Firm Ambitions Read online

  As I stretched from side to side I spotted a familiar face across the room. It took me a moment to attach a name to the face.

  “Oh, God,” I said to Ann. “Is that Chrissy O’Conner?”

  Ann squinted to see and shook her head. “Not Chrissy anymore. Christine. Christine Maxwell. The Christine Maxwell. Of Maxwell Associates. How do you know her?”

  “She was two years ahead of me in high school. She was in charge of the homecoming dance. I was just a lowly sophomore on the decorations committee.”

  “You don’t sound like one of her fans.”

  “I’m not.” I studied Christine from across the room. She was a tall redhead—taller than me—with the fierce look of an avant-garde fashion model. She had straight red hair cut short and held in place with a sweatband. With what I admit was uncharitable pleasure, I noted her battleship hips and sagging rear.

  “She’s kind of a bitch,” Ann said.

  At precisely seven-thirty the music started. A Janet Jackson number blared out of the huge speakers that were set on raised platforms in the front corners of the room. The women formed into rows facing the mirrored front wall and started doing stretching exercises. Within seconds all of them were moving in sync. I found a spot between Ann and a platinum blonde with a tush to die for and pneumatic boobs.

  “How do you know her?” I asked Ann as I tried to coordinate my stretching with the rest of the class.

  “Christine? Mainly from class. I’ve tried to be friendly, but she’s a real snob. One of those society types. Always in the Ladue News and Berger’s column.”

  “What did you say her company’s called?”

  “Maxwell Associates.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something with investments, I think, or insurance.”

  The music continued to build in volume as Janet Jackson faded into the Miami Sound Machine. It felt as if the bass guitar was in my rib cage. There was a raised stage in front. To the side of the stage was a red door set into the mirrored wall. As the music reached a crescendo, the door burst open and Andros leaped onstage.

  “Ladies,” he yelled as the music paused, “it’s show time!”

  He was a striking figure—bronzed skin, a strong, angular face, a cleft chin, and a thick mane of shoulder-length jet-black hair combed straight back and held in a small ponytail. The drums pounded as he leaped high, punched his fist into the air, and shouted, “Let’s get busy!”

  We got busy and stayed busy for forty minutes. It was definitely show time for our instructor. He was wearing a body mike—the music was so loud he couldn’t have been heard otherwise. He strutted back and forth in front of us like some hybrid of Mick Jagger and Richard Simmons, exhorting us and prodding us and verbally abusing us. His aerobics outfit was part of the show: a scarlet muscle shirt and matching bikini briefs over black tights. He had a muscular torso, narrow hips, and tight, round buns. The scarlet briefs accentuated the body part that Eileen Landau had compared to a bull’s. Based on the visible evidence, she hadn’t exaggerated much.

  I did my best to keep up with his exercise pace, and was pleased to discover that I was in better condition than most of the women in the class. By the time the session ended, my lungs were burning and sweat blurred my vision.

  “That’s a wrap, darlings,” Andros shouted as the last chords of M. C. Hammer’s “Too Legit to Quit” rap faded out.

  Panting, I walked over to where I had left my towel by the wall. My legs felt wobbly.

  I was sitting on the floor cross-legged and wiping my face with the towel when Andros came over. He positioned himself directly in front of me. His arms were crossed over his chest and his legs were slightly apart. He was standing so close that I had to crane my head up to see his face.

  “You and Ann are family, no?” he said. He had a slight foreign accent. I hadn’t noticed it when the music was on. Greek? Turkish? I couldn’t quite place it.

  “We’re sisters.”

  “You are very good,” he said sternly. He had dark blue eyes and long black eyelashes.

  “Thank you,” I answered, not knowing how else to respond.

  He held out a hand. “Stand up.”

  I stood up without his help. He stepped back and crossed his arms. With a look somewhere between clinician and swinger, he studied me from head to foot. I shifted uncomfortably.

  “Your triceps,” he finally said, frowning.

  I couldn’t keep a straight face. “What about them?”

  “I can shape them. I can make you magnificent.”

  I laughed. “Come on,” I said, feeling myself blush.

  He shook his head impatiently. “Your body is a gift from God.” He stared into my eyes. “I can help you attain the perfection God intended for you.”

  It was hard to take him seriously. He seemed so much sexier—and taller—up there on his stage, strutting around and shouting commands and showing off his tight little buns. As a pin-up, he was definitely a hunk, a suitable Mr. March for the “Men of Aerobics” Calendar. But down here in person, hustling business and feeding me lines, he seemed more of a small-time con artist.

  I could see why Eileen Landau might pick him for a one-night stand, or even a short bout of revenge sex. But the way Eileen talked, it sounded like she was having a real affair with this guy. I couldn’t see it. But then again, I hadn’t spent the last fifteen years of my life picking Tommy Landau’s chest hairs off my body.

  Andros started pitching his personal workout program to me. I interrupted his spiel, explaining politely but firmly that I really wasn’t interested. As I moved away, several other women crowded around him with questions about their fitness routines. They giggled and flirted as they asked him questions and listened wide-eyed to his answers. When Ann and I left a few minutes later he was still surrounded by women.

