Breathing and talking were a complicated enough combination…

Add the two blaring, competing televisions in the gym that hovered to Janine’s upper right and left sides, the mind-numbing Muzak being piped over the loudspeakers placed strategically around the large room, assorted nubile and robust young forms running around half-naked, and the huffing, panting man beside her—who could not be ignored no matter how much she tried—and she was on system overload.

Any minute now she was going to blow. Or trip. Both were possible; neither favorable.

She looked over at the man, hoping and praying he wouldn’t keel over, based on the sounds he was making. Having a man die on the treadmill next to her would definitely put her over the edge.

She looked at Mr. Locomotion again, wondering how he could go out in public to make such guttural, almost animalistic sounds. By animalistic, she was thinking swine, possibly boar.

She was obviously oblivious to her own auditory articulations.

“You okay?” the man asked.

Elise Lanier

Elise Lanier is a pen name for Elise Leonard, who also writes children’s books under her real name. Elise earned her undergraduate degree from LIU-C.W. Post, and her master’s at SUNY Albany. After teaching for almost twenty years, she now writes full-time in the home she shares with her husband of twenty-five years and her two cool, smart, attitude-packed teenage sons.

Treading Lightly
Elise Lanier

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Acknowledgments:

My heartfelt gratitude to the world’s greatest agent,

Jay Poynor, for his hard work, his perseverance, his

constant attention and his wonderful friendship.

He gives far more than anyone would expect

from a man in his position.

Special thanks to the agency’s V.P.,

Erica Orloff, for everything.

I’m sincerely grateful to my editor, Tara Gavin.

Your insight is pure genius, and I’m thrilled and honored

to have you as my editor. Thank you. (And just so you

know, I really wanted to put exclamation points after each

of these three sentences, but I restrained myself.)

To my husband, John: How does one thank another

for giving them unconditional love and unwavering

support for twenty-five years? “Thank you”

seems inadequate, but…thank you.

Michael and John. You are my sons, you are my

inspiration, you are my life. You totally amaze me.

Keep tackling life head-on. And never forget…

I’ve got your backs!

To my mom: You really lived. Thanks for showing me how

to do it. I miss you and think of you often.

To my dad: I’m so glad I got to share your best years,

however few. I really miss you.

A special shout-out to Lieutenant Colonel

M. Noyes, my first writing contact and now my friend.

Had I never been published, I still would have won.

I stayed the course, and yes, you told me so.

Finally, a word of thanks to my readers…

Honoring the light in you,

Knowing the light in me,

We are one.

This book is dedicated to all women over forty.

We’ve earned our wings, ladies. It’s time to fly.

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

EPILOGUE

LETTER TO READER

CHAPTER 1

“Jesus, Mom! What the hell happened in here? It looks like a testing sight for curling devices.”

“Don’t say ‘Jesus,’ Craig.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re religious,” she said distractedly, while plucking at an errant wisp of hair, making it stand up straight.

“No we’re not.”

“Oh. Right. Well, it’s blasphemous.”

“No it’s not.”

“Well, don’t say it anyhow. And before you ask your next question, it’s because I said so!”

“So, what the hell’s going on?” he persisted.

“Now that I cut my hair, I don’t know if I need the three-eighth-inch curling iron, the half-inch curling iron, or the five-eighth-inch curling iron to fit my curls. My old hot rollers won’t stay in. It’s too short. Oh, and don’t say ‘hell’ either.”

“How come? You say it all the time!”

“It’s not attractive coming from the mouth of a twelve-year-old.”

“I’m almost thirteen,” he claimed, throwing her a sideways glance that would have weakened a lesser opponent. “And it’s enchanting coming from your mouth?”

“Hell, yeah!”

Her attempt at irony didn’t escape him. “Okay, Mom, I get it. Let’s not overdramatize things.”

She burned her finger on the hot curling iron, grimaced and cursed. “Why stop now?”

“Yeah,” he said, snorting a laugh and stubbing his huge, adult-sized, boot-covered foot into the bathroom rug. “Good point. So what’s for dinner?”

She could handle his mood swings—they mirrored her own. Perimenopause and the teenage years were a lot alike. Well, except for the drooping, the sagging and the bloating. On the bright side, her pimples weren’t as bad as his. On the not-so-bright side, he applied his makeup far more artistically than she applied hers. But both only wore it for large-scale social occasions; another thing mother and son had in common. “Spaghetti.”

“Again?” he whined.

“Well, did you remember to take something out of the freezer?”

“I didn’t know it was my job.”

“It’s both our jobs,” she said, trying the five-eighth-incher out for size.

“Why don’t you just take it all out of the freezer so we’ve got it on hand?”

“Tried that once. It all went bad.”

“Oh,” he said, eyeing her newly made curls. “Those are too big. They look loopy. Yours are tighter. Like those springs you find in a pen.”

Janine grabbed the half-inch curling iron to try out the smaller size.

“Mom, the small one! Try the small one,” he said with abundant annoyance. “You’re just wasting your time with the other two.”

She put down the half-inch and grabbed the three-eighth-inch iron, watching him from the corner of her eye. “Since when are you so concerned with how I spend my time?”

“Since I’m starving to death!”

“Ah,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her face. “I should have guessed. You’re so good to me, my son.”

“It’s all about you, Mom.” He grinned.

“Yeah, right.” She tried the three-eighth-inch barrel and had to admit he was right. It worked the best. “Hey, do me a favor and go put a big pot of water on the stove, would ya?”

“Yeah, okay. Whatever. Anything to get some food around here,” he muttered on his way out.

“And throw some salt into it,” she continued. She knew he was rolling his eyes. “And don’t forget to put a lid on it, or it will take forever to come to a boil.” That was one of the few culinary tips she knew.

Twenty-five minutes later they were headed for their usual positions at the kitchen table.

“So why the big interest all of a sudden, Mom?” Craig said as he simultaneously pulled out and hopped onto his chair from behind. It was a slick move she’d often wondered how he came up with. It also prompted frequent prayers to the gods of the family jewel keepers that he wouldn’t hurt himself. One false move and she’d never have grandchildren. Time and again she’d told him not to do that, but he always ignored her, laughing at her concern and insisting it was his signature move.

Each time he did it, she’d cringe, but with a teenage son, one had to choose one’s fights cautiously. After all, motherhood was a long haul. A very long haul. It wasn’t just that wonderful and all-too-swift period of cute, gurgling baby noises and patty-cake. Sure, it was that too. In the very beginning. But that only lasted a short while. Then you’re given a few years to prepare yourself, ready yourself—at least as best you can—for…this: your child’s unswerving, non-stop, express train ticket headed straight to puberty. Some called it adolescence. To others it was known as the “front lines.” A chosen few simply referred to it as “hell.”

She’d learned a long time ago, that if you fought every battle that came up, a mother—particularly an overprotective one—would be dead in no time. That clearly in mind, she decided not to comment on the hopping-over-the-back-of-the-testicle-crushing-chair move. She figured if he ever did miss, he’d be humbled, humiliated and racked with pain—which was far more of a deterrent by example than any “I told you so” ever was.

“What do you mean? Why, all of a sudden, my big interest in what?” She sat down with a heavy sigh. “Please pass the Parmesan.”

He handed her the tall, green bottle. “All the hair-curling stuff. You’ve always had the equipment and never used it before.”

Out of the mouths of babes. Her mind couldn’t help pondering the depressing thought that she had lots of equipment that hadn’t seen any use for a while. “I don’t know, it just feels funny.” Her hand flew to her head, and patted.

“You did a good thing, Mom,” he said, while slurping up a stray strand of spaghetti.

She watched her son lick sauce off his mouth with a quick flick of his tongue. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”

“I wonder who’ll get it,” he said, before shoveling in another huge mouthful.

She had the urge to tell him to take human bites, but didn’t. “I don’t know. They handle it like an adoption.”

He nodded. “Have any regrets?”

She swallowed and then added more Parmesan cheese to her mound of spaghetti before answering. “Yeah, marrying your father.”

He rolled his eyes. “I meant about cutting off your long hair.”

Maybe a little. “Nah. It’s only hair.”

“Not to the girl who’ll get it,” he said, hitting her reason for doing it to begin with square on the head.

“Yes,” she said wistfully, imagining the joy of the sick and horrified hairless teen who would receive it. “I suppose.”

They ate in relative silence, a habit they’d gotten into over the past couple of years. “So how was school?” she asked before the meal wound down. She knew he’d lock himself in his room for the rest of the night, and they’d shared such a nice moment before, she wanted to extend it.

Wanting and getting were two different things when one had a teenage child.

“What is this? Twenty questions?” he asked, his wall of attitude now firmly placed around him.

“It was one question.”

“One too many,” he said snidely.

Yes, their Hallmark moment was over. “What’s the matter, Craig, did I hit a nerve?”

He rolled his eyes. “Everything you do hits a nerve, Mom.”

A smarter woman would have quit while she was ahead. She went on. “Oh yeah, I forgot. But help me out here, a little. You’re not failing anything, are you?”

“No,” he said sullenly.

“Anything I should know about?”

“No.”

“Any teachers want to see me?”

“No.”

“Doing drugs?”

“Jeez, Mom!”

“Answer the question and it’ll be the last one I ask.”

“For tonight.”

“So, sue me for caring about my kid!”

He rolled his eyes again.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Drugs?”

“No!”

“Good. And can I trust you?”

“You said that would be the last question.”

She shoved a huge forkful of spaghetti into her mouth. “I did, didn’t I. Okay, you don’t have to answer that last one.”

Like her, he shoveled a large forkful of spaghetti into his mouth.

“Just nod.”

“Mo-om,” he cried, spitting bits of spaghetti and sauce on his side of the table.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

He finished chewing and swallowed hard, eyeing her mischievously. “You’ll have to forgive me, my mother never taught me manners.”

“Don’t try to change the subject, Craig.” She wasn’t going to let up until she had her answer, and he must’ve known that, since he’d lived with her for his entire lifetime.

Capitulation was inevitable. She’d wear him down eventually. It was easier to answer and move on with life. “Yes, Mom. You can trust me. I don’t do drugs.”

“Okay, just checking,” she said with a smile.

