2
LENA’S MORNING PAGES 1
I’LL TRY ANYTHING once, I told Kim. She said she was getting so much out of doing this thing called Morning Pages. You just free-associate anything that comes into your head. Well, for once, plenty happened to me last night! So here goes me!
I had pulled up on the causeway, got out the car into the thick, wet air, had my hands on the metal barrier, looking out, staring over the black, choppy waters of the Biscayne Bay. Then the heavy rain that was beating down just stopped, this somehow synced with the angry horns, ripping through the night, trailed by the screeching of brakes. Then out of the darkness: the cars, the men, and her. Shouting, screaming, then the sharp whistle of what I knew, from my hunting experiences with my father, was a gunshot. I should have gotten right back into the car and taken off, but for some reason, which I still can’t explain to myself, let alone those darned persistent police officers, I didn’t. Instead, I took several steps closer into the road and started filming on my phone.
I’m not stupid, I told the police officers. Because by the way they looked at me, judging and dismissive, I could tell they weren’t taking me seriously. But it was my own fault, I was talking nervously, overexplaining myself out of insecurity and excitement. — It’s her, I shouted, and I pointed to the girl, the woman, who had just overpowered the gunman.
Then I showed them the phone. The picture was dark at first as she decked the shooter, but it became clearer as I advanced toward them. She was on top of him, holding him down.
It was obvious that once they’d seen my film, even the police officers were in awe of this Lucy Brennan. She looked the part with her long, chestnut hair, streaked with honey by the Floridan sun. Thick brows sat over big, piercing, almond-shaped eyes and she had a sharply defined, trapezoidal jawline. In contrast to this Amazonian severity was her dainty snub-nose, which gave her a paradoxical cuteness. She wore a short denim skirt, a white blouse, and white ballet-laced sneakers. One of her knees was skinned, probably due to the way she pinned down the gunman with those sculpted, muscular thighs.
They took us all (me in the same car as the heroine, and the perp and his target in another) back to the station in South Beach. Then they separated me from Lucy Brennan. I was escorted into a stark, gray-walled interview room with just a table, several hard chairs, and skull-splitting fluorescent lights. They put on a tape recorder and asked me all sorts of questions. All I got from them was: Where was I going? Where had I been?
Damned if they didn’t make me feel like I’d done wrong, just for stopping on the bridge and getting out of my car to take in some air!
What can you say? I told them the dull truth; that I felt bad about the email I’d gotten from my mom, messed up by what had gone on with Jerry, frustrated about my work, guilty about the animals, about using their bones. Just pretty darn shitty about everything. I felt a migraine come on so I just stopped for some air, was all. They listened, then a woman cop, the Latina officer who had first been on the scene, asked me once more, — What happened next, Ms. Sorenson?
— It’s on the phone, I told her. I had already forwarded the clip to them.
— We need to hear it in your words too, she explained.
So I went through it again.
Lucy Brennan. She’d told me in the police waiting room that she was a trainer, like a fitness trainer. It made sense; she radiated health, bristling with power and confidence. Her hair, skin, and eyes shone.
And through my fatigue I was burning with excitement, just being around her. Because I felt that somebody like Lucy could help me. But when the police were done with me, giving me a token for my car keys in the downstairs lot (they’d insisted I couldn’t drive my own car back here), I looked for her and hung around, but she was gone. I asked a police officer at the desk if I could get in contact with her. He just fixed me a stern look and said, — That is not a good idea.
I felt like a reprimanded child. So when that news-crew guy talked to me outside, in a civil, proper way, I was happy to let them interview me and I forwarded them the clip of my footage.
So that’s my Morning Pages. I write Kim an email explaining the same thing, but not Mom, as she and Dad worry enough about my being in Miami. After driving home I was exhausted but still exhilarated. So I went to my studio and started sketching. I’m no portrait artist, but I needed to try and capture Lucy’s fantastic golden-brown mane and those searing, vigilant eyes. All I can think about is picking up the phone and calling her.
But where in hell do I start?
