Roxy’s Story (14 page)

“What isn’t?” I asked. “I imagine someone is watching me sleep.”

“Could be,” she said.

I glanced at Portia, who kept her face locked in a tiny smile.

Mrs. Brittany looked at Mrs. Pratt and then back at me, nodding at the card. “That’s
your schedule for the foreseeable future,” she said. She started out, then paused
and turned back to me. “If you have any problems today, see Mrs. Pratt.” They looked
at each other, and she turned back to me one final time to add, “I suppose the big
question to answer is whether you will still be here when I return.”

“I’ll be here,” I said.

“Don’t let us both down, then,” she replied, and left.

“She likes you,” Portia said immediately.

“You’re kidding. If she likes me, I pity someone she doesn’t like.”

“Exactly. That was our point.”

“How can you tell, anyway?”

“I’ve been around her long enough. After a while, you’ll figure it out for yourself,”
she said, and finished her coffee.

I looked at the empty doorway.

There’s a woman who would be a match for my father,
I thought, and finally smiled, thinking about the two of them in the same room talking
about me. I’d love to be a fly on the wall that day. My smile widened.

“What’s so funny?” Portia asked.

“Nothing. Everything.”

She widened her eyes and laughed.

So did I, but I wondered when I would laugh again.

Portia left before I finished my breakfast. She told me she was going for a morning
swim and then, after a massage and a session with Claudine Laffette, who had promised
to give her a new hairstyle that was the rage in Paris, she would have lunch and rest
before dinner. She said she didn’t expect to see me again until then.

“You’ll be much too busy.”

“I can see that,” I said, indicating my schedule. “How long are you going to be here?”
I asked before she walked out.

“I’m leaving tomorrow. You’ll have the whole place to yourself for a while, I think,
although we never know. Good luck,” she said.

I looked at the clock on the wall. I had ten minutes. I finished most of the fruit
in the small bowl, drank some more coffee, and then picked up my schedule card and
rose just as Randy returned.

“All alone? They deserted you on your first day. How sad,” he said.

“I’ve been alone a lot longer than this,” I told him.

“Poor pretty thing,” he said, and began to clear
the table. “Well, I hope that will end soon and forever and ever,” he muttered like
a silent prayer. I watched him carefully pick up cups and plates in small, dainty
moves, as though he was trying not to make a sound. He smiled at me and shrugged his
left shoulder. “I’ll see you at lunch. Don’t worry. I’ll help you in any way I can
during the training.” He winked and returned to the kitchen.

Exercise was the first thing on my schedule, so I headed for the gym, where I found
Lance Martin doing stretches. He saw me enter but didn’t stop. I stood waiting and
watching for almost five full minutes.

“Sorry,” he said, rising off the mat, “but it’s very important to begin with stretching
and not break your concentration. I’m Lance Martin.” He held out his hand.

“Roxy Wilcox.”

It wasn’t much of a handshake, more like just touching as if he was afraid he’d pick
up some evil bacteria.

“Have you done much physical training?”

“None,” I said. “Unless you count brushing my teeth every morning and evening.”

He nodded without breaking into a smile. I imagined a sense of humor wasn’t part of
the program.

“You don’t look much older than sixteen. Mrs. Brittany’s going to market you as the
ingenue, I imagine.”

“Me? Sweet, innocent, and virginal? I doubt it.”

That brought a smile. He had a very strong mouth
and deep-set hazel eyes. He was dressed now in a pair of swimming trunks and a tight-fitting
T-shirt, and I could clearly see the perfect symmetry of his muscles. I couldn’t see
an inch of fat on him. He looked unreal, more like a mannequin created to depict the
ideal manly physique. I thought he had a waist only an inch or so wider than mine.
Tanned, with neatly styled short dark brown hair, he was one of the healthiest-looking
men I had ever seen, but there was something almost asexual about him at the same
time. I didn’t feel any erotic excitement or attraction. It was as if everything about
him, even his facial expressions, had been sanitized. He was the sort of man who worried
about his own well-being and health so much he probably avoided sex with anyone except
another health and fitness mannequin. Mrs. Pratt needn’t have been worried about my
seducing him or him seducing me, I thought.

“Ingenue,” he repeated, looking me over. “It’s a matter of marketing, not reality.
You have your sports bra and panties on?”

“Yes, why?”

“Please strip down to them,” he said, then reached for the tape measure he had lying
beside a clipboard on the mat. He looked up at me, surprised, when I didn’t take off
the sweatsuit instantly. “Don’t tell me you’re bashful,” he said. “If so, you’d be
my first.”

“Hardly,” I said, and took off the sweatsuit. He stared at me a moment, walked around
me, and then began taking measurements of my thighs, calves,
waist, arms, back, and shoulders. He looked at my breasts for a moment. “Are you firm
under there?”

“What?”

“You’re not one of those girls who go braless most of the time, are you?”

“Not most of the time, why?”

“Old gravity has a say in what shape you’ll take. You can be defiant and free like
some feminist if you want, but stretching won’t be attractive.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

Ignoring me, he moved quickly to measure my breast size and picked up his clipboard
to write down the numbers he had taken.

“You’re pretty good right now,” he said. “But I can tell you’re going to have a little
trouble with your thighs. Your calves aren’t as tight as I would like them to be,
and your arms, especially in the triceps area, will be a problem later on if you don’t
keep them tight. They’re a bit loose now for a girl your age, in fact. I guess you’re
telling the truth when you say you don’t exercise much.”

“You can’t tell that way. Everything about me is a bit loose for a girl my age,” I
muttered, reaching for a funny double entendre, but he acted as if he didn’t hear
or care.