“Anything else you want to drill me about?” He took a swig of his soda from the can.

“No. I’m good for now. Eat your spaghetti, dear. And didn’t your mother ever teach you to use a glass?”

“We don’t have any clean ones.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll have to buy some more.”

“You could break down and wash some, Mom.”

She opened her own can of soda and took a swig. “What? I’m the only one that lives here? Your hands are damaged?”

“It’s easier to give in than argue,” he said with a smirk as he pushed over the ever-present pad of paper that sat on their table, and handed her the pen that stayed permanently on top of it.

She wrote: Buy More Glasses!

As she pushed the pad away, the phone rang and Craig reached to get it. Janine didn’t bother answering it anymore after three o’clock. It was always for him, and never for her, so why bother.

“Hey, Dad,” she heard her son say after a brief pause. He listened for a while then looked at her cautiously.

Here it comes. It was another one of those conversations that was going to make her out to be the bad guy. She could see it in her offspring’s eyes. She could feel it in her stomach. Either it was that, or the half pound of pasta and tomato sauce sitting like a brick down there.

She ate too fast. Always did. It was a trait her ex-husband had pointed out frequently. Of course it didn’t help that after a long while of hearing him constantly assert that she ate too fast, she responded with a concise remark of what she thought he did too fast! True, it’s not the most high-minded or confidence-building thing to criticize about a man, but any man should know not to criticize a woman about her eating habits. Both were hitting below the belt, if you’d ask her. So she’d always considered it a fair comeback. He didn’t.

But he was never a match for her. She’d overpowered him from the moment they’d met. When they were first together and newlyweds, he’d told her he thought her assertiveness and aggressiveness was sexy and exciting, but after a while, he’d changed his mind.

For her, when they’d first met, she’d thought his shyness and passive-aggressive, soft-spoken ways were endearing. Plus, it was easy to always get her way. But after a while, there was no way around it for her. She’d only perceived him as “wimpy.”

Wimpy, but very manipulative. It was that passive-aggressiveness that threw her off every time.

She wasn’t used to that because she’d always called ’em like she saw ’em—saying what was on her mind. She was always up-front. There was never a hidden agenda when Janine was involved. She let everything show. Whether the other person wanted to see it or not.

Her ex-husband, on the other hand, played so many head games she never knew what his intentions were, or what he was getting at. All through their entire marriage—and their divorce—she had never known what he was trying to accomplish. He’d always had an order of business—of that she was certain—but she was never privy to it. And obviously, by the one-sided conversation she was hearing from her son, her ex was up to his usual scheming, underhanded tricks again. Which only goes to show, she thought to herself, a leopard never changes his spots.

It reminded her of a story.

One day a man found a frozen snake in the forest. Feeling sorry for it, he took it home and nursed it back to life. He defrosted it—or whatever the hell it is you do to a frozen snake to nurse it back to life—and gave it water and food.

As soon as the thing unfroze, the man was hand-feeding it with love and care when it suddenly bit him.

The man said, “How can you bite me? I nursed you back to health! I gave you water by dropperfuls and even hand-fed you!”

The snake looked him in the eye and said, “Thanks, buddy, but you’re forgetting one thing.”

The man said, “What’s that?”

The snake said, “I’m a snake.”

She wondered what Martin was up to now.

CHAPTER 2

“Oh come on, Mom! Why not?”

“Because it’s too dangerous, Craig. I said no, and I mean it.”

“I can’t believe I have an opportunity like this, and you won’t let me go!” He stomped his heavy, boot-clad foot. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go white-water rafting with Dad! You’re, like, the Wicked Witch of the East, not letting me go!”

She shrugged, not budging at all in her decision.

“You’re so unfair! I hate you!” screamed her usually passive son before storming out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. He was basically easy-going, that is, until his father put some stupid idea in his mind causing him to rebel and rear his defiant head in a blaze of hateful challenge.

He slammed his bedroom door, too, for good measure. Or maybe because she’d followed him, hoping to work things out before they got too ugly.

“Don’t you want dessert?” she called in after him.

He didn’t bother answering her. She could hear him muttering to himself in his room. Being her only child, she knew he did this often—probably because he was an only child and didn’t have anyone besides her to talk with—so she tried to allow him some leeway and privacy. “If I never saw her again, it would be fine by me! Lord knows I can barely stand living with her! She’s so unfair! She’s closedminded, overprotective and unfair!”

Okay, he had the right to get angry and she understood his frustration, so she let his comments go, realizing where they were coming from. He hadn’t really said them to her face, anyhow, so she had no right addressing them, arguing about them, or even agreeing with them.

“And Dad’s right. She’s a bitch!”

Okay, now he was starting to get her hackles up. She quickly became so angry she could feel the heat of her blood as it pumped through her, but again, she tried to be understanding and realize where that had come from. Breathing deeply to regain her composure, and silently cursing her ex-husband for making her out to be the bad guy for the millionth time, she could only hope and pray his hair continued to recede at its blistering pace, and his premature ejaculation problem continued in its customary fashion.

Lost in her silent prayer, she hadn’t noticed that Craig had opened his bedroom door again until he’d slammed it with enough force to make the windows rattle and the pictures bang against the walls. She might have tried opening his bedroom door and entering, hoping to calm both of them down and possibly calling a truce, but she’d heard him throw himself on his bed, the squeal of the bed frame’s feet scratching along the wooden floor as his weight was hefted upon it. That was her first clue as to what was going on in there. The second clue that he wanted nothing to do with her came when he flicked on his stereo—the Linkin Park CD blaring through his speakers.

He knew she hated Linkin Park, so when he’d turned it up, way up, she got the not-so-subtle hint that he was a bit miffed and wasn’t in the mood for talking. She could feel the music reverberating in her bones. And that was with the door closed. “Yeah, good. That’ll teach me!” she muttered to herself. “Make yourself deaf.” She could have screamed it to her son, but no one, including herself, would have heard her over the shattering volume. Obviously he didn’t care if he blew his eardrums out. She had pissed him off, and now it was time for a little payback—teenage style.

She shook her head and headed to her own room, knowing they were done communicating for the night. His stereo was so loud she almost missed the incoming call, but a few months back he’d talked her into buying phones with LEDs that lit up when they rang, so although she didn’t hear it, she could see it was ringing.

He must have, too, because he had lowered the volume significantly and swiped up his phone at the exact moment she lifted her extension. He was probably assuming it was one of his friends, because she heard him say, “Yeah, talk to me.”

“Hello, dear.”

“Oh. Hi, Grandma.”

Janine knew so much about him that she could read his thoughts almost to the letter. Right now he was thinking, Oh, great, it’s the woman that spawned my current adversary. The female that gave life to the bane of my existence. Yeah, like I really feel like speaking with you at the moment!

“Hello, dear. How is everything?”

Again, she knew exactly what he was thinking. Most likely because they had a conversation about this at least once a week which always started with him whining, “Mom, what kind of lame question is that? How is everything? Like I’m supposed to know how everything is doing. And Grandma asks it every time she calls! What is it with older people? Does everything they do have to be so freaking annoying?” She wondered why he thought she knew the answer to that question. Especially because—ironically—she constantly asked herself the exact same thing after each and every conversation with her mother.

“Everything’s fine, Grandma. How’s everything with you?” she heard him say, and smiled, knowing that if Craig was anything, it was predictable.

“Well, dear, I have a nasty sinus infection at the moment, but you know me and how susceptible I am to sinus infections. Every time I get a cold, it goes right into my nasal passages and I get a sinus infection. This one’s a doozy! Today my discharge is green. Yesterday it was yellow, but today it’s green. That’s bad. A sign of infection. I can’t wait until it’s clear again.”

Way too much information there, Grandma! Janine thought to herself, wondering if she should let Craig off the hook by interrupting here, or let him suffer a little longer. “Sorry to hear that, Grandma. I hope you’re feeling better soon. If clear nasal discharge is what you wish for, I hope your wish comes true.” The sarcastic little brat. She had to admire him, and would have rescued him, but his harsh words were still fresh in her head, so she let him have a few more minutes of torture.

“Me too, dear. Me too. So, how’s school going?”

Janine smiled with the knowledge of what her son was thinking. Another lame question. She knew his insides were crying out to say, “How do you think it’s going, Granny? It sucks! It’s school!” but instead, he said, “School’s fine, Grandma.”

“Are you getting good grades?”

And there was worst question number three. He constantly whined to Janine, “Does Grandma have to have the exact same conversation every time she calls? She’s lived, like, forever! Can’t she come up with any other questions? Since she feels the need to come up with any questions at all, that is. Why does she always think that asking me the same exact lame questions will give her any different answers? Have they ever changed, yet? Does she even hear my responses? Does she even care?”

“Yes, Grandma. Mostly A’s.”

Janine heard her mother cough up a disgusting wad of what she could now only picture as a big glob of “snot”—in Craig’s native tongue—on the other end of the phone. She wondered if Craig was picturing it too, and figured he most likely was. How appealing, she thought, as her mother went off on a hacking spree. She could have sworn she heard Craig mumble “Nice,” but it was hard to tell over the amplified expectoration being spewed through the phone line. It made one glad Ma Bell had perfected the resonance of their fiber-optic lines. As the huge conglomerate promised, they made your phone connection so real, it was like you were right next to each other. There’s a lot to be said for not being able to hear a pin drop. “You’re so smart, Craig. Just like your mother used to be.”

And there it was. She had to remind him of his antagonist. Had to bring her up. Janine knew he’d been trying so hard to forget about and ignore her—hence the blaring music to drown out her existence—and now she was right up there on his mind. Her mother was right, he was a smart boy, so Janine knew he’d make both of them pay with the one punishment he could inflict on both of them simultaneously. “I’ll go get her for you, Grandma,” he said before Janine heard him throw the phone down on his bed.

“Yeah, that’s it. Let ’em at each other. They deserve each other! I sure as hell don’t deserve either one of them, but they sure as hell deserve each other,” he muttered to himself as he stomped down the short hallway to her room. Her bedroom door was shut, so he didn’t see her leaning against it, her ear against the hollow door. “She’s working—all the more reason to disturb her—she hates to be interrupted when she’s working,” he said to himself with the pleasure of a nefarious villain who had a deliciously reprehensible plan. With what she could only imagine was an evil smile, he pounded on her door. “PHONE!” he shouted to it.