3
HERO
COULDN’T SLEEP. DIDN’T even try. As the sun rises I’m stretching out in Flamingo Park, preparing for my early-morning run. I’m not going to let Miles, a Motor Vehicle Accident, some asshole shooting off a gun, or even the entire Miami-Dade Police Department fuck with my routine. So I’m pushing down 11th Street toward Ocean, at an easy 7.5ish mph. Roadworking Latinos hoist fallen palms back upright, supporting them with wooden stays. The rehabilitated trees gratefully swish and wave in the cool breeze.
When I first came down here, a resentful high-school sophomore, I recall Mom’s boyfriend, Lieb, explaining to me that palm roots were shallower than those of most trees, so although they were easily blown over in hurricanes and storms, they didn’t suffer such great trauma and could survive this. I was missing Boston and made some bratty comment about how, in Miami, even the trees have superficial roots. But I didn’t pay much attention to them at the time, my disdain was fixed on the red patch on Lieb’s balding dome. Of course, a couple of months later, when it turned out to be an aggressive skin cancer, which he thankfully got removed, I felt bad for my previous disgust.
As I hit Washington, I slow down to a 4 mph jog for a couple of blocks, opting to take in the mess of tattoo parlors, sports bars, nightclubs, and stores selling tacky beachware. Even this early some drunk groups are still about, looking into closed store windows for future purchases. Shrill girls check out thongs emblazoned with slogans like DON’T BE A PUSSY, EAT ONE, while snickering guys earmark tees with the silhouette of naked pole dancers and the proclamation I SUPPORT SINGLE MOMS. From plush cocktail lounge to tacky sports pub to seedy dive bar, you can find all social levels in SoBe. Only one thing holds it together: a love of pure, unadulterated sleaze. Convertibles cruise past, their blaring sound systems often as expensive as the car, rolling downmarket as obviously nobody on Ocean or Collins is paying attention, no doubt lost in their own narcissistic concerns. A trio of shivering junkies share a cigarette in one doorway. A little farther down, two people of indeterminate sex lie asleep under a pile of unwashed laundry.
Enough of this B.S.; I turn toward Collins and Ocean, the sand and the sea, skipping past a stumbling drunk who mutters something unintelligible. Without this kickstart to my day, I’d be lost. A day without a morning run is a day you fumble through, rather than one you attack.
I rack it up a few notches to around 10 mph, running down the beachside tarmac path as far as South Pointe, picking up more speed on the way back. I’m flying past them all now, my sneakers slapping the ground in light rhythm, my breathing controlled and even. This is how it feels when you know you are with the gods. The rest of them, the shambling mortals, are just losers; so slow, so limited. Tailing off to what feels around an even 7.5 mph, I cross over Ocean, oblivious to the sleepwalking cars, and head down 9th before turning onto Lenox. Up ahead, I see a crowd of people in the street, outside my condo. Like others in the area, our building facade is art deco but ours is unique in being painted lavender and pistachio with an abstract geometric design of ocean-liner stripes and portholes. But why are there guys with cameras, shooting pictures of the outside of the property? I suddenly worry there’s a fire or something, then, as I get closer, I realize in mounting panic: this shit is for me!
I quickly spin off down 9th Street, heading for the back entrance to my home, but one asshole has clocked me and shouts, — LUCY! ONE MOMENT, PLEASE!
A stampede of
paparazzi; a pack of red-faced, morbidly obese wheezers and skinny vampire alcoholics, blinking in the sun, suddenly give an unlikely pursuit. I’m not letting up, though; ripping my keys out and opening the caged metal door to the back stairs, I slip in and slam it shut, just as the snapping pack crush each other up against its mesh. I’m climbing the staircase, ignoring their cacophony.
Inside the apartment, the open back window streams in cool morning air as sweet as creek water, as I try to regulate my breathing. The buzzer is going intermittently, and I eventually break down and answer it, raising the phone to my ear. — Lucy, Live! magazine, we really want to talk to you about an exclusive!
— Not acceptable! Get the fuck away! Stop ringing my buzzer or I’ll call the police! I slam the phone down into its wall mounting. A dark instinct makes me go to the cupboard where I keep my .22 air pistol. I bought it last summer when a prowler was hanging around the building. He somehow gained entry and molested a girl who lives downstairs. I didn’t know her, although I’d obviously her seen around. I’m not sure exactly what happened, it wasn’t reported in the press, but you heard stories from other people in the apartment building. Some say the asshole raped her, others that he just bound her with duct tape and ejaculated on her. Whatever went down, he was one sick fuck.
