3.

Through the big front window of Erin‘s studio, she watches a group of fifteen or so women, a few younger, most of them about her age, sprawl out on their mats, following Erin’s lead in a variety of positions. Presently, they are in downward facing dog. She had forgotten that on Sunday, Erin’s classes started a half hour later.

Claire watches Erin in the front of the room, facing the window, her body tensed and flush. Judging by the general rose color of all the women in the room, Claire thinks this must be one of her power yoga classes where she turns the heat in the room up over one hundred degrees.

Erin looks up, and sees Claire standing outside. She smiles, quickly, her face strained. Claire puts her left hand up in a wave. She is not sure if Erin sees as she puts her head down and stands, balancing on one leg. The women in the room follow her move, though none is as graceful as she. Claire watches these women, bobbing up and down, some wobbling in their poses, but Erin up front remains stoic and poised. She has been doing this for years, since she gave up teaching ballet years before and converted the space into a studio for yoga and tai chi and kickboxing (on Wednesdays). It was a move necessitated by the lack of interest in ballet, mostly. Had she not changed, she might have lost the studio.

There is no doubt she would rather still be dancing. But economic concerns aside, her toes couldn’t handle the stress of ballet anymore. Neither could her legs, of course. It always amazes Claire she was a ballerina to begin with. She’s built more like a hockey player, with a broad, thick chest and solid, large legs. The form of her belies nothing of her practiced, learned elegance. Instead, at just a glance, Erin has always looked formidable and stout, impregnably strong.

But then she moves. Claire still loves to watch her move: the measured slide of her legs across open space, the insouciant saunter of her hips, the sheer stillness of her back. Watching her feet, it would be easy to mistake her for a woman in her twenties. There is a sharp confidence in her steps.

After a minute or two, she begins to grow antsy with immobility. She is going to walk down the street to a coffee shop, but through the window, the women begin to lose their synchronicity. Erin stretches backwards like a quarter moon. The women start to pick up their mats and some sip from bottles of water. The lesson is over. A few women leave immediately, but some linger and talk with Erin, laughing lightly.

Claire waits for the last of them to leave. She walks into the empty studio, which is still sweltering. She takes her jacket off and folds it in her arms. Erin is standing in front of the wall length mirror, bent over in a pair of grey spandex, a long moist line of sweat running up the indent of her back. She is wiping her face with a towel when she turns around and smiles at Claire. Her broad face, which is creased sharply on her cheeks as if it had been steamed by an iron, is still red with exertion. Her hair, which she has finally allowed to grow long, is the same grey as her spandex around its roots, but still black as asphalt for most of its length. She has it pulled back in a pony tail.

“Hey you,” Erin says. “I didn’t know you were coming by today.”

Claire smiles. “I figured it would be a surprise.”

“You should have come by for class.”

“My body isn’t sore today. I don’t feel terribly old. I wanted to keep it that way.”

Erin laughs as she kneels down to fold up her mat. “How long are you planning on staying?”

“I don’t know. My day is pretty much open. I thought maybe we could go for a walk around the college or down in the woods.”

“Sure. I’ve got to shower first though.”

“Ok.”

“You want to join?” Erin says looking up and grinning like a kid. Loose strands of grey hair have curled with humidity across her small ears in a way Claire has always associated with her daughter, and finds remarkably endearing. Sweat is dribbling down both edges of Erin’s jaw line.

“Probably not,” Claire says. “Maybe though.” One mishap in the shower, and she has had more than a few with Erin (including a nasty bruise on the crown of her head that is still swollen with pooled blood), was enough for the day.

Erin smiles. “Well ok. You can keep me company then.” She picks up her mat and throws the towel over her shoulder. Claire follows her into the back of the studio, behind the large mirror. They step outside into the resounding, windy cold.

“Fuck it’s cold,” Erin says. “You really want to take a walk in this?”

“We’ll see. I don’t mind it so much.”

“You grew up in Wisconsin. I did not. This is nothing to you.”

Claire smiles. She has not been to Wisconsin in years. Her body long ago adjusted to east coast weather. Cold is cold. She just feels like venturing out.

Erin stops before the steps that lead up the brick building to her apartment, a vent from the pizza shop next door roaring with misty warm air. She puts her hand, which is still warm and sticky with sweat, on Claire’s neck and gives her a brief, blithe kiss. Then, she turns and walks gingerly up the stairs. Claire follows closely behind, watching the muscular motions of Erin’s butt, which is practically naked beneath the spandex. So little is left for Claire to wonder about, and she is not so sure she wouldn’t like to jump beneath a warm shower with Erin. The whole mess with David could be pushed further into the past. Love does not have to be as old as she, at least not on every day.

In the apartment, all the lights are on, giving the space - which is a neat, open room with wall to wall new hardwood - the feeling of a winter cabin somewhere in New England. The air smells ever so faintly of pizza crust and pepperoni, a permanent charm that Claire only notices when she has not been over in a week or so.

“Mm,” she says. “Now I feel like getting pizza.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Dinner?”

“I don’t know if I’m going to stay that long.”

Erin stops at the bathroom’s threshold, having already thrown off her shirt so that her small, damp chest is visible beneath a grey sports bra. Her bare stomach is lined with muscle and even in November, it is holding onto the last color of summer. She faces Claire, and she smiles mischievously, so that her face is slightly lopsided and only her left cheek is dimpled.