Head rattling, she called out, “Who is it?” while covering the mouthpiece of the phone tightly with one hand and her mouth with the other so she’d sound distant. Yes, she knew it was a juvenile move, but she did it anyhow.

“Yeah, right. Like I’m going to tell you. If I did, you’d beg me to tell her you were in the shower again. And there’s no way in hell I’m going to do that! A favor? Yeah, right. I don’t think so,” he mumbled to himself—yet was loud enough for an ear plastered to the door to hear—before she heard him clomp back to his room, slamming his door behind him for good measure.

She picked up her extension, clicking the button and pretending she didn’t know who was on the line. “Hello?”

“Oh, hello dear.”

“Hello, Mother,” she said with a definite lack of enthusiasm. Her son didn’t know how good he had it. He had no idea what it was like having a mother who was a pain in your ass. He may think she was a pain, but she was a poodle as compared to the old attack dog that was her mother.

“You must be working on one of your little books, because I called you three times this week, and you never returned my calls.” This was great. Just what she needed. Fighting with Craig, and now her mother was sticking it to her. But, you had to hand it to Mom. In one fell swoop she had insulted her profession, her writing, her manners, and her capacity as a daughter. All with that one short sentence. Her ex could learn a lot from her mother. At least her mother ragged her quickly and efficiently. Not like Martin. He was much more slow and laborious. Quite amateurish, actually. But after a lifetime with her mother, a seasoned insult comic would appear incompetent and amateurish.

“Sorry, Mother. I’m doing an edit. It’s hard for me to get interrupted. I need to keep focused so mistakes don’t happen.”

“What, like your little books are as important as brain surgery that you shouldn’t get interrupted? Or are you trying to imply that speaking to me is a mistake?” Damn, she was good. Either way, Janine looked like an idiot. In so many words—or rather, so few words—her mother had once again reinforced that her books were unimportant, her career was insignificant, and she sucked as a daughter. If it weren’t so exhausting—and directed at her—she’d probably find it impressive.

“No, Mother. I didn’t say that.”

“I don’t know how you make your living as a writer, when you can’t clearly explain yourself in a simple conversation.”

“Whoa, Granny. Pull in the reins! Even I think that one was a little rough, and currently I’m on the warpath with her almighty highness.”

Janine rubbed her temples and sighed. “Craig, get off the line, would you please?” She hadn’t realized he was listening, but as the saying went, what was good for the goose was good for the gander, so she couldn’t rightly say anything, could she? Plus, she really didn’t mind. She had nothing to hide. Particularly from her son.

When she heard the click of the phone, she assumed he had hung up. “Mother, I’ve had enough fighting for one day. Between Martin and Craig, I was at my limit before you called, and to be quite honest, I don’t have the energy or desire to contend with you right now. If you’d care to, you can try calling in a few days and hopefully by then I’ll be better equipped to handle your hostility.”

Her mother gasped.

“No offense, Mother,” she said as an afterthought.

After harrumphing better than a short, round Englishman wearing a monocle, she said, “How can I not be offended, Janine?”

With a heavy sigh, Janine said what she knew she’d have to say to get the older woman off her back. “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m under a lot of stress lately. Please forgive me.” She rolled her eyes as she said it, thankful she was on the phone and not having this conversation in person while having to keep a straight face. She couldn’t have pulled it off if she had to do it face-to-face. As it were, she was smiling wickedly and the sparkle in her eye was a dead giveaway that she was not the least bit sorry.

CHAPTER 3

Her mother’s phone call was long forgotten. The woman was a pain in the butt, but that wasn’t anything new. The minute she’d hung up, it was off her mind. This edit was important and she needed to finish it, so she’d worked all night. When Janine finally looked at her clock, she was surprised to see it was 2:23 a.m.

“Guess it’s time to call it a night,” she said to herself as she shut down her computer. The eerie light it had cast no longer illuminated the surrounding space, throwing her into total darkness. Taking a deep breath, she walked out of her room, not needing any light down the short hall toward Craig’s room. She’d done this a million times before.

A faint yellow band glowed from underneath his door, and she surmised that he’d fallen asleep with his light on again.

Opening the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak, she gazed at her son sprawled fully dressed across his bed. She crossed the room silently, thinking he looked like an angel in repose, and knelt beside the bed so she wouldn’t wake him. Carefully she untied the laces of his government-regulation black boots and gently tugged them off. God, his feet were huge. And they stank, too! Keeping those mammoth puppies penned up in those hot, festering, black leather encasements didn’t help matters. The boy’s feet needed air circulating around them.

With that thought in mind, she removed his wet, sweaty socks and threw a blanket over his prone body, kissing the top of his head and smoothing back his bangs as she did every night after he fell asleep.

“Mommy loves you,” she whispered. It was her ritualistic mantra that she uttered to the sleeping boy nightly.

She stood for a few minutes, watching him sleep, letting the sight calm her. When she felt her body relax and lose some of the strain that seemed to be ever present in her upper back, she reached over and turned the light switch off with a click.

Closing the door silently behind her, she left his room to do the other thing she did nightly. Raid the kitchen.

Heading straight for the junk-food cabinet to check out what was left, she grabbed a fistful of strawberry Twizzlers, and popped a stray purple jelly bean she’d found on the bottom of the shelf into her mouth before realizing what she’d just done. She spent a couple minutes trying to calculate when that uncovered jelly bean could’ve possibly been purchased, not remembering the last time she’d bought a bag of jelly beans, then quickly drowned out any possible contamination worries by scarfing down approximately thirteen licorice sticks, hoping that would obscure or perhaps overwhelm any bad pollutants the one measly grape-flavored jelly bean might’ve caused. She closed the cabinet door before padding back to her room to attempt sleep. It was hard for her to unwind when she was in edit mode. She held an entire novel in her head, and needed to make sure every thread, every action, every sentence fit perfectly. It took her almost two hours, but by approximately four in the morning she finally fell asleep.

As she’d tossed and turned, she had again been struck by the relative ease at which she could make things work out perfectly on paper, but in her real life, her existence was a mess. Try as she might, she couldn’t control things as she could in her books. And anyone who knew her would agree that she always tried. It wasn’t that she was a control freak. Well, maybe it was. But things just never seemed to work out for her the way they did for her characters.

For example when she woke up the next morning, she’d trodden into the kitchen, eyes crusted over with sleep, hair sticking out haphazardly on the right side and plastered against her head on the left, heading for the coffee machine. He was her only true love now—Mr. Coffee. At least at that hour. Ben & Jerry’s came in at a close second, but not first thing in the morning. Perhaps second thing. But not first.

On her way to her beloved Señor Café—she saw him as the Latino type, deep, dark, rich, fiery, and with a kick that woke her up quickly—she passed the kitchen table with the pad. Her heart soared every morning when she read the short note from her son, which had become a tradition they’d started when he was old enough to go to the bus stop each morning without her guidance.

That decision had been more of a negotiation than an outright decision. She’d felt he was too young to go to the bus stop alone, and he’d insisted he was “big” enough. After a few dozen extremely mature instances of “are not,” “am too,” “are not,” “am too,” she’d finally confessed in her most pathetic whine that she’d miss him. That’s when he came up with the note idea. “That way you’ll be able to keep me with you all day, Mom,” he’d said.

She’d almost cried when he’d said that because she was so proud of him. “Who’s the grown-up and who’s the kid?” she’d said to him that morning so long ago as she ushered him out the door before closing it. She remembered watching him through the peephole until she couldn’t see him anymore. When he was gone, she’d turned, leaned against the door, and cried because her baby was growing up.

Now her baby was well on his way to manhood. In some religions and cultures, he would be considered a man in a few short weeks.

She pulled the pad to her while forcing her right eye open by prying it apart with her fingers—ripping out a few eyelashes in the process. Thankfully, her left eye wasn’t also crusted shut. Just the right.

She squeezed her eyes open and shut a few times to get them to focus before trying to read his message. Nothing. Nada. The pad was blank.

So…he still wasn’t talking to her.

“Damn it! And damn you, Martin, for starting this little war!” Although she was angry at her ex, her heart sank because she hadn’t gotten a note from Craig. He always wrote something before he left for school, and she loved his sweet notes. They started her day and made her smile.

There’d be no smiling today. “Thank you, you rotten, selfish bastard!” she said aloud to her ex, hoping he could hear her.

On to Mr. Coffee. Once she was fully pumped up with high octane, she could begin her morning ritual.

Her morning ritual had changed dramatically these past few months.

It had all started when she hurt her back. Thinking it was a pulled muscle, she’d tried to ignore it, but within minutes it had gotten so bad she was crippled in pain. That’s when she’d figured it might be more than a pulled muscle. She didn’t have one ounce of medical training, but she didn’t have to be a medical genius to know that if one minute she’d been fine, and the next she could barely move, things weren’t right. When she could finally get herself out the door of her apartment to see the doctor, she’d begged him for muscle relaxers, hoping to ease the excruciating pain.

“Not so fast, little lady,” Dr. Harvey Rogers had said.

“What? No drugs?” she’d shrieked in panic.

“Yes, I’ll give you a prescription, but by the way you’re standing, I’d like to get some X-rays, too.”

“X-rays? It sounds expensive. Is it covered by my plan?”

“Yes, Janine.” He’d rolled his eyes. “But does it make a difference? If this were Craig’s back, would you ask that question?”

“Of course not! How could you even ask me that? If this happened to Craig, I would do anything he needed. No matter what the cost. And you know that!”

“Yes, I do. And you deserve the same quality of care. So don’t tick me off again by asking another stupid question, Janine. If I tell you I want an X-ray, just go get the damn X-ray!”

She’d smiled at him. He’d been her doctor for as long as she could remember. “Yes, sir.”

The results had come back a few days later, and instead of telling her over the phone, he’d made her come back into his office. She had no idea what to expect—and her mind had included a plethora of possibilities—but what he’d told her was the furthest thing from her guess.