  “Well,” Ann said as we walked through the mall toward the parking lot, “what did you think?”

  “It’s a good workout,” I said, intentionally answering the question she hadn’t asked.

  “Not the aerobics. I mean Andros. Isn’t he gorgeous?”

  I shrugged. “He’s okay.”

  “He’s okay? Come on, Rachel! Doesn’t that little tush make your mouth water?”

  “It’s cute,” I agreed.

  “How about that package up front?”

  We walked in silence for a moment. “He’s just not my type,” I finally said.

  “Oh, yes.” There was an edge in her voice. “I forgot. He’s not an intellectual.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it, Ann.”

  “Rachel, honey, the last thing to worry with a guy like that is the size of his brain.”

  The phrase “Rachel, honey” was the warning signal. It meant that we were headed toward a fight, sinking into that familiar La Brea Tar Pit of our relationship.

  I tried to slog toward firm ground. “Come on, Ann. That’s not what I said. He’s just not my type.”

  “Which means what?”

  We had reached the parking lot. Ann turned to face me.

  I tried to gauge where the tar pit ended and firm land began. “He’s too smooth. Too…coiffed. And…”

  “And what?”

  I shrugged. “A little slimy.”

  Ann shook her head in angry amazement. “Slimy?” I was now up to my knees in tar. “You think he’s slimy? I see. He’s too good for you but he’s just right for me, huh?”

  “Come on, Ann. I never said that. I don’t think he’s your type either. He just struck me as the kind of guy who preys on rich women, a gigolo.”

  “A gigolo? I can’t believe you, Rachel. I bring you to my exercise class, a place that’s special for me, a place I want to share with my only sister, and what do you do? You dump all over me and the people I care about.”

  I was sinking deeper. “Ann, I did
n’t—”

  “Just forget it,” she said as she spun around and stomped off.

  I stood there watching her stomp down the row of cars.

  Again, I moaned.

  I thought back to when Ann and I were in elementary school, back before we moved into a bigger house with separate bedrooms. I had felt closer to her than I have ever felt to anyone since. We slept in the same bed, bathed in the same bath, walked to and from school together, invented our own secret clubs, protected each other from our parents. I can close my eyes and still recall the smell of her breath in the morning. We once had our own private language. Now we often seemed to need a translator. (“What your sister really means to say is…”)

  Off in the distance, I could see her unlock her car door. She got in and slammed the door shut. A moment later I heard her car engine rev as the rear lights came on. With my shoulders slumped, I turned to find my car.

  “Oh, damn,” I said aloud as I remembered how I’d gotten there. I turned back as Ann pulled her Suburban alongside me. She was staring straight ahead.

  We drove home in silence.

  “Ann,” I started as she pulled into the driveway, “he’s definitely cute. It’s just—”

  “Forget it,” she interrupted as she turned off the engine and opened her door. “We’re different. That’s all. Forget it.”

  My mother was ironing in the den. There was an Italian opera on the television.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “Phew, that’s a real workout.”

  In the five seconds it took her to put down the iron and look at her two daughters, she had sized up the situation and decided that tonight it was best to let the parties cool down on their own instead of initiating multilateral peace talks. She gave Ann the dress and a container of fruit compote for her family and walked her to the door while I waited in the den.

  “So?” my mother said when she returned.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “What did you fight about?”

  “Andros, I think.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’m not sure. Ann thinks he’s a hunk. I thought he was so-so. Maybe she was thinking of fixing me up or something. I don’t know.”

  “Did she talk to him afterward.”

  “No.”

  “Did you know he comes to her house for workouts?”

  “That’s the fad these days, Mom. It’s part of his business. These exercise people make house calls. After class he even tried to hustle me for that stuff. If you had gone, he’d have done the same to you.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s a good-looking guy. Dark, nice body, great eyes. Maybe thirty. He’s a hustler.”

  She shook her head and frowned. “I don’t like hustlers.”

  “Mom, I wouldn’t worry about Ann and him. I happen to know for a fact that he’s in the middle of a wild love affair with another.”

  “Oh?”

  I nodded.

  “I still don’t like it,” she said.

  Twenty minutes later I was pulling back the covers and getting into bed. I set the alarm and reached up to turn off the reading light. As I did I paused to look around. My bedroom looked the same as it had the day I left for college. The red-and-white Cardinals banner over the dresser (“1967 World Champions”), the Billie Jean King poster over the desk, the multicolored scented candle on the nightstand, the psychedelic Eric Clapton poster on the back of the door, the large peace sign glued to the headboard. The only decorating touch I’d added since moving back were the two framed 5x7 photographs on my nightstand. I found them when I went down to my father’s office to clean out his desk and personal belongings. They were in the top drawer of his desk. One was from high school, with me in my U City cheerleader outfit; the other was at my law school graduation, with me in a black gown and mortarboard. In both pictures, my father is standing next to me beaming with pride. Now his gentle smile is the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night.

  “Good night, Daddy,” I whispered as I turned out the light.

  Chapter Three

  The phone started ringing as I came in the front door lugging the bag of softball equipment in one hand and my purse and briefcase in the other. I dropped the equipment bag, ran into the kitchen, and reached the phone before the answering machine clicked on.