“Claire-y,” she says while bending forward and peeling her sweaty spandex off of her legs. She is wearing nothing beneath them. “You’re staying for dinner.” She throws the spandex in Claire’s direction, and they both laugh. Then Erin turns into the bathroom, and Claire watches her go. She has the naked legs of a thirty year old, still rippling with muscle, her skin not yet dimpled with age. Her veins are only beginning to explode with purple.

The ceramic pang of water bouncing off the shower floor comes to life, out of Claire’s sight. She stands, somewhat befuddled, waiting and unsure of what it is she wants to do. Part of her is drawing itself out of her clothes already, bounding into warmth in the shower. But part of her instinctively begins to think of David, still at home, perhaps reading a book in the radiance of their living room. They could call Christina, and drive to her place for dinner. They could spend the night on a fold out couch in Manalapan, New Jersey.

In the other room, there is the creak of a shower curtain being drawn and closed, and of water’s flow softening against a body.

“Hey,” Erin yells out over the water. “You can at least keep me company if you aren’t going to join me.”

“Ok,” Claire yells back. She slowly moves towards the bathroom. She kicks off her shoes, and shimmies out of her sweater in anticipation of the humid steam that will be building. Erin, in one small similarity with David, adores long showers. She puts the cover of the toilet down and sits. She waits, but Erin is not saying anything. They do this from time to time; sit with each other in the bathroom but don’t talk. It is a strange habit they adapted back in the beginning of things, when they wanted to spend each second they could together. It stopped being necessary long ago, but they both still did it when possible.

Claire thinks of the beginning of things in the silence. She often remembers their first summer. For nearly two years, they had shared the occasional dance lesson. Then two summers after meeting, while walking back from dinner at a neighbors, both of them drunk and light in the warmth, Erin had kissed Claire around the bend from their houses in the shadows far away from any street lights.

After that, Claire began coming over as often as she could. She would walk across the street in the hazy, thick air of the evenings, smelling rhododendrons and roses and the moistness of cut grass. At first, nights would start as dance lessons, but inevitably they would devolve to a sweaty, frantic undressing. It all felt so new (which, of course, it was), and young. They were both reborn as adolescents, especially Claire, playing and discovering again. Her own desires could finally be enacted, put into practice in the form of another body mirroring her own. When she wanted something, she could just show Erin. The ease of it all was perhaps the best
part.

Over the summer, her visits grew more frequent and extended to all hours. Her excuses grew: she would stop by to borrow dishes, or intentionally forget buying butter. When Rose moved out, Claire would stay late into the night. She told David it was to provide support, and of course, in some ways it was.

Now, things are less desperate or fierce. Sometimes she goes over for yoga, or they go into Philly for a concert, and maybe dessert. Oftentimes, it is something as brief as coffee after dinner, or to borrow a book. Occasionally they end up in bed, half dressed, or kissing in the car if they are drunk. But mostly it is this - talking, or rubbing backs, or reading magazines while making lunch. Small domestic intimacies. Claire is nearly sixty. Her body is less readily opened.

Erin is not vocal in the shower. She does not hum, or lecture imaginary masses. The water cascades onto her, and the only other sounds are the sloshing of her feet, the rustle of her elbow as it brushes the curtain, the slap of her hair against her back. Claire is on the toilet seat, feeling the steam build around her and warm the room. Still, cold air creeps in from under the door. She watches Erin’s oblique silhouette through the curtain, lackadaisical but thorough.

“You’re awful quiet out there, old lady,” Erin bellows out.

“I’m watching your shadow,” she responds. “It’s quite mesmerizing.”

Erin pokes her head out the back of the shower, her hair drooping with wetness. “You pervert.”

Claire laughs. Erin smiles, then darts back behind the curtain. Claire can see make her make one more exploratory pass over her body with a wash cloth. Then, she cuts the water, and the room is suddenly completely silent but for the sound of water droplets falling from Erin’s body. It is similar, Claire thinks, to how rain falls on your head when the wind perturbs a tree long after it has stopped raining.

Erin steps out completely naked and wet. She never has a bathroom rug, and she never towels off before getting out, so she sends a torrent of water spilling out over the tiled floor. She stands, a staunch woman heavy with wetness, eyeing up Claire on the toilet.

“You’re getting water everywhere, as usual,” Claire says.

“It evaporates, you know.”

Claire smiles and takes a towel from the rack, handing it to Erin. “Someday, when you’re my age, you’re going to slip because you’re careless and don’t use a towel or rug or anything. And it will be completely your fault.”

Erin finishes shaking her hair dry. She scrubs her body down and then steps past Claire and out into her bedroom, letting the colder outside air pour into the bathroom in one sweep. Claire stays in the bathroom, and leans forward, peering across the hall. When Erin bends over, parts of her back are visible. She is pulling up more spandex.

Shortly, Erin appears in the doorway, looking down on Claire. She is wearing a tight fitting pull over and sneakers.

“Do you still want to take a walk? Even though it is fiendishly cold outside?”

“If you want,” Claire says. “It was a nice morning.”

“It’s supposed to snow later.”

“That’s what David said.”

“Well? What do you think?” Erin asks.

“Sure. Let’s go for a walk. It’ll be nice to not just sit around.”

Erin smiles, though she looks suspicious. She pulls her light jacket up around her neck, crossing her arms. She looks out the window, into town. “Ok,” she says. “But you’re responsible for warming me up when we get back.”