If she’d been paying attention to the clues, she would have known before being told. She’d known Craig was growing, but it seemed her height was diminishing as well. Then she’d had that sudden pain—stopping her completely. It had hurt to stand, walk, sit and lie down. There was no position she could assume that would give her relief. It hadn’t felt like a pulled back muscle. It had been too debilitating. In her heart she’d known it was something else, which was why she’d dragged herself down to the doctor’s office to begin with.

“Osteoporosis,” she’d shrieked when Harvey Rogers gave her the bad news. “How in the hell did I get osteoporosis? This is ridiculous. There must be some mistake. I don’t have osteoporosis.”

“You do, and it’s bad, Janine. I’m not playing here. One sneeze and you could break your spine. Clip your pelvis into a counter’s corner, and you could be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.”

At the time she’d thought he must be kidding, and had said, “Stop making this up, Harvey! I’m really in no mood for jokes. I’ve got a deadline, and stress up my ass! I don’t need your stupid gags today.”

“Honey,” he’d said far too seriously for her comfort, “I’m sorry, but I’m not joking. Your spine is collapsing upon itself. You didn’t pull a muscle, honey, you fractured your spine.”

She’d remembered looking at him as if he were nuts. “Check the report again, Harvey.”

“I’ve checked and double-checked it. I even put a call in to the lab’s head technician to see if there could possibly be some mix-up.”

“And?”

“And, there’s no mix-up, no mistake.” The look he’d given her was steeped with sadness and concern. “My dear, you’ve got the stubbornness of a two-year-old toddler, the eating habits of an eight-year-old child, the figure of a sixteen-year-old boy, the mentality of a thirty-year-old wildcat, the mouth of a forty-year-old sailor, and the bones of a seventy-five-year-old woman.”

He’d tried to use humor to help defray the emotionalism of the diagnosis, but she’d been thrown into a state of shock when she’d found he wasn’t kidding around. “How did this happen?”

He’d shrugged. “You’re genetically preprogrammed.”

“What the hell does that mean, Harvey?”

“You’re tall, thin, Caucasian, and breast-fed a child you had later in life. You’re the poster child for this disease.”

“It’s a disease?” she’d gasped.

“Osteoporosis? Sure is, honey,” he’d said quietly. Too quietly.

He’d scared her. “So what happens now?”

“Well,” he’d said slowly, “now you have to use that stubbornness of yours to get yourself on a regimen of eating right and exercising to get those bones as strong as we can.”

“Can we do that?”

“We can try. But I have to tell you, there’s no easy or magic solution to this, Janine. You’re going to have to work at it. Diligently. And daily.”

She’d made a face.

“Look, if you need their help, I’m willing to put a call in to your mother and also one to Martin if you feel you need support with this.”

She’d gasped again, only this time, not in shock but in horror. Clutching her hand to her chest, she’d said, “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Oh no?” he’d said, eyeing her directly. “If it’s the difference between your doing as I instruct or not, you’re damned straight I’ll call in the troops. This is serious, Janine. I can’t stress this enough.”

“Okay already, I get it, Harvey. Cool the threats and theatrics.”

“You need to follow my orders or I’m going to call in the hounds.”

“Hounds my ass…they’re more like pit bulls!”

“Like you’re not one of those yourself,” he’d said with a chuckle. “Now listen up and listen good…” was the start to his long list of things she’d had to eat daily, do daily, and take weekly. He’d also given her a prescription that came with a warning list so long it had scared the hell out of her. After taking the pill she couldn’t lean over, bend over, lie down, eat fiber, take medicine, drink anything other than water, or ingest food, to list a few. It was scary, and had made her realize the magnitude of this whole thing.

Harvey had been right. It wasn’t a joke.

After that, she’d done some pretty thorough research via the Internet, and everything he’d said was true and accurate. Everything. From her genetic predisposition, to her chances of future fractures and damage based on that current level of bone density. He was also right on the money with his ordered advice on how to fight any further damage through diet, exercise, and the latest medication he’d prescribed to help stop and possibly reverse bone loss.

Now, as he’d said, it was her job to follow that strict course of therapy.

That fateful day, on her way home from Harvey’s office, she’d stopped at a grocery store and bought milk, yogurt, ice cream, and one of each of their stocked cheeses—Romano, Parmesan, Monterey Jack, mozzarella, provolone, Swiss, jalapeño jack, American, Muenster, white cheddar, and regular cheddar in mild, medium, sharp, extra sharp, New York, and Vermont.

The other thing she’d done that day was call a used-sporting-goods shop to find a reasonably priced, secondhand treadmill. The first call was all it took.

“I’ve got plenty to choose from, lady. Come on down and you can try ’em out,” the man had said.

Not knowing what she was looking for, or what the differences could possibly be, she’d told him to send a good, reliable yet reasonably priced machine that wouldn’t take up too much space in her already cramped bedroom.

“Ya mean the space-savin’, basic model?”

Sounded good to her. “Yes, that’ll be fine. Thank you.”

“Ya need incline, preprogramming, or anything over ten miles per hour?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you run?”

“No. I’ll be walking.”

“Do you want it to move up and down simulatin’ hills?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Okay, lady. I’ve got a good, plain, basic, space-savin’ machine I think’ll be poifect for ya.”

He’d given her the price, including shipping, and told her his guy could deliver it the next day. She’d given him her credit-card number and told him she’d be there waiting.

She’d decided not to tell Craig about the osteoporosis thing. At least not yet. Not until she’d gotten herself on the right path to making herself healthier. She knew she might not be able to make it better, but she could try not to let it get too much worse—possibly slow it down a bit.

That very afternoon Craig had noticed something was awry.

“What’s with all the cheese, Mom?”

“I had a craving. And you know, Craig, it wouldn’t hurt you if you ate a little calcium, too.”

He’d shrugged. “Sure.” The boy ingested anything that didn’t scurry out of his reach, what did he care if it had nutrients, minerals or calcium in it? Well, now that she’d discovered the dire results of eating a calcium-deprived diet, she’d make sure her own flesh and blood didn’t fall into that dark pit.

“Eat some cheese,” she’d called as she tried to empty a corner of her room for the treadmill being delivered the next day. She had no idea how big the machine would be so she cleared as much space as possible, attempting to additionally free up a pathway for the deliverymen to carry it in.

“Hey, cool. What’s up?” Craig had asked upon seeing her activity.

“What? Something has to be up for me to be cleaning my room?”

He’d raised an eyebrow at her. Only one eyebrow. She didn’t know how he did that but was always fascinated when he did, because she thought it was nifty and creepy at the same time. She didn’t have the talent, and often wondered if Martin had the one-eyebrow-raising endowment. She’d wondered, but never enough to ask the bastard when she had the divine pleasure of talking with, to, or at him.

“Okay. So maybe I am cleaning up for a reason. I’ve decided to go on a health kick.”

Craig had laughed. “That’s funny, Mom.”

“I mean it!”

“I’m sure you do. But for how long this time? That’s the real question.”

“Forever.”

“You say that every time, Mom. You’ve said that the last seventeen times you’ve gone on a permanent health kick.”

“Well, this time is different!” she’d huffed, insulted by her son’s lack of faith in her word.

He’d done the one-eyebrow thing again. “How so?”

“Because I mean it this time.”

“Unlike all the other times you’ve said it in the past?”

She’d remembered getting annoyed. “Is this you encouraging me, here? Or is it you trying to talk me out of it before I even attempt to start my new healthy lifestyle?”

His hands had flown up in the air. “Hey, don’t go all postal on me, Mom. I’m just trying to gauge how committed you are to this—your latest—healthy-lifestyle kick.”

“I’ll tell you how committed I am to it, you big doubting Thomas, you! I bought a treadmill.”

He’d looked as if she’d slapped him in the face. “What?”

“You heard correctly,” she’d said snootily. “I bought a treadmill. I’m cleaning my room so when it’s delivered tomorrow, there will be a place for it.”

He’d nodded his head slowly. “Good for you, Mom. I’ve been trying to get you to do some exercise for a while now, and I’m glad you’re finally listening.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve nagged me long enough, plus it’s hard keeping up with such an active son. I had to start doing something.”

He’d grinned crookedly. “Good for you. I’m proud of you,” he’d said as he left her room so she could finish clearing and cleaning.

“Well, I haven’t done anything yet,” she’d called after him.

“You will, Mom. If you set your mind to it, you’ll do it!” he’d yelled back.

“Hey, that’s my line,” she’d whispered to herself.

She shook her head at the memory. And now, months later, here she was, walking on a treadmill every day, just as she’d foretold. Who would have guessed extortion—and the threat of deformity—would be such a big motivator?

Done with her coffee, still depressed at her lack of morning, son-written note to cheer her up and start her day, she ambled back to her room and looked disgustedly at the treadmill shoved in the corner. “Looks like it’s just you and me, bud,” she said to it as if it were a person. It was the only thing she related to besides her son these days. And now that Craig was no longer talking to her, it was all she had left. Too bad it wasn’t a man. It would’ve been ideal: it was hard, built, always ready for her, made her sweat, got her blood pumping, and never said a word! Their woman/machine association was probably the closest thing to a perfect relationship she’d ever had in her entire lifetime. “And you don’t leave your crap all over the floor, either,” she said to it as she climbed on after swiping the hand towel she’d used yesterday off the floor. She’d used it to mop up the sweat that had poured from her during her laborious exertion, but after she smelled it and found it wasn’t too pungent, she shoved it into the towel-holder hole, figuring what difference did it make? She’d take a shower right after the torture session anyhow.

She hopped on and began her walking, her mind traveling in five different directions at once. Her latest book, her son, her infuriating ex, her flabby, jiggling thighs, and her pain-in-the-butt mother. When she couldn’t home in on only one problem, she decided to forget them all momentarily.

CHAPTER 4

“Why can’t I go with Dad?”

She sighed heavily. “This fight again? How many times can we have the same fight?”

“Until you give me a good answer!”

“You mean the answer you want to hear.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up a little. “Well, why can’t I go?” This time it was more of a whine than a demand.

“Because it’s too dangerous, and he’s not the most athletic person on earth.”

“So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“If the raft goes amuck, he’ll have a hard enough time saving himself, much less rescuing you!”

