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The sun wouldn’t set for a few more hours, but it had dipped behind the mountains, and the blue was darker now, as if a watercolor brush had swabbed over the trees and rocks and hillside. Jim could have walked farther, but the road was steep, and more than exercising, he just wanted a few minutes away. Jim sat and watched the sheep until they all stopped moving and just stood, staring off into the distance or at one another or at the grass underneath their bodies, as if they’d all coordinated it beforehand, this moment of silence. It was the sort of thing you might remark on to the person sitting next to you, a tiny and unimportant but nonetheless noteworthy part of the day. If he had been a different kind of man, he might have written a poem. Instead, Jim swung his legs back over the wall and started his way down the hill. Behind him, the sheeps’ bells began to ring again, without hurry. It was all up to Fra
It didn’t matter that most of the party had flown in that morning, and that they would need to have a third wind in order to stay awake through dessert. Fra
“Can I help with anything?” Carmen appeared just behind Fra
“No, no, all done,” Fra
Carmen’s dark hair was wet, and her curls hung heavily over her shoulders. It was what Fra
“Thank you for having us here,” Carmen said. She had put on makeup, which Fra
“Of course,” Fra
“It’s good! It’s busy. Really good. Yeah.” Carmen nodded several times.
“Well, shall we?” Fra
Day Four
BOBBY AND CARMEN’S ROOM WAS BETWEEN SYLVIA’S room and the bathroom and overlooked the pool, which meant that any noise louder than a whisper could potentially be heard by everyone in the entire house. Bobby was awake but hadn’t moved yet, not even wiggled his toes—Carmen was still snoring softly next to him, and he didn’t want to disturb her.
At their apartment in Miami, Carmen was up before dawn. Her clients liked to get in a workout before heading to the office, and so she started seeing people at five-thirty a.m., straight through until ten a.m. Then there was a break until the lunchtime crowd, and then she was booked again from eleven a.m. until two p.m. She saw up to eight clients a day, sometimes more. Everyone at Total Body Power knew that Carmen got results, and that she worked you harder than the other trainers. She’d been seeing some of her clients for more than a decade, back from when she was fresh out of kinesiology school and working at the YMCA. Bobby’d come to the gym looking for some help with his lats and traps, and that was that. Of course, that was when Bobby had the money to spend on a personal trainer twice a week.
His mother was up—Bobby could hear the pans banging onto and off the stove, the sound of pancakes being distributed or eggs being cracked. Maybe both. Fra
Carmen grumbled and turned onto her side, taking the sheet with her.
“Good morning,” Bobby said, using his best newscaster voice. Carmen thumped him in the chest without opening her eyes. “It’s late.”
“How late?” she said, eyes still closed.
“After eight.”
“Jesus.” Carmen shimmied her body backward until she was sitting up against the wrought-iron headboard. She was wearing her pajamas: a pair of faded boxer shorts that preceded her relationship with Bobby, now going on six years, and a pale pink camisole that clung to her rib cage and small breasts, her dark bull’s-eye nipples showing through. If you asked the Posts, they would all tell you exactly what kind of body Bobby found attractive: a thickened teenage gymnast, women who looked like they couldn’t ovulate if you gave them a million dollars. He didn’t care. Bobby loved how hard Carmen worked on her body. Her thighs were her calling cards; her biceps were her advertisements. She looked strong and serious, which she was. Bobby respected that she always knew what she wanted, from herself and from her clients. If she told him to drop to the ground and give her twenty push-ups, he’d do it. She had a strong sense of the human body, and of what people could do, if encouraged. It was one of the things Bobby liked most about her.