“I am too.”
Somehow, they’d both said they were sorry without actually apologizing for anything. This was followed by a moment of unbearable silence, gloomy seconds that lumbered like hours.
“Are you comfortable at Keith’s?”
“Yeah, he’s chill, so... it’s all good.”
All good. These words could mean so much, or so little. They could be a callous brush-off, or simply mean that things were, in fact,all good.
Since then, they’d been having cordial and increasingly infrequent exchanges, mostly via text.
Maybe one day the messages would cease, sparing them a histrionic breakup. There was no way to predict. Teddy said he and Keith were “getting all kinds of stuff done,” which most likely meant the consumption of copious amounts of cannabis, endless jam sessions, marathons of gaming, incessant talk about crypto, and of course, hours of sports-watching.
Jane was still struggling to assess how she felt about thenon-breakup breakup. There was part of her that enjoyed being entirely self-sufficient, not worrying about what state she’d find Teddy in when she got home. Another part of her longed for him—but whether for him specifically or just for some form of companionship, she couldn’t tell.
She chased all these thoughts out of her head as best she could. The movement and Allegra’s soothing voice helped distract her, so the class went by fairly quickly and before she knew it, she was in corpse pose. Her spine felt liquid, her muscles were pleasantly rubbery, and her brain nestled against the back of her skull. She felt both heavy and light, like she was sinking into the ground and levitating at the same time.
After class, students would line up to chat with Allegra. Jane felt strangely shy about it, but today she was craving connection—connection to her yoga practice, to her teacher, to herself? She didn’t know. But one thing she knew for sure was that she wasn’t happy with her down dog, so she rolled up her mat and waited her turn.
Allegra, seated on a yoga blanket with legs crossed like a pert Buddha, was talking to Christina, a lean, fine-boned blond, hyper-flexible and strong like a dancer, whom she often asked to demonstrate poses for the group.
“Why do I attract all these guys who are clearly using? My profile says ‘sober living.’ What do they think it means?”
Christina nodded emphatically. “They probably want to drag you off the wagon!”
“Yeah, never going to happen. And why are they all like twenty years older than me? I mean, I know I’m an old soul, but I didn’t put that in my profile.”
Jane hovered nearby, feeling awkward and extraneous.
“I feel you, it really sucks,” Christina assented. “So many ofthese guys, it’s like, why would we possibly be a match? Because we both breathe? I mean, come on, dude, bring something to the table.”
As they laughed, Allegra noticed Jane and gave her a big smile.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to interrupt—”
“No worries. Just the same old bitch-and-moan. Do you have a question?”
Jane took a step closer.
“Well, I feel like my downward dog is off. I’m really straining to get my heels to the mat, and when I try to focus on the root lock, I end up tensing my back instead—”
“Jane, your down dog looks good. Seriously! If you needed an adjustment, I’d give it to you.”
“But I can’t get my heels flat—”
“It’s a little different for everyone. You can’t get hung up on what it looks like, or getting your heels to the ground if they don’t want to get there. Just focus on how it feels.”
Christina chimed in, “She is one hundred percent so right about that!” This only made Jane feel undermined, and more unsatisfied. She persisted.
“It feels like my shoulders get all hunched.”
“Jane, you are so diligent, and I love that about you, but what you need to focus on in your practice is getting out of your head. Don’t worry about nailing the pose. Your imperfections are what make you perfect.” Allegra’s equanimity was maddening. “That is really the most essential part of the practice. Especially for you.”
And with that, she turned back to Christina. “I don’t know, maybe my journey is meant to be a solo journey.”
Feeling depleted rather than energized by yoga class, Jane stopped for coffee. As she got out of her car, she noticed a hulking manback a large Yukon truck into a space reserved for the disabled, then swing his door open and bound out, agile and imperious.
Jane froze. Was she going to confront this jerk, who was the size of a pro wrestler? Yet a permit was hanging from the rearview mirror. As if that meant anything. There had been a scandal at UCLA: the men’s football team were using bogus permits to monopolize the accessible parking spots on campus. It was a travesty with layers of repellence. The people who had the most to be ashamed of had the least amount of shame.