“First off, the raft isn’t going to ‘go amuck.’ Secondly, there will be a guide in there with us. You don’t think he’s going to let me drown, do you? He’ll lose his business!”

“He’ll have other people in the boat with him, and he’ll save them first, assuming your father will save you—which he won’t because he’s an inept spaz who couldn’t save a drowning fly from a cup of coffee—and you’ll be left, dead, floating down the river after you hit your head on a rock!”

“Mom, how do you think of these things?”

“They just pop into my head.”

“Well, get it to pop out! That’s not going to happen!”

“How do you know?”

“Because the odds are astronomical!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, young man!” she screeched.

Her son stared at her in disbelief; he was no longer amused and hate now flashed from his eyes like daggers.

“Oh my God. Now look at what you’ve done. You’ve got me sounding like my mother!”

“Another bitch on wheels,” he muttered under his breath.

“That’s it! Get to your room!”

“My pleasure!” The entire building heard his door slam. How did things get so heated so quickly? They both needed time to cool down. And what she needed was to ram a hot poker up her ex’s butt for putting this maniacal pipe dream in her son’s head. Martin knew damn well she wouldn’t let Craig go on a trip like that. As far as she knew, Martin himself wouldn’t want to go on a trip like that. He was probably having another of his midlife crises, which she could care less about. What did concern her was that he had to throw it out there, knowing their son would want to go, and also knowing she’d be the bad guy by putting her foot down with a resounding no. That son of a bitch.

Trying to distract herself from her ex’s latest manipulative stunt and her son’s formulaic response to his artful maneuver, she moved to the pile of mail and ripped open the top letter with pent-up anger. Not noticing it was from the Internal Revenue Service, she hadn’t expected to read the imposing and alarming words the businesslike letter contained.

“Damnation! I can’t believe it! Why this? Why now? Why me?”

She threw the letter on the table and immediately ran to her room to her trusty computer to fire off an emergency message to her agent.

Sid:

Help! They’re after me! The stinkin’ IRS wants more money! Lots more! What’s up with that? They state that I couldn’t possibly have made so little in the last two years. What do I do about this? They’re saying I owe thousands in back taxes!

And have you sent out the last manuscript I sent you? I know Evette doesn’t want it, but there’s got to be someone out there who does!

—Janine

Her ire spent, she stomped back to the kitchen to grab some ice cream. That would help her mood. “The IRS! Those bloodsuckers. Does it look like I’m rolling in dough?” Some Cherry Garcia was what was needed right now. With chocolate syrup. Lots of chocolate syrup. Grabbing a spoon in anticipation, she opened the freezer to find a huge gaping space where they kept the ice cream. Two half-gallons were gone. Vaporized. The Chunky Monkey and the Phish Food were missing. (Phish Food being Ben & Jerry’s chocolate ice cream with gooey marshmallow, a caramel swirl, and fudge fish. Not, you know, “fish” food—food for fish.)

She shook her head but dared not ask her son if he had eaten them. In his present frame of mind, she winced at the thought of his possible response and figured he must’ve been the one to eat it. Who else would have? Unless her former stalker was back. But she hadn’t heard from him in a while. Perhaps she had another stalker. A new stalker. A violent stalker. The thought scared the heck out of her—worse than this IRS scare.

She thought about her previous stalker situation.

Only she, Janine Ruvacado, would have a stalker who actually broke into their stalkee’s apartment, ate their food, and tried on their good lingerie and shoes. She shook her head and smiled with the memory. Fans. Obviously she couldn’t live with them (if they were obsessed and touched in the head), and, as she was finding out lately, she couldn’t live without them either (if she needed or wanted to make a living).

“How can those leeches at the IRS think I’ve got money flying in? I can barely afford to keep my human-vacuum of a son supplied in Cherry Garcia and Phish Food!” She slammed the freezer shut then pulled it open again. “Just look at that freezer!” There were two icicle-covered lumps that had not been touched since Hoover was president. They were there when she moved in, and Lord only knows what they were. No one ever dared to find out by defrosting the things. If you could pry them out of the frozen tundra to thaw! “I should invite those sons of bitches here and let them look at the opulence I live in! One look at the Taj Mahal I call home, and they’d back off pretty damn fast,” she muttered.

Acid rock came stabbing through the airwaves at a Concord-equivalent level of volume. And her already pounding temples were now pulsing in 4/4 time. “Great.”

She thought she’d heard the phone ring but wasn’t sure. The kitchen phone was LED-less.

“Hello?” she screamed into the phone. “What? I can’t hear you. Hang on a minute.”

She stormed down to Craig’s room, pounded her fists on the door and screamed, “Turn that down! I can’t hear whoever’s on the telephone!”

When the volume was turned down with no other comments coming forth, she stomped back to the kitchen to pick up the extension she had left on the table.

“Hello? I’m sorry. My son…”

“Can’t you control that boy, Janine? Letting him listen to stuff like that will send him right on the road to drugs and alcohol!”

She rolled her eyes heavenward. Thank you, God. This is exactly what I need right now. My mother, Attila the Hun, spouting off childrearing advice with the authority of Dr. Spock. “Mother,” she said softly, taking a deep breath while trying to fight the urge to scream. Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “It’s always a pleasure to hear from you, but Craig will not start drinking and doing drugs by listening to rock music. All the kids listen to this stuff.”

“And they’re all doing drugs! Don’t you read the paper or listen to the news?”

“Yes, Mother, on occasion I read the paper and listen to the news. But you can rest with assurance that Craig’s not doing those things because he listens to heavy metal.”

“Don’t patronize me, Janine. I watch Oprah! And I’ve seen him when he goes out to his druggie concerts with his cronies!”

Cronies? Who refers to preteens as cronies? “He and his friends have fun dressing up when they go to concerts, Mother. That’s all.”

“He wears more makeup than you do! Well, anyone wears more makeup than you do. You really should take more pride in your looks, Janine. You weren’t born with much, but you can remedy that with some makeup. Just ask your son! He’ll show you.”

She took another cleansing breath. It wasn’t working. The urge to scream Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! was still upon her. “It’s a little black kohl around his eyes for the funny effect of it, Mother.”

“Well it looks ghastly. And you shouldn’t let him do it. Any caring mother would not let their son go out of the house looking like that.”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “Thank you for your support, Mother, but it’s really harmless, and to be honest, I have to choose my fights with him now that he’s a budding teen, and that’s not one fight I want to waste my time or energy on.” She sighed audibly, hoping her mother would get the hint.

“Speaking of wasting your time and energy, Janine, as I was saying, you probably should take your son’s lead and think about wearing a little makeup yourself. You’re not getting any younger, dear, and no offense, but you can use all the help you can get in the looks department. You get your looks from your father’s side you know, not mine.”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “Yes, I know, Mother. You’ve been telling me for over forty years now.”

“Which goes to prove my point, dear. You’re getting older and you’re still unattached. And what man in his right mind will want an old, reclusive, irritable woman who doesn’t even attempt to make herself look attractive? Or at least as attractive as she could possibly make herself look—if she’d take some time and do something with her hair and her makeup. You can’t change what God gave you, dear, but there’s certainly enough beauty products and makeup out there that can help you take a shot at fixing what you weren’t born with.”

Janine smiled. This ought to get her. “I cut my hair off a few days ago.”

“What?” The older woman gasped. “Why would you do such a thing? Your hair was one of the only appealing things about you!”

“Why, thank you, Mother. And now I don’t even have that in my favor.”

“Oh my God! I know! Why would you do that, Janine?”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “I gave it to Locks of Love.”

“Who’s Loxa Luv? She sounds like a porn star. Why are you giving a porn star your hair?”

“Locks of Love, Mother. It’s an organization that makes wigs for teenage girls who lose their hair from medical problems.”

“But your hair was down past your waist!”

“Yes, Mother. I know.”

“How much did you cut off?”

“All of it.”

The older woman choked on her gasp.

“It’ll make a nice, long wig for some girl,” Janine added.

“You don’t even know who it will go to?”

“Nope.”

She heard her mother tsk a few times. “How could you do such a thing?”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “I was being generous and giving, Mother. A notion you may not be familiar with.”

“What do you look like now? Without your hair, you have nothing left. Nothing!”

“Why, thank you, Mother. As a matter of fact, you’re probably right. It’s short, cropped close to the head, and now that the weight is gone from it, it’s sprung like a thousand demented pogo sticks on crack.”

“Oh my God. It sounds gruesome!”

“Yes, Mother. I’d have to say that’s exactly how it looks.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re reclusive. No one has to see you.”

“Yes, Mother, I’m saving the world by staying indoors.”

“You don’t have any awards ceremonies or anything coming up do you, dear?”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “No, Mother. But thanks for pointing that out for me. It makes me feel a hell of a lot better to know I won’t be offending anyone while not getting any attention or accolades for my work.”

“Yes, dear. Glad I could help.”

Sarcasm was lost on the woman. “Do you have anything else to say to me, Mother? I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.”

“Oh, please, Janine. Don’t start overeating, too. Between your hair, your plummeting career and your difficult son, you don’t want to add to your misfortune by making yourself overweight!”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “I was talking metaphorically, not foodwise. I’ve got a lot of problems on my plate right now, Mother. And Craig is not difficult, Mother. He’s the perfect kid. So before you start ripping him apart like you do me, my advice is to say goodbye and hang up the phone before I give you a little piece of my mind on your parenting abilities.”

“No reason to get yourself in a huff, dear.”

“Yes, Mother, there is. You can say whatever you like about me, but when you cross the line and talk about my son, you’re overstepping your bounds, and you’d be wise to back off.”

“But I…”

Will you please be quiet and mind your own business, you insufferable witch! “Back off, Mother, and say goodbye.”

The older woman sighed. “Okay, Janine. I don’t know why you have to turn everything into a fight. I was only trying to give you advice based on some of my many years as a—”

“Goodbye, Mother,” she said as she hung up the phone on her mother, mid-sentence.

She hadn’t noticed that the music had stopped. Nor did she see Craig come out of his room, sliding along the hallway to the kitchen in his socks; so she was startled when he spoke. “You okay, Mom?”

Janine nodded. “Yes. I’m fine.”

