a day late for valentines
I happened to go by the Tyee Fitness Center last week, what used to be Camano Curves before that and before that was the Pampered Pekinese Dog Grooming Salon. Even the mutts apparently need toning up down here on the yuppified South End. Just not enough mutts to keep a canine hair styling salon open, apparently.
My old ex Janice was working up a lather on the stairmaster and ordinarily I might’ve hustled past the big plate glass windows, but the sight of her in gym shorts striding away to some dialed up half jog held me a tad too long to avoid her catching me looking in from outside. Trust me, it’s not what you’re probably thinking. No, too many late night arguments for that. Too many scars. We didn’t part mortal enemies, but sleeping dogs don’t snarl at each other, I’ve learned.
Janice has worked her way OUT of the South End dating game, she confides over her bottled water and a towel wrapped around her shoulders. All I asked was how ya doin?, and she cuts right to it. I guess that’s what the rules are in marriage and so maybe they apply after. Too many gnarly single men locked into their idiosyncracies and unwilling to budge one iota, even for romance, she informs me with a roundabout swirl of the plastic water bottle that I nearly have to duck to avoid. There’s not a romantic bone in any of these boys. She’s done looking for love down here.
She’s dating on the internet, she tells me when I ask what are the options. Janice is trying to be, what she calls, a Personal Trainer. When she told me this a year ago, I just thought we never really knew each other, did we? What next, I asked, and regretted it, if not immediately, shortly after, a Life Counselor?? Maybe I’ll become a minister. Actually, that might’ve been our last conversation now that I think of it.
Anyway, she’s in a dating service, she tells me, Romeo and Juliet, costs something a month, but she’s meeting more interesting fellas than ‘you losers down here.’ I let that go since I deserve it. And it’s sort of true when I think of some of the boys she dated, present company maybe not excluded. ‘Any keepers?’ I ask and for the first time she seems calm, at least not breathing hard. She’s got a nice sheen of sweat worked up. We’re the only ones in the place, but she lowers her voice like she’s telling me a secret. ‘Yeah,’ she says, dreamy almost, ‘I think so.’
I feel a small stab of jealously and it surprises me so I say quick, ‘I hope so, Janice. I really do. You deserve someone nice.’ And she laughs, a laugh I remember from way long ago when things were good between us. ‘Yes,’ she says, “Yes I do.”
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