Next Generation Health and Fitness at King’s Park was possibly the most intimidating place I’d ever been. It was where the beautiful ~ and loaded ~ people hung out. Bikes and treadmills lined the windowed walls. Tall girls who looked liked they’d just finished shooting for Marie Claire or Vogue or something stood on them and around them wearing teeny climate control singlet tops and short shorts that looked more like my undies than something you’d exercise in. Their breasts were so perky they didn’t need sports bras. Their bums were so toned I bet they’d never seen a pair of Spanx. This was obviously all a show. These girls didn’t need to work out. From the look of them, they didn’t even eat. Pity that Alex and I stood out like Michael Jackson fans at a Metallica concert.
Wearing our exercise gear ~ circa 2010 ~ of leggings and Christina t-shirts I’d got the fateful night of the concert-slash-prank-gone-wrong, we presented ourselves to the very smart and very thin looking girl at the counter. Her nametag read ‘Imogene’ but ‘rude’ would have been more apt. Amazed that she could glance up from whatever it was she was doing on the computer while simultaneously looking down her nose, I gave her a smile. To say she gave us the once over would be being polite.
“Hi, I’m Millie McIntyre. Alex and I have an appointment with Jackie at 2pm.”
Imogene rolled the mouse and clicked a few buttons, consulting the computer diary. I was waiting for her to tell us there’d been an error; that nobody dressed like us could possibly come into Next Generation.
“Jackie’s in Studio 2,” she said. “That way.” She raised a bony finger and waggled it in the direction of the hall and away from the main gym area. Clearly, only certain people got to work out in full public view. We weren’t them. We set off in the direction given.
At the door of Studio 2, another tall, slim girl walked towards us. “You must be Millie? And Alex?”
She was wearing a fitted polo shirt and short shorts that showed off one of the best sets of lightly tanned legs I’d ever seen on a girl. Her blonde hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail and a pair of black-rimmed glasses framed her face. Everything about her screamed ‘lets get physical’.
“I’m Jackie, I’ll be your trainer. Here for a bit of a tone up are we? Getting ready for the big day?”
We nodded.
“So what’s your exercise routine been like, say, in the last six months?”
“Uh, non-existent,” I replied, feeling rather sheepish that I’d been too busy to take any ‘me’ time.
“What about you, Alex?”
“Zero. I’m Greek. I’m allowed to be comfortable in my chubby little body.”
Jackie was pokerfaced. Fitness was no joking matter.
She led us over to where some free weights were lined up against a wall. Two exercise mats were set up on the floor and a rowing machine, medicine ball and bike had been placed in a sort of circuit.
“All right then. Set to get going? We’ll start slowly. We don’t want to kill you on the first day. We want you to come back. Now, are there any areas you’d like me to target in particular?” She looked me up and down and ticked a few things on her clipboard.
“Not really. Just a general work out’ll be fine.”
“I’d like to lose a bit more weight if I can,” Alex added. “I’ve lost five kilos.”
Jackie gave her a smile. “I can handle that, no problem. Lots of cardio is the requirement for that. Now get your bum on the elliptical and get warm. We’ll start in ten minutes. Oh and this is Pammy, by the way. She’ll be training with you today, if that’s okay?”
I looked over to see a short woman of sixty or so sitting on the exercise bike. She had very thin toned legs and a rather large tummy that was she trying to hide in an oversized t-shirt that read ‘Miss Universe Training Squad’. A shock of bright red dyed hair stood on end all over her head, punk fashion.
“Hi girls,” she said. “Are you new?”
“Yep.”
“God, I am so not in the mood for this today. If Jackie gets on my case, I’m as likely to tell her to get stuffed.” A cheeky glint twinkled in her eye. I could tell she meant every word.
Jackie looked up from the clipboard, where she’d been filling in more notes about Alex and I. “Shush up and pedal Pammy, you talk too much.”
“You should be more respectful of your elders.”
“You don’t pay me to be nice, old girl. You pay me to get you fit. Now shut up and get those legs working.”
“She’s a tyrant,” Pammy whispered, after Jackie turned her back to us. “Works me like a dog. I nearly vomited during the work out last week.”
Alex glanced at me, a look of terror on her face. “Oh my God.”
