Tales from the Yoga Studio (5 page)

T
he thing that Katherine likes best about the new Dutch bike she bought online is that it's pink. It's true, she paid too much for it—and extra for the designer color—but her massage practice at the studio has really caught on in the past few months, and she figures she owes herself a little pampering, a treat. She ordered it on the second-year anniversary of her sobriety. Why not?

It's sturdy, it's solid, and she feels cool riding it around Silver Lake. Complete strangers sometimes wave at her. It has a great classic design, and she gets off on dressing to match the bike's style, if not its color—a little more girly and retro-chic, a little Zooey Deschanel. She's been getting back into sewing and has taken apart and restitched a couple of vintage dresses she had stored away in a closet. It's true the bike is a target for thieves, but in her mind, that only confirms its value. She's got a very good lock.

What she likes least about the bike is that it really doesn't show off her ass.

Under most circumstances, she'd consider this a plus. She's had way more than her fair share of wanted and unwanted attention all her life, and there's no use pretending that thirty percent of her massage clients at Edendale Yoga aren't guys (and one or two girls) who think she's hot. Almost a year ago, after she put an end to her relationship (to be generous about what was in fact more like an exercise in low self-esteem) with Phil the Impossible, she decided to take a break from men and dating and sex altogether. It's been among the most relaxing stretches of time she's had in years and the most centering, but lately, as she's biked down Hillhurst Avenue to the studio and past the station house and spotted the redhead—two days ago she chatted up one of the other firemen, who told her his name is Conor—she's had a sudden desire to be leaning over the handlebars, flaunting the results of all those utkatasanas she's been doing over the past couple of years.

The way she sees it, there's a big fat connection between sex and yoga (well, sex and
everything
, but who's counting?) that a lot of people don't like to own up to. A lot of people she knows come for the body sculpting (sex appeal), combined with the flexibility (sexual enhancement), and the muscle control (duh!). The boyfriend before Phil also turned out to be a total shit (actor!), but after one month of Lee's classes, his staying power increased dramatically.

And if people aren't using yoga classes to enhance their sex lives, they're using them as an alternative to sex after a divorce or a bad breakup (Stephanie, she's guessing) or a long dry spell. How else do you explain the popularity of Gianpaolo's classes at the studio? His Italian accent is so thick, it's hard to understand a lot of what he says. But
man
, does he give amazing adjustments, especially in paschimottanasana, when he more or less drapes himself over you backward so you can get your forehead closer to your knees.

There are a few tragic types, like Brian/Boner, who come to class to show off their wares, but they usually end up the resident joke at Lee's studio. The white stretch pants that scream
I'm serious about yoga, ladies—and circumcised
. She's guessing he'll either finally hook up and (mission accomplished) stop coming or realize no one's buying and head off to a big commercial studio with a singles bar atmosphere. There is no shortage of those in this town.

It's another perfect morning, and since she's got a few extra minutes before Lee's 9:30 Intermediate Vinyasa class, she circles the block twice, hoping to spot or be spotted by Conor. Nothing. It's a shame. She has on a yellow cotton dress and it looks great with her pale skin, and she's finally learned how to ride while wearing a skirt. (Carefully, but not
too
.) She's tempted to stop and adjust the basket she has on the front to see if Conor ventures outside, but that's too obvious. She let one of the guys know she wouldn't be disappointed if Conor contacted her, so maybe she'll just leave it at that. And there's always lunch break.

As she's locking the bike up behind the studio, she sees Lee through the window of her office, talking on the phone with her head down. Katherine always suspected that something was up in that marriage, never bought into the conventional wisdom that it was a perfect match. Like those exist? She's been around the block a few too many times, had her heart broken too often, and seen the darker side of the way men really act to buy into fairy tales.

The truth is, Lee's marriage is none of Katherine's business. She knows that. But if it wasn't for Lee, Katherine would probably still be using. She'd still be working for the escort service. Assuming, that is, she was still around. For a while there, that wasn't certain. How much Lee knows about the specifics of
that
tawdry chapter is not clear. Not that it's such a shocker. Just another L.A. story: tough, clueless girl from Detroit heads west with totally half-baked ideas about acting, ends up “dancing,” leading to escorting, leading to self-loathing, leading to self-medicating, and culminating in one long slide into self-destruction. Where would she be if she hadn't met Lee? Hadn't been welcomed into the studio free of charge? If Lee hadn't lent her the money for the massage school? More to the point, where would she be if Lee hadn't shown her unconditional belief in Katherine's talent as a healer and her ability to keep herself clean?

In the reception area, she can see from the number of shoes in the cubbies that it's going to be a packed house. This is Lee's most popular class, but it's a crowd, even for her. Katherine goes into her massage room and peels off her dress, hangs it in the closet, and gets into her old tank top and the cotton drawstring pants she bought at a street fair at Venice Beach. She absolutely refuses to go the trendy-yoga-outfits route. Even if she secretly craves some of the practicality of those pricey outfits.

At the reception desk, she bumps into Lee.

“It looks like a big crowd in there, Miss Lee. You up for it?”

“I can't wait.”

Katherine slips on a headband, not that she really needs one with her current hairdo. Six months ago, a client of hers gave her a gift certificate for an obscenely expensive haircut in Hollywood that came out looking as if she'd hacked her hair off herself. So now that's what she does. Scissors, mirror, and voilà. Maybe a little punky, but it suits her, and it is kind of surprising with the retro clothes and the twirly skirts. Lee has dark circles, not the way she usually looks. Exhausted? Or has she been crying? As causally as she can, Katherine asks, “Everything okay?”

