Four Friends. Robyn Carr

today. You know how she feels about all your woo-woo stuff. If you pull any of your feng shui, chakra or karma bullshit today, you’re going to end up on top of that pile.”

      “But something could have been done about that!”

      “For God’s sake,” Gerri said impatiently, walking again. “It was destiny.”

      Ahead of them, about half a block away, a small, lean woman came out of her house, also wearing sweats. She stopped to stretch on her front walk. She was still stretching as they passed and Gerri called, “Morning, BJ.” But Sonja added, “Wanna walk with us today, BJ?”

      “Thanks, but I need the run,” she answered, waving them off.

      When they had cleared the house Sonja said, “She’s making an awful lot of bad karma, the way she acts.”

      “She wants to run,” Gerri said. “Quit asking her. I’d run if my knees wouldn’t collapse.”

      “But it’s unfriendly,” Sonja said.

      “Some women don’t want girlfriends,” Gerri pointed out. “I think she’s been clear, and not unfriendly. Just private.”

      “Don’t you think that’s pretty suspicious?”

      “No, I think it’s private. Are you going to talk the whole time? Because if you are, I might risk permanent paralysis and just run with BJ.”

      “Little grouchy this morning? I bet you had liquor instead of chamomile before bed last night.”

      “Shut up, Sonja,” Gerri said.

      The 6:00 a.m. power walking had been going on for almost two years; Sonja had initiated it. She was the health guru, the motivator, often the pain in Gerri’s butt. It was Sonja’s profession. She was a feng shui consultant and home organizer who did personal color charts and something she referred to as life reading, which was like a mini study of your past, present and goals with the objective of total balance and personal success. Additionally she was a vegetarian, novice herbalist, part-time yoga and meditation instructor and impossible perfectionist. Gerri had an entire shelf dedicated to books given to her by Sonja on everything from studying your body’s pH to gliding through menopause on herbs—books stubbornly left unread.

      Gerri and Andy had been neighbors and good friends for fifteen years, since before Andy threw out her first husband. They were both now in their late forties while Sonja had just scored the big four-oh. When Sonja arrived in the neighborhood a few years ago, Gerri and Andy welcomed her and immediately grew bored with her naturalist and metaphysical leanings. However—and it was a big however—when someone was sick or hurt or in trouble, it was always Sonja who came forth with anything from a massage to a casserole to transportation to, well, whatever was needed. When Gerri had been brought to her knees by a killer hemorrhoidectomy Sonja was there, drawing the sitz bath, making broth, administering pain meds and, of course, she was armed with the perfect, natural, gentle laxative. Gerri had learned you just don’t give the right laxative enough credit until you find yourself in that position.

      Still, she could be tiresome as hell.

      After three miles in just under forty-five minutes, Gerri sweating like a boxer and Sonja glistening attractively, they separated. Gerri entered her house noisily. “Everyone up?” she yelled into the house as she wandered into the kitchen.

      Phil was sitting at the table with coffee, newspaper strewn around and his laptop open, going through email and checking the news. “They’re up,” he said. “More or less.”

      The Gilbert kids were thirteen, sixteen and nineteen. Boy, girl, boy. “You’re supposed to make sure they’re up, Phil.”

      “I did,” he said without looking up. “I do every morning.”

      She trudged up the stairs and started throwing open doors. “Get up! Don’t make me late!” Then she backtracked to her shower and wondered why the hell Phil couldn’t accomplish one simple task—get the kids out of bed while she was out walking. Despite the fact she was planning to go in late today, it annoyed her. But lately everything annoyed her because she was doing the menopause drill and she was often testy.

      She let the water run over her naked body, cool water to lower her body temperature. At the moment all she wanted in life was to feel level. Even. She’d always had a short fuse but lately she was positively electric and could burst into flame anywhere, anytime. She’d been trying on bathing suits one day and when she made her purchase, she’d flared up so bright she thought the clerk would call security to frisk her for stolen goods. Talking to the mayor at a fund-raiser one night, great balls of perspiration had begun to run down her face. She’d started sleeping naked because of the night sweats and when Phil rolled over, found flesh instead of flannel and began to grope her, she’d mutter, “Don’t even think about it.”

      When she was out of the shower, dry and cool, she had one of those reprieves that came regularly—she felt perfectly normal, sane and in control. Then came the inevitable guilt—she should be fined for ever snapping at Phil. She didn’t know of a husband who pulled his weight as well as Phil. She knew of no family in Mill Valley in better balance, and that was as much because of Phil as Gerri. While Andy was throwing her husband’s clothes on the lawn, Phil was doing his morning chore, trying to get the kids up. It wasn’t his fault they pulled the covers over their heads, as teenagers did.

      By the time she was putting the finishing touches on her face and hair, she was wilting again, her makeup melting off her face as fast as she put it on. She flipped on the little fan that was now an accessory in her bathroom.

      When she got back to the kitchen, Phil had gone to work. Jed, her nineteen year old was racing for his car to get to class on time while Jessie and Matthew were arguing over whose turn it was to take out the trash. “Just get in the car,” she said. “I’ll take care of it myself.” After dropping them off at their schools, she called her office. Gerri was the supervisor of case workers with Child Protective Services. She said she had a family situation to resolve and would be a little late. Then she drove back to the neighborhood, but parked in Andy’s drive.

      Andy didn’t answer the doorbell, so Gerri knocked and then rattled the knob. “Come on, Andy,” she yelled. A few long moments passed before she saw a shadow cross over the peep hole and the door opened slowly. Andy’s curling, shoulder-length black hair was clipped up off her neck, a few tendrils escaping, and her face was a combination of ashen and blotchy from crying. Gerri glanced over her shoulder at the pile on the lawn and said, “Have a little tiff?”

      Andy turned and walked back into the house, past the living room into a kitchen that was torn apart, under construction. That would be the relationship quadrant of the house. Andy sat in the breakfast nook where there was a cup of coffee. She rested an elbow on the table, her head in her hand and groaned. “Go ahead. Say it. Say I told you so.”

      “I’m not feeling that mean at the moment,” Gerri said. She went into the disastrous kitchen, grabbed a coffee mug from the sink and quickly washed it. The cupboards had all been emptied of their contents and would soon be ripped off the walls, replaced with new. Gerri poured herself some coffee, then joined Andy at the table. “Must’ve been a good one.”

      “Same crap,” Andy said. “Out all night, comes home smelling like a whore, lots of excuses about some account executive sitting too close to him at a marathon meeting and smelling him up. No phone call. And apparently they serve booze at those meetings...”

      “Hmm,” Gerri replied, sipping her coffee.

      “There’s a new twist this time. I spent most of the night hacking into his email account and read all the romantic little notes he’s been sharing with some woman known only as Sugarpants.”

      “Sugarpants?” Gerri repeated, forcing herself not to laugh out loud. “Jesus, that’s subtle.”

      “Erotic emails. Dates being set up. Steamy postmortems on the dates. Do you think if he’d hit me over the head with a naked woman I would have come to my senses sooner?”

      “Well,