“Nothing to worry about. If wants me to do too much crazy stuff, I tell her I’ll do it when she does. Then I remind her who pays her wages. Works every time.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
Me, too, I thought. It’d come in handy next time Angus had one of his stupid ideas.
By ten minutes into the workout, I was convinced that I was dead. Either that or the victim of some terrifying new form of torture. My legs were beyond jelly and my heart was pumping so hard, I could see what Pammy meant about wanting to throw up. Dragging my eyes up from the floor, where I was doing sit-ups with the medicine ball above my head, I looked in the mirror, not surprised to see a beetroot red face surrounded by a wad of wet matted hair looking back at me.
Alex didn’t look much better. A rivulet of sweat had trickled down the side of her face, past her collarbone and found its way into her cleavage. She’d given up trying to wipe it and was now concentrating on trying to keep her body upright. I could tell she didn’t want to get whooped by a granny.
“How much longer?” she gasped.
“Only twenty minutes. Legs up. Come on. Suck in those tummy muscles,” Jackie chirruped.
“Twenty minutes. I thought the sessions were only thirty minutes long?”
“They are. You’ve only been at it for ten. Now get those legs straighter.”
Alex groaned and attempted to roll her eyes at me as she heaved her legs up and down in the hamstring machine. “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”
“Think of the end result.”
“What? My funeral?”
From the other side of the circuit Pammy flipped a free weight into the air and began to bench press like a pro. “You’re not that fit, are you, young Alex?”
“Guess not.”
“Give it a month and you’ll look like me.” She snorted loudly at her own humour.
God. I hoped not. Pammy, bless her, ran rings around us in the fitness stakes but I wouldn’t swap bodies with her for a million bucks. She was more of an orange than an hourglass.
“I don’t think I can last much longer,” Alex puffed. “Can we slow down or get a drink or something?”
“Sure… in, ah,” Jackie checked the time, “Ten minutes. Change stations.”
I put down the medicine ball and rolled to my knees. Until that moment I’d never known the meaning of the word tired. “We don’t have to do this, you know. I don’t want you to change because of some misguided idea that you think you have to compete.”
Completely defeated, Alex was trying to remove her legs from the clutches of the hamstring thingy. Her whole body had taken on a pinkish glow that didn’t look healthy. “I’m not. And it’s fine. Truly. I’m just not that used to exercise.” She bent down to pick up her towel and with a loud clang whacked her forehead on the metal footrest.
Shit.
“Alex! Oh my God. Are you alright?”
A large lump began to surface on the top of Alex’s head. It looked like she was giving birth to an egg. From her skull.
“Quick, lay down,” Jackie screamed. “I’ll get an icepack.”
Pammy looked up from her Sumo squats. “That’s one helluva way to get out of a workout,” she snorted, and kept on pumping.
*****
That night, I lay in bed on the phone to Sam. I was sore in parts of my body I hadn’t known existed before that exercise session but I was way better off than Alex.
“You should’ve seen her head, the lump was as big as a tennis ball,” I said. I’d driven her straight to the Emergency Department at St John of God where I’d been subjected to an hour of wailing while we waited for a doctor to see us. Sometimes having a Greek girl for a friend was too much. She was so O.T.T with the emotions. Even the receptionist had offered to get her a painkiller to keep her quiet.
“Is she okay, though?”
“Yeah. I think her pride was hurt more than anything. She wanted to do well. She’s been on a diet you know.”
“A sore head shouldn’t stop her from training.”
“No, but her pride will. There’s no way I’ll ever get Alex back in that gym again after the looks we got as we left. She was mortified. Not that I blame her. We got our bums whipped by an old lady.” I’d already relayed our meeting with Pammy at the gym. I didn’t need to elaborate.
Sam chuckled. “Wish I’d seen it.”
“No. You don’t. And I’m calling Angus in the morning. We don’t need anymore of that silliness before the wedding.”
On the other end of the phone, I heard Sam yawn.
“Am I boring you?”
“No, I’m knackered, that’s all. It’s been a busy week. Early night for me, I think.”
“Me too. ‘Night.” I blew him a kiss through the phone.
“Love you.”
“You, too.”
It was only after he’d hung up that I realised he hadn’t even asked how the wedding preparations were going.