  “Hello,” I said, panting from the exertion of carrying the heavy bag of equipment from the car to the house.

  “How are you, Rachel?”

  Not again, I groaned to myself as I put my purse and briefcase on the counter. “I’m fine, Andros.”

  It had been almost two weeks since his aerobics class, and he had called me at least ten times, sometimes at home, sometimes at the office, urging me to enroll in a series of personal workout sessions that he would be happy to conduct at my house. At first I thought it was just a pickup gambit—I could almost feel him trying to smolder through the phone line. But eventually I realized it was just part of the sales shtick. He was the personal-exercise equivalent of one of those demoniacally persistent life insurance salesmen. At the end of the last week, refusing to take ten separate nos for an answer, Andros had mailed me an appointment card stating that he would come by my house at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday to give me a free personal fitness session. I received the note on Saturday. I tried to call him the day I got it, and then again on Monday. It was now Tuesday.

  “Rachel, my assistant, Kimmi, tells me you’ve been trying to reach me.”

  “I have. Look, I have no interest in a personal fitness session, and even if I did—which, believe me, I definitely do not, I promise—I work during the day. I’m not interested and I just don’t have the time.”

  “But what could be a more important use of your time than to fine-tune that magnificent body?”

  My mother had the call-waiting feature on her phone, and it started making that clicking signal. “Hold on,” I told Andros. “I have another call.” I depressed the cut-off button once. “Hello?”

  “Tell your mother’s cat I’m running late.” It was my pal Benny Goldberg.

  “Where are you?” We had left the softball practice at the same time.

  “Well, I decided to drop by Wolfie’s on the way over to your house.”

  “Oh, Benny. For what?”

  “Just a nibble.”

  “Define nibble.”

  “Just a sampling of some of the basic food groups.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Meat, vegetable, and dairy.”

  “Specifically?”

  “A Big Daddy with extra grilled onions and a chocolate shake.”

  “Benny,” I said with disapproval, “I thought you had a hot date for dinner.”

  “Hey, Rachel, that’s later. This is now. Gotta keep the furnace stoked.”

  “You stoke enough in your digestive tract to run a Bessemer steel operation down there. If you don’t watch out you’re going to end up on Oprah.”

  “Funny you should mention her. I’m already scheduled on a panel next week: Big Men Who Turn Women into Love Slaves.”

  “Are you sure it’s not Big Men Who Need Lobotomies?”

  “Very funny. Listen, I’ll be there in ten minutes, but that’s not why I called. As long as I’m at Wolfie’s, I thought I’d bring Ozzie a treat. Can he eat frozen custard?”

  I smiled. Ozzie was my golden retriever. Benny was taking care of him temporarily. “Sure. But just a small cone. I’ve got to get off. I have Andros on the other line.”

  “Again? Tell that oily putz if he doesn’t leave you alone I’m going to haul his sorry ass outside and beat him like a rented mule.”

  “A rented mule?” I was laughing. “See you soon, Benny. Bye.” I clicked back to the other line. “Andros?”

  “Rachel, you say you
don’t have time to devote—”

  “I don’t. Period. I get my exercise jogging. That’s plenty.”

  “Oh, Rachel, when I think of the punishment that jogging inflicts on your supple legs and hips, I get tears in my eyes.”

  “Don’t. I’m canceling tomorrow’s personal fitness session. I appreciate the offer, but I’m not interested.”

  “I don’t understand how can you pass up my offer to—”

  “I just did,” I snapped, and then immediately felt a tinge of remorse for being so abrupt. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Do you still have that aerobics class on Wednesday nights?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll go to it tomorrow night, but only if you promise to leave me alone and never call me again. Okay?”

  There was a long pause. I heard him sigh. “With great sadness, I promise.”

  As I went back to the front hall to get the bag of softball equipment I heard my mother’s car pull up the driveway. I waited until she came in the house.

  “Hello, sweetie pie,” she said as she gave me a kiss.

  “Good day?”

  “Good enough. Are Benny and Ozzie here yet?”

  “Benny’s running late. They’ll be here soon. Where’s Gitel?”

  My mother looked beyond my shoulder and smiled. “There’s my little princess. Come here, young lady.” I turned around to see the cat promenade down the stairs from the second floor. She gave me a withering glance as she passed by. The feeling was mutual.

  Gitel was the reason Ozzie and I were separated. Ozzie was a Valentine’s Day gift from a former boyfriend named Howard Stein who now is a gynecologist in San Diego. He was six weeks old at the time. Ozzie, that is, although Howard often seemed to hover around that age emotionally. Howard and I didn’t last to Ozzie’s first birthday. Ozzie and I celebrated our seventh Valentine’s Day together this past February—which says something about dogs, and probably men, too.

  Gitel, on the other hand, is a Persian with more than a touch of the Ayatollah in her. While she tolerated having me around the house, she declared a jihad on Ozzie the Infidel the day we moved in. She made his life miserable during the forty-eight hours he spent there, poor thing. He’d been living with Benny ever since, and I was starting to feel guilty about the arrangement.