“I heard everything,” he said gently. “I didn’t mean to, but when you knocked on my door, I thought the phone was for me so I listened in.”

“It’s okay.”

“Thanks for sticking up for me.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry about what I said before.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, Mom. It’s not. You’re nothing like Grandma.”

A snort of air came from Janine’s nose. “That’s a relief.”

They stood in silence, neither knowing what to say next.

“Why do you let her talk to you that way, Mom?”

She shrugged. “Why fight it? It just extends the conversation. I’ve learned long ago to let her have her say and not argue. Arguing only prolongs the agony.”

He nodded.

She looked at her son. Really looked at him. “I don’t want you to ever think that way about me, Craig. I want you to be able to talk to me.”

“I can, Mom.”

She smiled sadly at the most important person in her world—the only important person in her world. “Will you let me know if I ever get too overbearing and you can’t express yourself to me? Because the day that happens will be the day I’ve destroyed the best thing in my life.”

He looked at the floor, stubbing his toe at some invisible mark. “Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

CHAPTER 5

The sunlight streamed across her face, and the sound of an ambulance screaming outside her window woke her up from her troubled sleep. Looking around, she saw that she wasn’t in prison for tax evasion, but was still in her own home. Thank God it was only a dream. A nightmare, really.

She pulled herself out of bed, threw on a robe and stumbled to the kitchen for her morning jolt of caffeine. Passing the table, she looked for the pad and found her morning note from Craig.

Not yet, Mom. I can still take ya!?

Don’t let Grandma get you down.

You’re smart, talented, and beautiful in my eyes!?

Smiling, she was glad he couldn’t see her at that moment. She looked down at the old, worn terry-cloth robe with pulls and stains, and fingered her dirty hair. He wouldn’t find her so beautiful right now. But perhaps she was wrong. When he had bed-head and crusts of sleep in his just-wakened eyes, she found him quite adorable. Beautiful. The only time she found him more beautiful was when he was sleeping. Because when he was asleep, he was without any defenses. He was her son, her child, the being she had given life to—pure and open. He was still her baby when he slept.

She looked down at the pad again and smiled. How could her mother think this boy was anything but terrific? Look at the sweet message he’d left her, knowing she was stressed and tired and feeling crappy about herself.

She shuffled over to Mr. Coffee, measured out some coffee and thought of her son as she stood there waiting for the pot to fill. The heavenly aroma filled the small, drab kitchen, and she found renewed strength in the blissful fragrance. When the trickling sound ended, she poured herself a cup and padded back to her room, mug in hand, to get her e-mail messages. Once she’d responded to anything urgent (like hopefully the response from her agent Sid), she’d get to her walking.

She logged on and brought up her e-mail program, sipping the hot coffee while waiting for the messages to come through. Looking for anything important, she was a bit miffed that she hadn’t heard from Sid. “Damn it! When I was making money hand over fist for the man, he answered my e-mails within minutes!” Lately, if she heard back from him within a week, she felt honored. “Has my latest work been that stinky?” she wondered aloud as she deleted the mortgage offers, the porn-site insertions, and the other nonpersonal spam that flooded her in-box. Feeling depression start to sink in, she put on her mannish-looking walking shoes and sports bra—no use having anything droop further, time and gravity were doing enough to help in that department—and climbed aboard her treadmill.

She popped in the videotape of Family Feud that Craig had recorded for her daily and started walking. Family Feud was on twice each weekday, which made one hour of tape. If she timed it right, she could walk about forty-five minutes worth in an hour. If she was lucky. The time discrepancy was due to her usual pit stops—which she took every ten to fifteen minutes or so. Having a bladder the size of a thimble, she could only get about a quarter mile done—tops—before she needed a bathroom break.

“House! HOUSE, you moron! How can you not say house?” she yelled at the doofusy-looking man on her TV screen. “Where do you live? In a cave?” she shouted, gasping for breath. “In an island hut? In a cell? You moron!” She shook her head. “People are idiots!” she sputtered. “Where do they find these people to go on this show? Under a rock?” she muttered, and made a face that was a cross between severe pain and the immediate aftermath of finding out your son has head lice while you’re lying with him on his pillow to talk about his day. “You don’t deserve to win the twenty thousand dollars. You’re too stupid!” she told the man on her screen.

When she had first started walking, Craig tried to show his support by sometimes sitting on her bed while she walked, watching Family Feud with her as she plodded along. The television volume needed to be way up to be heard over the noise the treadmill made, so he’d join her, casually saying it was so loud in the apartment, there was nothing else he could do without hearing it anyhow. He’d laugh at her disbelief at the answers people came up with on the show, and funny as it first was (watching his mother tromp like a hamster in a wheel while screaming obscenities at a taped game show), it lost its appeal pretty quickly.

One day, when he was in his room doing his homework, she was screaming, “Now, now! NOW!” and he’d thought she was screaming, “Ow, ow! OW!” He came running in to help his poor mother, only to find her not lying in a crumpled heap at the base of the treadmill as he’d expected, but red faced and screaming at the TV, her hands balled up in fists, as her sneakered feet pounded away. It was just as well she hadn’t hurt herself, because he’d wondered how he was going to carry his mother—who was wearing her usual workout attire of nothing but old panties, a sports bra, and ugly walking shoes—to the hospital.

After he complained that he couldn’t hear himself think over her pounding feet, the squeak of the treadmill, her screaming at contestants, and the blaring television, she tried to get her walking done first thing in the morning while he was at school. This way he would have no excuse to not do his homework; nor could he ever say he didn’t have the peace and quiet to do it well. Plus, she figured in case she did hurt herself or keel over and die, it would also save Craig the embarrassment and logistical problem of getting her to either the hospital or the morgue. In the “getting hurt” case scenario, she’d have all day to figure out a way to get herself to a hospital independently, and in the “keeling over and dying” case scenario, well, she’d be dead, and there’s not much anyone could do about it.

The afternoon after making that momentous decision to walk mornings while he was at school, she’d instructed him to dress her adequately before calling the police should he ever come home to find her lying dead in just her sports bra, old, big underwear and walking shoes. When she’d tested him, by asking him to choose an appropriate outfit for the situation, he’d failed miserably. Who’d get caught dead in an olive-green velvet blazer and old, faded gray sweatpants one had worn during a pregnancy more than a decade before but kept and still wore because they were comfy? Yes, he was right, they’d be easy to slip on her prone, stiff, dead body. But to be caught dead in that outfit! So ever since, she kept a neatly folded pair of black slacks and a fresh, crisp blouse on a chair nearby, so he would dress her appropriately should the need arise. The black slacks were slimming, and the blouse was supposed to be wrinkle free. It was truly the perfect outfit to be caught dead in. She also threw out the olive-green velvet jacket.

So now she walked in the mornings. Currently, she was alternately screaming “Brad Pitt” and “Tom Cruise” at a woman with a foot-tall, bouffant hairdo from Idaho who had just given the answer “Fred Astaire” to the question: Name a famous actor. Who did she think they polled? One hundred people from a nursing home? When her husband, wearing a light blue polyester suit, said “Charlie Chaplin” she decided to take her second bathroom break. “Will Smith, Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves, Mel Gibson,” she muttered to herself as she walked to the bathroom. “Or, if you wanted slightly older—which it seems you do—how about Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood!” she huffed.

Upon her return, she climbed onto the treadmill and started again, disgusted by the couple who obviously lived under a rock in Idaho. Suddenly she heard a terrible clunk and was almost thrown from the treadmill when the walking tread came undone and the front bar that held the tread part in place arced up and lifted on the right side—perpendicular to the walking platform.

“Hmm. That can’t be good.” Not good at all. Now what the hell was she going to do?

She tried stepping on the bar to push it back in place, but it didn’t budge. It just stood there, poking out, the tread all wavy and askew.

“Damn it! This sucks,” she muttered as she got off, no longer thinking about how badly the Idahoans were playing, which had been all consuming mere seconds ago.

Not knowing what else to do, she thought of her maintenance man.

Throwing on some clothes, she steadied herself for the trip down to the building’s basement.

The basement was where the tenants kept their stuff in small, partitioned cages. In their particular compound, Craig kept an assortment of sporting goods and miscellaneous stuff he’d collected that she’d insisted were not to be kept in the apartment. Her particular donation to their assigned pen was her clothes from the off-season, stored in large, rectangular containers.

She hated going to the basement. Her self-assigned, floor-specific claustrophobia always made her overactive imagination envision the entire building collapsing on top of her with her not being able to get out. Needless to say, just hitting the B button in the elevator brought feelings of suffocation for her.

This wasn’t the only outlandish visualization she had. She had lots of peculiar Janine-induced mental pictures. Quite a few were rather inspirational. But as unlikely as they all probably were, they freaked her out nonetheless. If the basement brought impressions of asphyxiation, the sub-basement brought more atrocious visions of terror. For below the dreaded basement…was the sub-basement. The sub-basement was a totally creepy, dark, dank place where the building’s maintenance man, Mr. Franklin—a friendly enough old coot—could usually be found. Rumor had it that his office was there, but she’d always had a sneaking suspicion that the strange old man lived down there, too.

Janine shivered with fear and repulsion as the elevator doors opened to that floor.

“Mr. Franklin?” she called, a slight echo following her words.

Taking a few steps into the sub-basement, she could smell the mold, and hated the look of the rusty, exposed pipes traversing over her head. The ceiling was low, as though the building had already settled or had a mini-collapse, squashing the space originally designed. Was that water she heard dripping? Maybe the pipes had already broken with the pressure of the building that was surely starting to collapse.

The sooner she got out of there, the better. “Are you down here, Mr. Franklin?” She heard the panic in her voice, but was too creeped out to disguise it. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop picturing the rats that were probably scampering around her feet at that very moment. The Black Plague started here, I’m sure.

“May I help you, ma’am?” A young man appeared out of nowhere, scaring her to the point where what little was left of her hair almost stood on end. He wiped his hands on the dirty rag hanging from his shoulder.

“I’m looking for Mr. Franklin.”

“I’m he. I mean him. I’m him. Mr. Franklin.”

She stared at him. “Unless you’ve taken some kind of youth elixir, had hair plugs, and dyed whatever little tufts were already there from gray to black—you’re not Mr. Franklin.”

