephanie assumes is piped in on speakers, until she sees that the wall of the building beside the front door has been covered with what appears to be corrugated copper with water trickling down over it. Impressive, even if you’re determined not to be impressed.

The inside of the studio feels even more serene, with faint chanting sounding from an invisible speaker system. It looks like a cosseted, wood-paneled spa, and there’s a smell in the air like . . . she’s not sure; honey and lavender are what come to mind immediately.

Graciela is clearly wowed, and even Stephanie has to admit it’s spectacular. Katherine, on the other hand, seems mostly focused on finding Lee among the crowd of people lined up at the front desk. So far, no sign.

“Do you think that can be right? ” Graciela asks, reading from a pamphlet. “Individual classes are thirty-five dollars?”

“That’s what it costs,” Katherine tells her. “But it includes unlimited use of the sauna, in case you have unlimited time on your hands, which you probably do if you have unlimited funds and can pay thirty-five dollars for a single yoga class.”

They get checked in and go to change in the glass and marble locker rooms, which look like something out of a Roman bath as reimagined by a Vegas decorator. Stephanie would love to see the balance sheet on this place. It doesn’t seem possible that they could be turning a real profit, despite the mob of attractive young women wandering from the sauna to the showers draped in terry cloth robes supplied by the studio. The Italian bath gels and moisturizers are from a company Stephanie has read about in style magazines but has never felt self-indulgent enough to actually purchase. Too bad she didn’t bring a little travel bottle she could pump a sample into before leaving.

The receptionist proudly told them that there are between five and six classes going on simultaneously from six in the morning until ten at night, so maybe it’s purely an issue of volume.

“And on Fridays we have a midnight ‘Hour of Power Chill’—a heated class done to ambient chill and deep house music. And soon we’ll be having live music supplied by a master harmonium player—Panjit Alan. After the Chill class, there’s a champagne bar in the Karma Lounge.”

“I quit drinking at just the wrong moment,” Stephanie said to Graciela.

“Sparkling cider is also available,” the receptionist, paid to be helpful no matter what, put in.

It all sounds too silly to be believed, even if there’s something appealing, too, about all the pampering.

When the three of them step out of the locker room, Katherine puts her hand on Stephanie’s arm and says, “Isn’t that Imani Lang?”

The mention of the name, which Stephanie had been bandying about a few weeks ago when she was pitching her movie, gives her a little pang of regret mixed with excitement. She’s been hoping Imani would turn up again at a yoga class, but she never appeared. Now here she is, curled up in the corner of an orange cushioned banquette built into the wall, talking quietly into her cell phone, dressed in the creamy V-necked yoga top Stephanie was coveting at Lululemon only last week.

“Has she ever come back to Lee’s studio?” Stephanie asks.

“Not that I know of,” Katherine says. “Come over with me.”

Imani puts away her phone as soon as she sees Katherine, springs up off the banquette, and gives her a hug. “My Silver Lake savior,” she says. Like a lot of successful actresses Stephanie has met, Imani has a way of sounding sincere while at the same time seeming to project loudly enough to be heard by the small audience of adoring fans she knows are watching.

“Savior’s a little exaggerated,” Katherine says, “but I’ll take it. You remember Stephanie?”

Imani gives Stephanie a relatively cool hello, and Stephanie reminds herself that, sometimes, coming on too strong too quickly can backfire. She’s been getting better at holding back a little and not trying to impress or make an impact right out of the gate. Don’t force it, Lee tells them in class. Let the pose blossom.

Stephanie introduces Graciela, and then says, “You never came back to Edendale. We’ve missed you.”

“I keep meaning to. I’ve been making the rounds of a lot of studios with a friend.”

“I saw a picture of you and Becky Antrim on TMZ,” Graciela says. She’s just sweet and innocent enough to get away with making this kind of comment about a gossip site and not have it sound insulting or invasive. “You both looked gorgeous. At a workshop in Santa Monica, I guess it was.”

“The less said about that the better,” Imani tells her. “Becky’s the one who told me about a class here today. Deep Flow Something.” She shrugs. “I’m way better than I used to be, I can tell you that.”

“It’s Lee’s class,” Katherine says. “That’s why we came. You didn’t know? You’ll see how good she is, now that you have other teachers to compare her with.”

At the door to the studio, they’re stopped by an attendant, a slim man with a ponytail, gorgeous shoulders, and a smile that’s somewhere between beatific and Jaws. “You’ll be happy to hear,” he says, “that you won’t need your mats. Everything’s supplied!”