Lee smiles. “A little distracted. Something at the kids' school last week. The Alan stuff catching up with me.” She looks away from Katherine and says with enough sincerity to break Katherine's heart, “You think I'm a good mother, don't you, Kat?”

“What's this about? Why would you even ask me that? As for Alan, he's going through some early-onset midlife thing that will pass.”

“I'm just trying to keep my options open, that's all.”

This seems to refer to something specific, but Katherine has no idea what. She'd like to ask, but it's 9:30, and Lee never starts class late.

I
f Katherine were a painter, she'd do a series of portraits of people on their mats before class begins. It's incredible how much you can tell about someone's personality just from those first couple of minutes. If Bosch were around, she's pretty certain this is what he'd be painting—a little microcosm of the world, with so many types crowded into one little space.

There are five people lying flat on their backs, two of them using blocks as a pillow, and one with her hands folded on her stomach, actually (though lightly) snoring. Tina of the endless retail drama is sitting up in a tense lotus, twisting her head from side to side to see who else is in class and how much space she's going to have to do her splits. There's a couple she sees every once in a while, their mats close together, lying on their sides, heads propped up in hands, very quietly talking. They met here, he's married, and if they're not having an affair they will be long before they can do headstands. It's easy to see from the way they're looking at each other that if Lee started the class half an hour late or just scrapped it altogether, they'd barely notice.

Boner is at the front of the room,
facing the class
, loosening up his lower back by thrusting his hips (etc.) forward. A woman in a purple leotard who comes at least five times a week is “politely” asking someone if he'd mind moving his mat over “just a hair,” all with a smile that's so hard and tense it could cut glass. And two guys Katherine has never seen before are executing a series of warm-up sun salutations in a “watch us, aren't we amazing” fashion. One short and muscular, the other lean, so they look like a Mutt and Jeff team. Where'd they come from?

Lee gets things going by asking, as she always does, if anyone has any injuries she should know about. Purple Leotard's hand goes up, and before Lee can even acknowledge her, she's off and running.

“I'm not sure if you'd call it an injury, but I've been noticing this little crick in my neck when I wake up? It's kind of annoying? I'm not sure if it's related, but my boyfriend just moved in and we're still using my double bed. His furniture is in storage back in New York? We'd been planning for him to move out here for years, and then finally, last month, he did it! Yay! It's been so great having him here. At first I didn't think I'd like sharing my place. . . .”

“Congratulations,” Lee says, interrupting, but sweetly. “Go easy on the twists, and look down at your mat when I'm telling everyone else to look up. We'll start there. Anything else?”

“I went to Chloe's class last Monday,” someone says—nasal voice, but Katherine can't see the speaker. “And someone I've never seen before was teaching.”

Katherine thinks of this portion of the class as optical-asana since she spends so much time rolling her eyes.

“That was Melissa,” Lee says. “She stepped in at the last minute when Chloe had an emergency root canal. Did you like her class?”

“She only did three sun A's at the start of class, and Chloe always does five, so I was kind of disoriented. I mean, not just in class, but all day. It really freaked me out.”

“I noticed that,” Tina says. “It was weird.”

“Whatever,” the nasal voice says. “I think the studio should have a policy of more uniform classes so we know
exactly
what we're getting.”

Katherine wonders why Lee bothers to start the class this way. Half the time, people just want to discuss their private lives or make irrelevant observations or veiled complaints. Most people with real injuries talk to her privately before the class begins. It's probably part of Lee's desire to create a community, and it's true, it does tend to make people feel they have input into what goes on in class, makes them feel as if they're part of the process, even if, cases in point, it's an annoying part.

“Melissa is a wonderful teacher,” Lee says. “I prefer to let her, and all the teachers here, decide how they want to teach their classes. I think it's best to forget expectations and try to get as much as you can from what's being offered. Otherwise, you risk ending up missing out on something potentially great. Are we ready to begin?”

Fifteen minutes into class, Katherine has one of those experiences she thinks of as her Katherine-has-left-the-building moments. Although really, it's much more than a feeling of escape. She's floating somewhere above the hardwood floor, feeling a curious combination of physical challenge and complete release. It's Lee's magic. She started off the class with an intense series of sun salutations. You never know how long Lee is going to have the class hold a posture, so you just have to let go of expectations and past classes and give yourself over to her expertise. Katherine didn't count the sequences, but by the second one, she felt as if she was dancing and her breath was the music. Not
her
breath, but the collective breath of the class. Lee can have thirty people breathing in unison within minutes. It's a strangely powerful, sensual experience. She has a way of making you concentrate on the smallest movements and adjustments of your own body, while still feeling connected to the whole group.

The sun salutations slid into a series of balancing-stick warrior postures that made Katherine feel strong and perfectly grounded, and a few minutes later, they were doing half moons. It was during these, when Lee's deep, musical voice and clear metaphors had everyone curving deeper and deeper, that Katherine noticed the woman practicing next to her and was shocked she hadn't noticed earlier. There was no mistaking the fact that it was Imani Lang,
the
Imani Lang. There couldn't possibly be two women in the world that looked that uniquely gorgeous.