My “pistol” isn’t a proper gun; it just blasts out lead pellets through air pressure. I’m not down with guns. Jails and morgues are full of feeble clowns who thought that carrying a firearm would compel folks to take them seriously. The incident spooked me, though, and I responded positively and started up a well-attended self-defense class for women.
I check my phone; it must have hit the TV news already as there are missed calls and voice and text messages of support from Mom, Dad, my sister Jos (a “wow, well done . . .” in her low, passionless voice), Grace Carillo from the MDPD (who ran the self-defense classes with me), Jon Pallota, the absentee owner of Bodysculpt (the fake gym I work out of), Emilio from Miami Mixed Martial Arts (the real gym I work out of), friends like Masterchef Dominic, and a host of old college buddies, and clients past and present.
This cheers me, and I take a long shower, the cold tap on full blast but never better than tepid against my burning skin. When I get out I peek through the slats of my blinds. The crowd seems to have dispersed, but stragglers could be lurking. The buzzer goes again. I answer it, right in the fucking zone to tear some cocksucker’s head off! — YES!!?
But this time it’s a woman’s voice, the honeyed tones smooth and reassuring. — I’m Thelma Templeton, VH1 programming. I’m not paparazzi and I’m not from a news channel. I don’t want a picture or a press interview. I give you my word if you let me in, I’ll be the only one who comes up. I want to speak to you about a fitness-slash-lifestyle show.
Fuck, yeah! I immediately buzz her in. Then it hits me that it was possibly all bullshit and I’ve been played. So I open my door and peer down the the hallway, ready to step back inside and slam it shut, should some asshole appear. After a few moments I hear reassuring heels on the stairs and see a woman emerge onto my floor. There’s no sign of her carrying anything, like a camera. She’s around forty, dressed in a business suit, with smooth blond highlighted hair and a Botoxed face, unnervingly immobile as she strides forward, a slightly bowlegged gait. I stand my ground, and when she gets close she’s suddenly gushing, — Lucy, shaking my hand and stepping into my cramped apartment. — This is cozy, she smiles, sitting, at my invitation, on my loveseat, and accepting my offer of green tea.
This ol’ girl’s pins are gym-toned; no cellulite or dimpled fat visible, and Thelma begins to outline her proposition. It’s a makeover show. I take some overweight, low-self-esteem bloat-bag who hasn’t dated this century or whose husband hasn’t boned her in years, and get her to lose weight and boost her confidence. Once I’ve licked her into shape, I hand her over to some fag designer, who will oversee phase two, the makeup and clothes component. — We have a few concepts, but this is the strongest and simplest model. We’d work with you developing the idea, shoot the pilot, and if the numbers stack up, go straight to series, she explains, then going through the spiel in some detail. When she’s done she stands up and asks, — Who reps you?
— I’m, uh, still deciding on representation, I lie.
— Don’t wait too long. Strike while the iron’s hot, she half warns. — There are some good people we work with regularly, I could pass on your contact details to them if you like. There’s no pressure, you have to find the person best for you, but I know one woman you really should meet, she’s called Valerie Mercando. I think you two would get along like a house on fire!
— Great!
She hands me her card, and I give her one of my totally rad embossed ones that Jon Pallota made for me:
LUCY BRENNAN
HARDASS TRAINING
No Excuses, Just Results — Be The Best You Can Be!
[email protected] She takes it in a well-manicured hand. — Wow! That is so impressive, you really do have that no-nonsense, hard-edged persona we’ve been dreaming of. Somebody to shake America right out of its complacency. Somebody even more out there than Jillian Michaels!
— I’d go head-to-head with her anytime, on the treadmill, the pull-up bar, or in the ring, I tell her, feeling my jaw jut out.
— I doubt that will be necessary, Thelma laughs, — but you never know!
I escort her out the door and down the hall to the front stairs. — Wow, I’m just so stoked that I could have a series!
— Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Thelma pats her hair in place against a nonexistent breeze, as she steps toward the front door. I jump ahead, checking the coast is clear. It seems to be. Thelma’s hand grips the edge of the door, as her eyes blink in the sunlight. — A pilot first, then see how the numbers play out, she says cheerfully. — It’s all about numbers, and she pulls a pair of sunglasses from her bag and sticks them on, — Bye, Lucy!
— Bye. I hear my voice, low-key, cheerless, as I let the door swing shut, feeling strange layers of both anxiety and excitement. Through the glass door I wave Thelma off, then bound up the stairs, going back to my pot of green tea.
I grew up in a family obsessed with numbers and measurements. Dad, a former PE teacher, punctuated only by some undistinguished service with the Boston Police Department, would take me to Fenway and bombard me with every player’s stats. When a poor or decent performance confirmed a hypothesis he’d made based on those figures, he’d lean in to me and say knowingly, “The numbers never lie” or “Don’t ever trust man’s subjectivity, math comes from God. Watch the stats, pickle, always watch the stats.”
With me the numbers that dominated my youth were my standardized test scores (high = expectation) and my GPAs (low = disappointment). The discrepancy between the two made me an enigma to my mom; she could never figure me out. This deficit had to be explained in terms of character. Or lack of. My dad couldn’t have cared less about my scores, though he shared with Mom the lack-of-character paradigm. Only, for him, it was explained by my sporting failures.
Home was Weymouth, MA, a town swallowed by the Boston sprawl, and part of the South Shore “Irish Riviera.” My younger sister by eighteen months, Jocelyn, was quiet, academic, and hopelessly non-athletic. Dad tried with her, but even he had to concede defeat, so then she pretty much flew under his radar. Instead, he set about training every weakness of sloth and indolence out of me. He made me hate those characteristics in others and fight them tooth and nail in myself. And for that, and that alone, I thank him. Jocelyn, the “sugar” to my “pickle,” became my mom’s pet project. It’s very hard to say who got dealt the worst hand there.
I finish my tea, as a tired yawn rips through me, and get out to my first appointment of the day. It’s quiet now, as I check my mailbox. A card from the MDPD, telling me I can pick up the Caddy from their lot. They had to keep it in to examine the damage to the hood.
I walk up to Bodysculpt, one of the two So
Be clubs I work from. Marge Falconetti appears, a CEO’s wife who is 5’7" and 285 lbs of puffy slug (don’t think tits—waist—ass, just beachball). After some warm-ups, I get her raising a ten-pound kettlebell.
— Full extension, Marge, that’s the way, I cajole the ol’ girl, and I’m just settling into the day, battling the fatigue, and the strange creeping silence in this place. So ungymlike and even worse than normal today. Marge is actually trying, but all the time glancing at me and then past me in sheer awe. Then, horror of horrors, I follow her bug-eyes to one of the myriad television screens we have positioned around the walls. A local news channel, then, on the next screen, another one, are repeating last night’s story, me featuring prominently. Lester, one of the other trainers, lets out a loud cheer, leading off some clapping, as I reappear onscreen, blinking and candy-assed-looking.
— They show this again and again, on the half-hour, he grins.
— You’re so brave, Marge smiles painfully. I respond with a thin leer to let her know there will be no slacking, as I crane my neck back at the screen.
There I am, kicking the gun-toting weakling into submission. It’s a pretty fucking neat front kick, farther up than I thought, the ball of my foot striking him at speed between his shoulder blades. I’m right on his back as the camera moves closer, my ass in my panties where the skirt has ridden up blacked out by digibars. I see myself slam a couple of hooks into his body which I honestly couldn’t remember throwing. His passivity looks spooky, as if I’m sitting on a corpse. I hear a voice screaming, — I phoned this in, as the image shuffles, then I’m in midshot and the tarmac darkens with his urine. Then, a more professional shot of me through the glass of the police car.
Jesus, I’m even keeping pace with the two fifteen-year-old conjoined twins from Arkansas. The girls have had a falling-out as one of them wants to go on a date, meaning that the other, the physically weaker one, will literally be dragged along against her will if she disagrees. I’m thinking of how it might have been to be attached to Jocelyn, have to drag her along to my shit, or, worse, be taken to hers. No fucking way.