Stephanie peers over his shoulder, and indeed, there are mats spread out across the floor of the vast studio, a few different shades of orange arranged in a carefully composed pattern, like a rubber mosaic. The lighting is low, with little bulbs twinkling on the ceiling, a constellation of distant stars. How pretty and how irritatingly perfect.

“When you say we’ll be happy to hear we won’t need our mats,” Stephanie says, “I assume that means we can’t use them? ”

“It is a policy,” the attendant says.

“How do I know who’s used the mat before me?” Imani asks.

“They’re individually sanitized every night,” he says, “with organic witch hazel and orange peel extract. And then treated with ultraviolet light. And by the way, I’m a big fan, Miss Lang. Oh, and we’d like to encourage you not to bring plastic water bottles into the studio. We sell reusable metal YogaHappens containers out front. They’re coordinated with the color scheme of the studios.”

“Maybe next time,” Imani says.

“Certainly,” the attendant says. “And if you don’t want to use them today, I’ll be happy to keep your plastic bottles here until after the class. We can label them with your names.”

Stephanie would find the whole thing less annoying if they just came right out and confiscated their forbidden supplies and tossed them in a barrel, as they do at airport security. The rehearsed quality of this polite phrasing is insulting. And she hates being told what will make her happy, especially since using her own mat and drinking from her own plastic (!) water bottle is what would please her most right now.

“How much are the bottles?” Graciela asks.

“Forty-two dollars,” he says. “But there’s unlimited filtered water throughout the Experience Center at no charge, and you get a coupon for a complimentary organic Himalayan kombucha tea—or a cappuccino—in the Karma Lounge.”

Between the champagne and the cappuccino, the Karma Lounge is starting to sound like a pretty spicy spot. Next they’ll be crowing about their ice cream sundaes and roast beef sandwiches.

“We’re expecting a full class today, so you ladies might want to go in and choose your practice zone.”

“Is Lee here yet?” Katherine asks. “The teacher?”

The attendant gives her a grin that’s supposed to be friendly, but looks to Stephanie as if he’s letting Katherine know she’s just one of the insignificant little people and shouldn’t even be asking about the star.

“I’m sure she’s in the greenroom, focusing. If you’d like to send her a message, I’d be happy to find someone to deliver it.”

“That’s okay,” Katherine says. “I’ve got my eye on a particular mat and I don’t want to get zoned out of my zone.”

“Greenroom? ” Imani says as they walk in. “I am so in the wrong profession.”

The greenroom is not, of course, green but a faint shade of salmon that goes with the burnished orange tones of the rest of the studio. Lee finds all the coordinated colors incredibly restful, which is probably the point. She and Alan decorated their studio using intuition and, it’s true, some flooring and discontinued paint colors they got a good deal on. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might hire a decorator or a feng shui consultant, not that that would have been an option anyway. But everything here is planned down to the smallest detail. It feels a little manufactured, but there’s something reassuring about it, too.

The greenroom is sectioned off in a clever way with low screens and soft cushions scattered over the floor. There’s a woman in an immaculately white leotard meditating in lotus in one corner and on the other side of the screen behind her, two men are talking about the fact that there were eight hundred applicants for an open position in their West Hollywood location. Lee is dumbfounded by the number. How can she feel anything other than grateful and flattered that she was actually sought out by YogaHappens and has been given this incredible offer? The corporate ambience is a little off-putting—many of the details scream “focus group”—but it’s all about what happens between her and the students.

Alan was supposed to come today, but he called her at the last minute to say that he was closing in on some final arrangements of a song they’re about to send off to their agent. Lee’s pretty sure he could have come, but in some ways, it’s a relief he’s not here. When she thought about him being in the class, she was excited that he’d see her at her best, teaching a group of new students. But then it occurred to her that that might make him feel competitive with her. She wonders how many times and in what ways she’s held back in the past, just so she wouldn’t make Alan unhappy. And it’s possible she would have held back today if she’d known he was in the room.

A young woman with bright eyes comes over to her and asks if she’d like anything before class—water, coffee, a chair massage? There’s only so much pampering she can take and the chair massage idea, appealing as it is, definitely crosses the line.

“I’m fine. But thanks.”

“Okay. My name’s Diandra and if there’s anything you need, ask for me.”

“Do you teach here?”

“No, I wish. I get one hour of class time free for every three hours of service I donate. Zhannette and Frank are so generous with everyone, it’s really beautiful.”

