Page 109 of Catch a Kiwi
Summer said, “I, uh, said it would be a good thing for us to share. You know, getting all relaxed and so forth. We had an interesting night,” she hurried on when Karen shot me a much-too-sharp look. She began to tell the story of Delilah and the Erica situation to much rapt attention, some shock, and then some laughter at the part with the cops, eventually with her hands on the mat and pedaling her legs in an appealing bum-up presentation. I relaxed a bit myself, or as much as a man can relax when he’s streaming sweat and wondering if there’s enough deodorant in the world, and nobody’s even asked him to move yet.
At that moment, though, a gong sounded and then resonated as if we were in a Buddhist temple, and everybody shut up. The teacher, a fit woman in a ponytail, leggings, and a strappy sports bra who somehow looked cool as a cucumber, stood on the riser at the front of the room with the candles around her—not the safest items I’d ever seen decorating a wooden building, making me wonder whether the fire inspector was aware of this—and immediately set in to make us sweat more.
I was expecting something slow and New Age and possibly tantric to go with the music, but I soon realized my mistake. Jax would have been right at home here, because the woman was a drill sergeant, and this was horrible.
Have I mentioned that I’d never done yoga before? Five minutes in, I was reshuffling myself so I was slightly behindSummer and could watch her, and not even because I enjoyed seeing her curvy shape bending and stretching itself in all those interesting ways. As she hadn’t had yoga pants, she was wearing some stretchy black shorts instead. Like bike shorts, only thinner. She’d brought them to wear under her skirt for tomorrow, she’d said, because you apparently weren’t meant to see a woman’s legs beneath the fabric, while somehow seeing her skin wrapped in nylon and spandex made it appropriate. I wondered who’d made that rule, given that seeing a woman’s legs through her skirt was my idea of a good time.
I might enjoy thinking later about how she looked upside-down in those snug shorts, but at the moment, I was grimly hanging on as I balanced on one leg and my palms with my other leg in the air, then did some pushup-adjacent work like that while the sweat ran down my face and into my hair, stinging my eyes and nearly blinding me. I stretched my towel over the mat in a futile attempt to mop it up, especially as the towel was about the size of a postcard and not of much use, and also so I wouldn’t slip and fall on my arse. As a male confidence booster, it wasn’t much chop, because I was dying here.
“Reach,r-e-a-c-hback for your heels,” the woman was saying approximately seventeen hours later—or rapping out, because she was failing once again on the serene front. “Get tall on your mat, send your chest and thighs forward, andopenyour throat to the sky. It’s not about whether you touch your heels. It’s about the opening. Give yourself to the world.Reach.”
If I reached any more, something was going to pop. I decided to reach for my water bottle instead. Unfortunately, I had about two swallows left.
“If you need to lift out of the pose for a moment and then reach for it again,” the woman said, “do so. There is nostopping, though. There is only the motion, fluid as water. Be the water.”
I was the water right enough. I was nothingbutwater. I was practically swimming in my sweat by now, my Band-Aid-sized towel was wringing wet, and yes, I was reaching again. With absolutely no serenity. The woman was glaring at me, I’d told Summer I’d do this, and I was no quitter. I was, however, running through every curse word I knew.
“And now,” the teacher said, “come slowly out of that—slowly, slowly, feeling how long your spine has become, how fluid your motions. Come forward, now, and shift your pose. Use the flexibility you’ve developed during this practice as you press your palms into the mat, bend your elbows, and place your knees on your triceps. Lift your feet, now, and feel yourself balance on your strong arms. Feel the weightlessness and pleasure of inversion, and share your effort with the room. The Buddha says, ‘Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.’ Let’s share this moment together, the effort and the effortlessness of it, going from one body to another, one spirit to the next.”
I suddenly understood Delilah’s objection to quotations. I muttered, “Bugger. Shit. Fuck a bunch of balancing” under my breath as I tipped forward, only the waning strength of my arms managing to hold me up as my knees rasped painfully against my sweat-covered triceps. Which was when they slid altogether and I crashed forward onto my head and did a sort of somersault into Summer, which knocked her off balance so she crashed into the woman in front of her. Also the woman to the right of that woman, because she fell at an angle.
My spirit was definitely going from one body to the other. My spirit of chaos, because we’d been in the back corner. Isaid, “Bloody hell,” reached for Summer to check that I hadn’t hurt her, and watched the dominoes continue to fall, one after another, until seven or eight women were tipped onto their backs like turtles, then scrambling up again. Karen, who’d been balancing beside Summer like a stick insect, as if this were mother’s milk to her, came down from her pose and started to laugh, and Poppy, who’d already fallen over, struggled to her knees and said, “Well, this is new.”