“Okay, let’s get started with the basics of stretching exercises. Then we’ll design
a daily routine for you to attack the areas we need to attack, and we’ll get you into
the pool and start building your stamina and strengthening your shoulders and your
trapezius muscle. We’ll get you up to speed before we turn you
over to Brendon in a day or so. Horseback riding is terrific physical exercise, too.
Have you done much of that?”

“I rode a pony at some fun fair once, and I’ve been on a carousel—does that count?”

“Hardly. You can joke if you want. You may not appreciate it yet, but you have to
be prepared for horseback riding. It will get you aching in areas you never knew you
had. It’s great for stimulating muscles in the dorsal and abdominal regions that are
seldom used in everyday life. Most people don’t understand that it’s a great calorie
burner, too. They think the horse does all the work.”

I looked around the gym at the various machines, each specifically designed for one
area of the body.

“All of this sounds exhausting,” I said.

He smiled, but it was a smile of condescension. “After a while, you’ll find it all
invigorating, just as I do. When you’re on your mark, it’s as good as sex,” he said,
and I thought maybe for him, that was definitely true, but it would never be for me.
I think he saw my thoughts and laughed.

“Just kidding. Don’t panic. But I will tell you this,” he added almost in a whisper.
“Women who are in top physical shape are better lovers. Even sex requires some endurance.
One other thing,” he added, pulling himself up even straighter to emphasize his point.
“We don’t use any steroids. No drug enhancements here.”

“Good. I don’t want to grow a mustache,” I said dryly.

He didn’t even smile. Was it healthy to be so damn serious about your work?

“Let’s get to the stretching,” he said. “As I said, it’s how we begin every day. I’m
proud to say I haven’t had anyone I train pull a muscle or strain a tendon.”

I found the stretching to be more difficult than anything else he had me do in the
gym. It was actually very painful. He told me I had to work through the pain to eliminate
it. I couldn’t imagine ever standing with my legs straight and stiff and placing my
palms flat on the floor, but he guaranteed that I would be doing it in less than a
week.

As he took me through his plan of exercises specially designed for me, I laughed to
myself, recalling how uncooperative and defiant I had always been in PE class. This
year, my teacher, Ms. Lecter, gave me so many demerits that I was a candidate for
failing PE in my senior year after only the first week of class, and that was something
that could possibly threaten my graduation. Eventually, when that consequence didn’t
change my behavior, she took to doing the same thing most of my teachers did: she
ignored me and didn’t even bother to send me to the dean.

Again, maybe because my father made such a big deal about staying in shape, especially
when you were young, I was recalcitrant. That description of me was actually on my
report card. I hated almost any form of exercise, and I knew it irked the girls in
my class who did work out hard and didn’t have anywhere near the perfect figure I
had. They glared at me with such envy and hate. It was so unfair to them. Why was
I so
blessed? All the Miss Piggies looked as if they would enjoy beating me to death in
the locker room and eating me for lunch.

I came back at Papa whenever he chastised me for not wanting to walk to the store
to get something Mama needed or even something I needed. He was especially enraged
when he saw the grades I was getting in PE.

“How can you be failing this?” he cried, waving my multicolored report card in the
air like something forbidden he had found in my possession. “What do you do?”

“Nothing, that’s why.”

“You’re making a fool of yourself and fools of us!” he bellowed.

I looked at him calmly. “Who are you to talk, Papa? You’re not exercising the way
you should anymore, are you? You have a sedentary job, and you don’t walk to work.”

Of course, he rattled on about how he was working hard to keep us all comfortable
and wanting nothing. He did try to get to the gym every weekend, but he wasn’t happy
about how he had to eat while entertaining clients. I think he was drinking more than
he should. It was the first time I seriously considered the possibility that he regretted
the choice he had made, after all. Perhaps by now, he could have been a high-ranking
officer. I knew he harbored the belief that he could have been a better soldier than
his older brother, who was still only a lieutenant colonel, whereas their father had
become a general by his age.

After my gym workout, Lance gave me two bathing suits to try on. Both were a little
tight. I think he did that deliberately so I would feel bad about my figure. The first
one fit better. When I came out of the bathroom, he gave me one of his energy drinks.
He was drinking some himself. I sat at the small table and sipped it. It wasn’t bad.
I had been expecting it to taste like some sort of medicine.

“You are a little soft in the abdomen,” he said. “Most women don’t usually gain their
weight there, but you look like you might have that inclination. Are your parents
overweight?”

“No. Well, my father is now, but my mother has a terrific figure for someone her age
and always did.”

“So you take after your father more,” he said. The way he said it irked me.

“I don’t think so.”

He laughed. “You mean you don’t wish so, but your genetics have a mind of their own.
There’s just so much we can do about that. What do you usually have for breakfast?”
he asked, grimacing as though he already knew my answer.

“Coffee and something sweet. My mother is French.
Petit déjeuner
is usually a café au lait and a sweet roll or croissant. My father often has oatmeal
or eggs and bacon.” I smiled to myself, remembering his complaining about my mother’s
breakfast habits. Her comeback was always, “Who has more obesity, the French or Americans?”

Emmie ate more like he did, which pleased him.

“Yes, well, you’ll get a good nutritional plan here,”
Lance said now. “You probably won’t change your breakfast habits after you leave,
but at least you’ll supplement them, and you’ll soon see why you need to. So have
you done much swimming?”

“Almost none,” I said. “My school had no pool, not that I would have gone into it,
and we don’t go to the beach much. Well, I should say, I don’t. My younger sister
loves it, and my mother is a good swimmer. When she was younger and living in France,
the family would summer in Juan-les-Pins, where an uncle had a beach house. I’ve never
been there, but she often talks about it. My father grew up in a military family and
was . . .”