He laughed. “Oh. You must be referring to my grandfather. Gramps retired to Florida.”

“He did? When did that happen?”

“Eight months ago.”

“Oh.” Shows how observant I am.

“I’m Mr. Franklin, too, but I think that sounds so officious, don’t you? Please, call me Ben.”

“Okay, Ben,” she said, trying to recall if she’d ever heard a maintenance man use the word officious before. She might not acknowledge their presence—or lack thereof—but she did notice their speech patterns and chosen vocabulary. Her job made that a habit and a necessity. “So, Mr. Franklin, I mean, Ben.” She stopped speaking. Something was off, amiss, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “Wait a minute. Your name is Ben Franklin?”

“Ironic, huh?” His smile was lopsided.

“Well, yes.”

“I’ve yet to invent anything useful, although I’ve spent my lifetime trying to come up with something.”

She felt sorry for him. “Most of the good things are already invented.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said with a huff, looking totally dejected.

“Keep at it, Ben Franklin. You’ll think of something.”

“Thanks.” He grimaced. “It’s a hard name to live up to.”

“I’d imagine so. It must feel like a curse for someone in your line of work.”

“Yeah. Welcome to my world.” His head hung low for about three seconds before snapping up with new life. “So, how can I help you, Miss Uh…”

“Ruvacado. Janine Ruvacado. Fifteen D.”

“Fifteen D.” He thought for a few moments. “Oh, you must be Craig’s mom.”

She smiled. Everyone knew Craig. “Yup. That’s me. Craig’s mom.”

“He’s a great kid. He was one of my first customers when I got here. I changed out some worn skateboard wheels for him.”

Her smile widened. “Yes, his skateboard. He loves that thing.”

“It’s a beauty!”

She’d gotten it for him when the money was still pouring in. It’s a good thing she bought it when she did, because now she couldn’t even afford the replacement parts for it. “Thanks.”

“So what can I do for you, Craig’s mom from Fifteen D?”

“Janine, please. Well, I seem to have broken my treadmill.”

He looked from her left side to her right, then twisted his neck as if peering behind her. “I don’t see it here, so I guess it’s still up in the apartment. Want me to take a look at it?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Your grandfather was a real love. He’d always fix anything that went wrong around here, even if it wasn’t building related.”

“Yeah, Gramps is a fixing wiz. If he can’t fix something, it can’t be fixed.”

She laughed. “Yes, it was his motto. ‘If I can’t fix it, no one can,’ he used to say.”

“Some may take that as being cocky, but with Gramps it was true,” Ben Franklin said seriously.

Biting the smile that wanted to creep across her face, she replied with equal seriousness, “Yes, I know. He fixed many a broken thing for me.”

Ben nodded, solemnly.

They walked to the elevator and Janine sighed with relief as they got in and started for the “surface” floors. Her sigh wasn’t lost on Ben.

“Glad to be out of there?”

“Yes!” Then she realized she might have been rude. “I’m sorry. How did you guess?”

“Besides the look on your face as we entered the elevator?”

“That bad?”

“Well, no. The horrified look on your face for the entire time you were down there might’ve also given it away. And I didn’t think it was because you were alone, in the middle of nowhere, with a stranger.”

“I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal. I just have a fear of basements and sub-basements.”

“Taphephobia?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you have taphephobia?”

“What’s that?”

“The fear of being buried alive.”

“Oh. No. Not really. I don’t think it’s that bad. I’m not afraid of being buried alive.” Although now that he mentioned it, she was upset by the thought. Being buried alive had to be horrendous. “It’s just a fear of being in basements and sub-basements. I’ve got an overactive imagination.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

She snorted a laugh, trying to push aside the thoughts of a predeath burial. “You’d be the first. Everyone else thinks I’m nuts.”

The elevator stopped at her floor and they got out, walking to her apartment. She pushed open the door that she’d left ajar.

“You really shouldn’t leave your door open like that. Anyone can walk in.”

“So I’ve been told. But I figure, what are the odds of some lunatic walking in the opened door of the fifteenth floor of this building at the exact moment I’m down in the sub-basement, looking for your grandfather?”

“Pretty slim, I’d suppose.”

“Yeah, and it gave me the added incentive to hurry back up from the dungeon. I couldn’t sit around with your grand-dad shooting the breeze. I could honestly say, ‘Gotta run, Mr. Franklin, I left my door open.’”

He followed her through her apartment. “Yeah, Gramps sure can shoot the breeze when he’s in the mood.”

She opened her bedroom door. Normally she wouldn’t allow anyone in there, especially with the mess that was the usual decor, but this was an emergency. She hurried to pick up the stray panties that hung off the lamp. She hadn’t bothered to clean up, assuming old man Franklin would take his time getting his arthritic body up to her apartment. She’d also had the added bonus of knowing his glaucoma-riddled eyes weren’t as sharp as they probably once were.

“So that’s it?” the young Ben Franklin uttered, pointing to the treadmill.

Considering it was the only treadmill in the room, and had the upper bar-thingie poking out perpendicular to the walking belt, she hoped his fixing talents were sharper than his observational gifts.

He was still looking at her for an answer.

“Yes. That would be the one,” she said, trying to remain calm.

He shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t look good,” he said.

“Ya think?” she said, feeling her sense of calm sliding away.

“Yup. Doesn’t look good.”

That’s all he had to say? Even she knew it didn’t look good! Why else would she have gone down to that horrifying dungeon in search of his grandfather?

“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked, trying to leave the challenge—and hysteria—out of her voice.

He shrugged. “Don’t know for certain till I look at it.”

“You are looking at it!” The hysteria was creeping in. She’d promised Harvey she’d walk every day to help fight the osteoporosis, but how could she do that if the damn thing was broken?

“And it doesn’t look good,” he said again.

“We’ve already ascertained that chosen tidbit of information,” she said with impatience. “Is there anything else you can say or do to get it fixed in—” she looked at her bedside clock “—the next half hour?”

“Nope.”

Great! “So what am I supposed to do?”

“About what?”

“My walking. I’m supposed to walk every day for at least a half hour.”

“Sorry, Ms. Ruvacado, but you won’t be doing that on this machine anytime soon.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” she demanded shrilly. At the look of fright on the poor man’s face, she realized she needed to tone it down a bit. “I’m sorry, Ben. I shouldn’t shoot the messenger. But, really, what am I supposed to do now? I have to walk daily, or my doctor will pester me. He’s already threatened to tell my mother and ex-husband to get them involved in making me walk if I didn’t do it voluntarily. Plus I’m afraid that if I stop doing it, even for a few days, I’ll never start doing it again.”

“Can he do that?” Ben asked with astonishment.

“Can who do what?” She was way beyond her frustration level.

“Can your doctor call your mother or your ex-husband like that?”

“Not ethically. But they’re both listed as my emergency contacts, so he figured he’d extort me.”

“I thought a doctor had to take a Hippocratic oath?”

“He must’ve stepped out to the bathroom or something during that part of the ceremony. He has no qualms about blackmailing his patients if he feels it’s in their best interests.”

“That’s not right!”

“Yeah, tell me about it. But he holds the strings, so I’ve got to dance his little dance like a marionette.”

“Or walk his little walk.”

“Yes. You’re catching on to my dilemma.”

“How about a gym?”

“Are you kidding? Do that in public?” Her hand waved at the broken treadmill.

“Sure. Lots of people work out in gyms.”

She looked sideways at him, her disgust clearly evident on her face. “I’m not ‘lots of people.’”

CHAPTER 6

How were people supposed to see that? It was hard enough to hear the damn thing, but to see it, you had to crane your neck at an absurd angle. That’s not mentioning the fact that there were two different channels competing for your attention on each side. A talk show on one, and the morning news on the other.

She could’ve possibly watched one, but couldn’t decide if she should wring her neck to the right and give her full attention and allegiance to the news, or contort her neck to the left to catch the casual, witty repartee of the talk show. Either way, she’d end up deformed for the rest of the day—if not longer—with a stiff neck. Plus, both shows were at equal sound levels, thereby drowning each other out, making either one impossible to hear easily. So instead, she looked straight ahead while miserably listening to the man beside her gasp, huff and grunt.

She wasn’t used to all the added stimuli. It was hard enough for her to do this without having any other action going on around her, taking her attention from the task at hand. Breathing and walking was a complicated enough combination for her to handle. Add the two blaring, competing television sets hovering to her upper right and left sides, the mind-numbing Muzak being piped over the loudspeakers placed strategically around the large room, assorted nubile and robust young forms running around half-naked, and the huffing, panting man beside her who could not be ignored no matter how much she’d tried, and she was on system overload.

Any minute now she was going to blow. Or trip. Both were possible; neither favorable.

She looked over at the man, hoping and praying he wouldn’t keel over based on the sounds he was making. Besides having a man die on the treadmill next to her, the fuss and upheaval that would ensue would be quite annoying. Plus, on top of all this noise, the loud, blaring ambulance siren sure to follow Mr. Locomotion’s collapse would definitely put her over the edge.

She looked at him again, cyclically thinking that his utterances were horrendous and wondering how he could go out in public and make such guttural, almost animalistic sounds. They were disgusting! By animalistic, she was thinking swine, possibly boar. The snorting, gasping, huffing and panting were quite annoying and disturbing.

She was obviously oblivious to her own auditory articulations.

“You okay?” the man asked.

She looked around to see whom he was talking to. Considering no one else was at the bay of treadmills, she assumed he was talking to her. Me? He’s asking if I’m okay? He’s the one who sounds like an angry bull making an obscene phone call. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said haughtily, not wanting to add yet another action—talking—to the breathing and walking she was already juggling.

“You seem angry,” he said succinctly, between gasps.

She knew she walked like a horse, but angry? Why would he think that? And so what if she was? It wasn’t any of his business. And who the hell was he to intrude on her almost spiritual level of clarity and concentration by drawing attention to her clomplike walking style? What did he expect her to do? Tiptoe? Sashay? Undulate provocatively? Do a frigging cat-walk?