“Have you met them?”

Diandra’s eyes pop open. “No! My God, I would love to, but there are only a few people who’ve met them. They’re very reclusive.”

Fifteen minutes later, Diandra returns and tells Lee it’s time to start class. How ridiculous that after all these years and hundreds of classes, Lee feels a new nervousness about standing in front of students. The most logical interpretation is that she must really want to impress the studio, that she must really want the job.

Diandra leads her to the back of the greenroom and then through a narrow door that opens directly into the studio where she’s teaching. They certainly thought of everything. The room is full, maybe a hundred people, but the mats are laid out in such a tidy arrangement that there are aisles between them for her to walk through as she teaches and plenty of space in front to demonstrate.

Having spent several days thinking about ways in which she can make the class a little more elaborate, perhaps more suited to the upscale demands of this studio, she spots Katherine and Stephanie and has a realization, just before she starts speaking, that she can’t change anything without throwing off the balance of what she does and why she loves to teach in the first place.

“Let’s start seated,” she says, “eyes closed. This class has been described as a journey. But before we embark, how about doing a little unpacking? Your expectations, your desire to do ten sun salutations, your plans for later in the day, the argument you had this morning, your safety net. Leave them all behind. Start off feeling light and liberated, no fears, no assumptions, nothing to knock you off balance or distract you. Just you and me and a beautiful empty slate to play with. Once you see it and feel it, open your eyes, and we’ll begin.”

As Imani is driving home, she calls Becky and leaves a message. “I can’t believe you missed the class today at YogaHappens. Of all the ones we’ve taken, I have to say, it was the best. The teacher has a studio up in Silver Lake. Turns out I already took a class with her. I never mentioned it because I was afraid you wouldn’t love her and then I’d feel like an ass. But she’s amazing. Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. I’m going to take your advice and call my agent and let her know I’m ready to start reading scripts. So thank you. Call me later. Let’s figure out a time to go to Silver Lake together.”

It isn’t until after Imani has clicked off her phone that she takes account of what she’s just said. She’s ready to move ahead, ready to get on with her life. Maybe she unpacked her bags of all her fears and expectations at the start of that class. And now she’s free. But as soon as she absorbs that image, really allows herself to believe it, she feels an ache inside her. Getting on with it means letting go of something, of the past. Of the baby she carried for four and a half months but wasn’t able to carry to term. Her daughter. Ellie. Don’t name the baby until the third trimester, a friend back in Texas had told her. But Imani was never superstitious. And sometime in the beginning of the fourth month, she started feeling as if she knew the baby, her moods and her personality. It was impossible to describe, even to Glenn. Just a powerful understanding and connection that she’d never experienced before. Maybe it was all crazy, hormonal projection. How could she say for sure? She talked to her when she was alone—to Ellie—except, when she was pregnant, she never felt she was alone. She felt her soft heaviness in her arms, such a real, true feeling, it was eerie.

In all the months since losing her, she still feels that weight in her arms sometimes. It’s been a comfort in some ways. She knew she shouldn’t dwell on it or (and this is probably the true part) indulge in it, but letting go of the feeling just so she could “move on” always struck her as cruel abandonment. Leaving behind her baby. Who would care for her? Who would love her? How could she do that?

As she’s about to turn onto Los Feliz Boulevard, she starts crying, crying so hard she almost can’t see the road. She makes a quick detour into Griffith Park and parks the car and shuts down the engine and falls against the steering wheel.

When she looks up, she sees that the sky is a rare bright blue above the green of the park. It’s surprisingly quiet. A woman is reading on a bench right near her, and on the grass, a little girl in a yellow dress is chasing after a dog, laughing and shrieking.

It all starts to go blurry through Imani’s renewed tears.

“I’m sorry,” she says, barely able to get the words out. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The little girl is farther away now, chasing the dog, laughing hysterically. And she knows this is the moment, this is how it has to be. I just have to, baby. I just have to let you be. You have to forgive me, Ellie. I tried so hard. I did my best, baby girl. You have to believe me. I wanted you with my whole heart and soul. I wanted to be with you and take care of you and love you. It just wasn’t meant to be. So I have to let you go now.

I just have to let you go.

All right, she thinks, and she starts to calm down. This is the moment and the way it’s going to happen. She starts up the engine and mops her tears. No more crying. No more. She slowly backs out of the parking space and then drives onto the road and into the flow of traffic, ready to begin.