Karen said, “Talk about sharing your candle, Roman,” and then everybody was laughing. Except the two women who’d been bang in front of the teacher all this time, showing us all how it was done. They were still balancing upside-down with utter serenity, and so was the teacher, who was saying, “We accept the changes in life as the stones in the river accept the water rushing over them. If we fall, we begin again. We hold ourselves steady, because acceptance is our strength. We are not pushed off course by events but remain still within.”
“Bollocks,” Poppy said, and now, I was laughing. How could I help it?
“We bring ourselves back when we waver,” the teacher said firmly, coming out of her pose with grace as Poppy and Karen choked into the collars of their shirts and Hope said, “Karen. Sssh.” Which only made them laugh harder, and I was losing control of my own reactions. Not much of a river rock. More of a reed.
As for Summer? She was giggling. I’d never heard her giggle, but that was definitely what was happening. And that was half the class laughing, the other half glaring around at us, and the teacher continuing to talk. We were meant to be upside-down again now, resting on our shoulders with our legs in the air, but that wasn’t going to be happening. The puddle on my towel was more of a lake now, and I wasn’t lying in that. I touched Summer and said, “Meet yououtside,” and Karen said, “Oh, the hell with it,” and stood up, too.
The five of us sneaked out like naughty schoolkids, and I dripped a trail of sweat all along the way.
This time, I wasn’t cleaning it up. If you want to hold a class on the surface of the sun, I reckon you’re responsible for the bodily fluids.
47
WIDE OPEN
Summer
I was still giggling, my insides fizzy as sparkling water, though that was possibly heatstroke. Out in the anteroom, which felt absolutely polar after the heat within, Karen rubbed her head with a second towel she’d had the foresight to bring along, making the strands of short hair stick up in spikes, stuck her feet into jandals, and said, “Best yoga class ever. Except you realize we can never come back.”
“Of course we can,” Poppy said. “Give me that, Karen. They can let our unruly selves flow around them like water around the stones in the river. It’ll be good spiritual practice. Ugh, this towel is disgusting.”
“Are you dissing my candle?” Karen asked. “Happiness never decreases by being shared. Sweat, though … Jax would say, if he’s not fighting beside you or in bed with you, he doesn’t want to share your sweat. But, hey, you asked for it.”
Poppy was still patting her face, which was nearly as red as the ginger hair that stood out around it in fuzzy curlicues. “Why do I let you talk me into these things?”
“It’s good for you,” Karen said. “Yoga composes the mindand relaxes the body.I’mrelaxed, anyway. Though I have to say—there’s hot yoga, and then there’s Mississippi. It must have been 110 degrees in there, and, what? Sixty percent humidity? The teacher should sue for inhumane working conditions. Oh, sorry, Poppy. And Roman. Forty-three degrees. I feel like a noodle. A cooked one.”
“Ha,” Poppy said. “I think I compressed my vertebrae with that elbows-on-knees thing, because I fell on my head. It’s easy foryouto say it’s good for us. You’re eleven feet tall and run kilometers on end because you think it’s fun and have one child. Hope and I have four each, and I don’t know about her, but the only time I run is when I’m chasing somebody or when Matiu’s chasing me, and I let him catch me pretty bloody quick. I also don’t think I have enough non-separated abs for this anymore. Enjoy it while you have it, Summer. You don’t know how lucky you are. You know the real reason you could talk Roman into this? Because you’re not married. He’s still trying to impress you.”
I’d been laughing with the rest of them, wishing that I had a second towel of my own, still remembering Roman cannoning into me and the look of a room full of women wobbling and falling, not to mention the sweat rolling off Roman’s body as if it were trying to turn him to jerky. Now, though, it was an effort to smile. Which was when Hope said, “Tell me we get to go for coffee now. And breakfast. Roman? Summer? Please come with us. I’m sure I didn’t actually burn as many calories as it feels like, but I’m thinking avocado toast with poached egg. Or maybe eggs benedict with smoked salmon. I’m a petite women who’s given birth to four children, but still. The circumstances are extreme. I’ll eat salad when I’m back home.”
“Creamy mushrooms and poached eggs on toast,” Poppy said. “Only if everybody else in the place is sitting upwind, though.” She sniffed her underarm and made a face.
Karen said, “We’ll sit outside in the sunshine, enjoy the cooling breeze on our sweaty bodies, and wrap ourselves in our moral superiority. Except we need to leave now, before the teacher comes out and yells at us. Though I think she should just yell at Roman. He’s the one who fell over onto everyone. You can go toe to toe with her, Roman. You’re a powerful man. I’m supposed to be a powerful woman, but unfortunately, I always forget that when I’m around women like her. I’m sure I’d just laugh and make it all worse. Quick. Let’s go before we get arrested for causing a disturbance.”