He was the one making strange noises she found totally repellent while he was sweating like the fat, bearded lady at the circus, but you didn’t see her telling him about it or drawing his attention to it, did you? No! That’s because she wasn’t like that. She reserved sharing her real thoughts with the people who knew her best. Like her beloved son, or her abhorrent ex-husband, or even her pain-in-the-butt mother. Not some strange, panting man she’d never seen before.

“I’m fine. Thanks,” she said pointedly, hoping to end this exchange. There, conversation closed.

More breathing, more huffing. “You don’t seem fine.”

Who did he think he was? Her mother? Her keeper? Her shrink? Okay, she’d been patient with the man long enough, but now he was starting to tick her off. She waited until her own breath was strong enough to talk before making her response. “Well, I am,” she procalimed, knowing full well she was not fine, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to share it with him—a complete stranger.

But then she heard the words Martin had spit at her during their phone conversation last night. Well, conversation was a pleasant word for what it really was. It was more like a screaming match, but that was neither here nor there. “You have serious trust issues, Janine. I don’t know how I can help you with that. Lord knows I couldn’t help you while we were married, but maybe now that we’re divorced I can prove it to you through actions that people—mankind—can be trusted and believed in. I do think you believe and trust me, but you won’t admit it! In what situations will you trust me with our son? Who knows, Janine. But he is my son too. And I deserve the right to do with him what I’d like to do. Your attempt to stop us from being together is wrong, and will only turn your son away from you. You’ve got problems, Janine. What do I feel is the best way for me to help you? Hell, I don’t know, I’m no expert. But what else can Craig do except eventually walk away from you? Over time, you’ll see that I’m telling you the truth.”

They weren’t the last words of the screaming match, but they certainly led up to them.

“Who the hell do you think you are, Martin? I know you like to think of yourself as the male version of Mother Teresa. But you know what, bud? You’re just a passive-aggressive bastard who uses this new age mumbo jumbo to try to sound as if he’s got things under control. But let’s not forget, little man, I’ve lived with you and know you’re just a sniveling little wuss who wishes he were otherwise! You are not taking my son river rafting, and it is because I don’t trust you to care for him properly. So go have your midlife crisis without involving Craig. And for the record, I’m not stopping you from seeing him. Go right ahead, see him till your eyes bug out, but you are not, Martin, NOT taking him rafting.”

She was reliving the conversation as the man beside her kept making his disgusting sounds. In a way, Martin was right. She did have trust issues. So what? She felt she’d always had them. But to her, it was understandable. Look at her parents, her life, her past. She lived with her past. Always. Maybe it was baggage, but as far as she knew, everyone had their share of baggage. If you were human, and you had lived a few years, you had baggage.

She looked at the panting man beside her. He probably had baggage, too. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, his face was red with exertion, and there were lines of agony on his face. He smiled at her. Or grimaced. She couldn’t tell which, but she thought he might have meant it to be a smile.

She only had the gym pass for a week, while her treadmill was being repaired, and once the damned machine was fixed, she’d be back home in her safe environment where no one could reach her or hurt her. Listen to me! I do have trust issues. Oh hell.

She looked at the man again and saw that he looked harmless. At least he looked harmless to her now. The poor guy was so exhausted he couldn’t swat a flea at this moment. So what could it hurt? He was a complete stranger. Why not tell him? In a week’s time, she’d never see him again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he’d realize she was apologizing for her rudeness but was a bit breathless at the moment, so she needed to keep things pretty concise. She took a deep inhalation to compensate for the breath she’d used to apologize.

Normally, at home, she’d be in her panties and sports bra, watching her taped programs of Family Feud. It was much harder doing this while fully dressed with no distraction of Richard Karn and the two five-person families from around the country saying completely stupid things. At home, she didn’t have to have a conversation, she just had to occasionally shout at the contestants when she felt like it. Like the other day, she was yelling “No cheese!” repeatedly before muttering to herself that the contestant was a moron. The question had been, “Why wouldn’t a mouse want to live in your house?”

Who the hell, in their right mind, answers “Because it’s a brick house and there are no holes to get in.” What was that lady implying? A wooden house has holes in it for mice to get in? Where was the logic? Janine could possibly understand “I own a cat,” or something else that made some sense as to why a mouse wouldn’t want to live in your house, but “It’s a brick house and there are no holes to get in?” What the hell kind of stupid answer was that? Did the woman live with the three little pigs?

Or how about the guy on the show a few days ago, whose question was “Why would an airplane not take off on time?” She screamed, “the weather, the weather, THE WEATHER” to him. But did he listen? No. He said, “Because it was delayed.” That wasn’t an answer. It was the question! Repeated! She’d been totally disgusted, concluding that that’s the problem with the world today…nobody listens.

She looked over to the sweating, panting man and wondered if he really cared to hear what she had to say, or if he was like everyone else in this world today and didn’t listen. He was still looking at her and was still smiling. Or grimacing. She still couldn’t tell which.

Oh well, what the hell. It wasn’t like she could hear the TV or anything, and she had to do her walking, even if it was in public, or Harvey would call Martin or her mother. Plus, she had to pass the time somehow. “I’ve had a bad couple of weeks,” she blurted out.

At first she didn’t know if he had heard her, because he didn’t answer, but when she stole a sideways glance at him, he smile-grimaced again.

“What happened?” he said between huffs. Apparently he too had trouble breathing while doing this torturous contraption. The only difference was that he was running while she was walking.

Looking at him, measuring whether she should she tell him or not, she let the question war within her head for a while. Should she tell him? Shouldn’t she? On the one hand, why should she? On the other hand, she’d only be there one week, tops, so what difference did it make? Once her treadmill was fixed, she’d be back home again. Alone. At least that’s what Ben Franklin had promised. She’d thought a week to fix the thing seemed an exorbitantly long amount of time, but he’d said something about getting a special part, which might take a while, so what could she do? That’s when she’d called the manager at the closest gym and arranged to do her walking there for a week.

The manger had tried to sell her a full membership, but when she remained adamant that she only wanted to use the treadmill, and that was all she wanted to do at the gym, he gave her a quote for a price that she felt was reasonable, and asked him to put it in writing, saying she’d be there early the next morning to sign it and pay him in advance for the week’s treadmill use.

The manager had laughed when she arrived that morning. “I thought you said you’d be in here early,” he’d said with a teasing gleam in his eye. He was a young man, built like a brick house (no mice getting in there!) with arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.

“This is early!” she’d said as she yawned for emphasis.

“We’re open at four in the morning for the early birds,” he’d said before laughing at her horrified expression. “But this is a better time. It’s much less crowded now. Most people are off to work by now, so it’ll be easier for you to get a treadmill.”

He was right. It was easy. Besides Grunting Red-faced Man, she was the only one interested in the treadmills.

“So, what’s happened these last two weeks,” the heaving, crimson-cheeked man puffed out, drawing her attention back to the present.

She looked at him again, noting his flaccid cheeks bouncing with each step, his thinning wet hair plastered against his scalp, and the sweat pouring from him like Niagara Falls. Oh, what the hell! What could it hurt? “My son’s getting attitude,” she blurted then inhaled. “My agent is ignoring me—” another breath “—my treadmill broke—” another gasp “—I’ve got osteoporosis—” a gulp “my stalker may be back,” another wheeze for breath, “—the IRS thinks I’m cheating them—” some panting “—my mother thinks I’m raising my son wrong—” a small hiss of air “—oh yeah, and I have a bastard of an ex-husband who is trying to make my life a living hell.”

“Wow,” he said, slowing his machine to a walk. “I’d call that a bad couple of weeks! Want to talk about it?” His breath was becoming lass ragged now that he was walking instead of running.

“No. That’s okay.” She breathed. She was still hoofing it at an alarming pace (for her). That was quite typical of her. No warm-up, no cooldown, just jump right in at the maximum speed until she got it done and hit her goal, then stop. It was the way she had done everything her whole life.

She’d like to say that she admired people who warmed up and cooled down as he was doing, but honestly? She didn’t have the time for that. For her, life had always been “get in, do it as fast as you can, and get out.” It’s how she shopped, worked, played, ate and even now, as she’d recently discovered, exercised.

Martin used to say, “There are shades of gray, Janine. Everything’s not always black or white,” but she seemed to see everything as one way or the other. Good or bad. Love it or hate it. Take it or leave it. Black or white. On or off. She’d never been wishy-washy about anything. Anything.

She looked up at the TVs and winced. Talking, walking and breathing were causing enough problems for her; trying to ignore all that noise, when she was used to only one form of stimulation at a time, was really grating on her nerves.

“You want them off?” he said, following her gaze, his breathing now regular since he was cooling down.

“You can do that?”

“What?”

“Shut them off?” she said with amazement.

“Well, sure,” he said with a hearty chuckle.

His deep chuckle unnerved and annoyed her. She hadn’t noticed the deep timbre of his voice before, which might have been because he was gasping, snorting, panting and making other disgusting noises, but now that she’d noticed it, she wasn’t too pleased. She was more comfortable with him when he was offensive and disgusting.

And also, who had died and left him boss of the gym televisions? And more irritatingly, why, in God’s name, hadn’t he offered sooner?

He picked up a remote, turned his back to her—a nice back with broad shoulders, she noted for the first time—pointed the remote at the left-hand set and pressed. With a blip of static, it shut off. Ah.

And now there was one. He turned to her and held out the remote.

It must be some kind of gym etiquette thing. The person on the side of the television got to decide what to watch or when to turn it off.

“The power button’s on the top right,” he offered while still holding the little device out to her. “The channel buttons are on the lower right. And the volume controls are on the lower left,” he said, without looking at the remote control. He’d obviously used it before.

Truthfully she would have grabbed the thing and shut it off in an instant, but at the moment—as with all the moments when she was aboard a treadmill—she was hanging on for dear life and couldn’t let go of one hand without spinning out of control like a demented top gone berserk before falling off the damn machine.

Think of rowing a boat with only one arm. You would just spin in a circle. Except on a treadmill, you would spin for a millisecond before you got thrown like a rodeo rider off a bronco. Don’t ask how she knew this. She just did. She still had the black-and-blue marks to prove it. Although they were a purplish-yellow by now. So she shook her head. “No. You do the honors.” Unquestionably in system overload, she choked on her last breath. “Please.”

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