Treading Lightly. Elise Lanier

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      “Nope.”

      Great! “So what am I supposed to do?”

      “About what?”

      “My walking. I’m supposed to walk every day for at least a half hour.”

      “Sorry, Ms. Ruvacado, but you won’t be doing that on this machine anytime soon.”

      “So what am I supposed to do?” she demanded shrilly. At the look of fright on the poor man’s face, she realized she needed to tone it down a bit. “I’m sorry, Ben. I shouldn’t shoot the messenger. But, really, what am I supposed to do now? I have to walk daily, or my doctor will pester me. He’s already threatened to tell my mother and ex-husband to get them involved in making me walk if I didn’t do it voluntarily. Plus I’m afraid that if I stop doing it, even for a few days, I’ll never start doing it again.”

      “Can he do that?” Ben asked with astonishment.

      “Can who do what?” She was way beyond her frustration level.

      “Can your doctor call your mother or your ex-husband like that?”

      “Not ethically. But they’re both listed as my emergency contacts, so he figured he’d extort me.”

      “I thought a doctor had to take a Hippocratic oath?”

      “He must’ve stepped out to the bathroom or something during that part of the ceremony. He has no qualms about blackmailing his patients if he feels it’s in their best interests.”

      “That’s not right!”

      “Yeah, tell me about it. But he holds the strings, so I’ve got to dance his little dance like a marionette.”

      “Or walk his little walk.”

      “Yes. You’re catching on to my dilemma.”

      “How about a gym?”

      “Are you kidding? Do that in public?” Her hand waved at the broken treadmill.

      “Sure. Lots of people work out in gyms.”

      She looked sideways at him, her disgust clearly evident on her face. “I’m not ‘lots of people.’”

      CHAPTER 6

      How were people supposed to see that? It was hard enough to hear the damn thing, but to see it, you had to crane your neck at an absurd angle. That’s not mentioning the fact that there were two different channels competing for your attention on each side. A talk show on one, and the morning news on the other.

      She could’ve possibly watched one, but couldn’t decide if she should wring her neck to the right and give her full attention and allegiance to the news, or contort her neck to the left to catch the casual, witty repartee of the talk show. Either way, she’d end up deformed for the rest of the day—if not longer—with a stiff neck. Plus, both shows were at equal sound levels, thereby drowning each other out, making either one impossible to hear easily. So instead, she looked straight ahead while miserably listening to the man beside her gasp, huff and grunt.

      She wasn’t used to all the added stimuli. It was hard enough for her to do this without having any other action going on around her, taking her attention from the task at hand. Breathing and walking was a complicated enough combination for her to handle. Add the two blaring, competing television sets hovering to her upper right and left sides, the mind-numbing Muzak being piped over the loudspeakers placed strategically around the large room, assorted nubile and robust young forms running around half-naked, and the huffing, panting man beside her who could not be ignored no matter how much she’d tried, and she was on system overload.

      Any minute now she was going to blow. Or trip. Both were possible; neither favorable.

      She looked over at the man, hoping and praying he wouldn’t keel over based on the sounds he was making. Besides having a man die on the treadmill next to her, the fuss and upheaval that would ensue would be quite annoying. Plus, on top of all this noise, the loud, blaring ambulance siren sure to follow Mr. Locomotion’s collapse would definitely put her over the edge.

      She looked at him again, cyclically thinking that his utterances were horrendous and wondering how he could go out in public and make such guttural, almost animalistic sounds. They were disgusting! By animalistic, she was thinking swine, possibly boar. The snorting, gasping, huffing and panting were quite annoying and disturbing.

      She was obviously oblivious to her own auditory articulations.

      “You okay?” the man asked.

      She looked around to see whom he was talking to. Considering no one else was at the bay of treadmills, she assumed he was talking to her. Me? He’s asking if I’m okay? He’s the one who sounds like an angry bull making an obscene phone call. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said haughtily, not wanting to add yet another action—talking—to the breathing and walking she was already juggling.

      “You seem angry,” he said succinctly, between gasps.

      She knew she walked like a horse, but angry? Why would he think that? And so what if she was? It wasn’t any of his business. And who the hell was he to intrude on her almost spiritual level of clarity and concentration by drawing attention to her clomplike walking style? What did he expect her to do? Tiptoe? Sashay? Undulate provocatively? Do a frigging cat-walk?

      He was the one making strange noises she found totally repellent while he was sweating like the fat, bearded lady at the circus, but you didn’t see her telling him about it or drawing his attention to it, did you? No! That’s because she wasn’t like that. She reserved sharing her real thoughts with the people who knew her best. Like her beloved son, or her abhorrent ex-husband, or even her pain-in-the-butt mother. Not some strange, panting man she’d never seen before.

      “I’m fine. Thanks,” she said pointedly, hoping to end this exchange. There, conversation closed.

      More breathing, more huffing. “You don’t seem fine.”

      Who did he think he was? Her mother? Her keeper? Her shrink? Okay, she’d been patient with the man long enough, but now he was starting to tick her off. She waited until her own breath was strong enough to talk before making her response. “Well, I am,” she procalimed, knowing full well she was not fine, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to share it with him—a complete stranger.

      But then she heard the words Martin had spit at her during their phone conversation last night. Well, conversation was a pleasant word for what it really was. It was more like a screaming match, but that was neither here nor there. “You have serious trust issues, Janine. I don’t know how I can help you with that. Lord knows I couldn’t help you while we were married, but maybe now that we’re divorced I can prove it to you through actions that people—mankind—can be trusted and believed in. I do think you believe and trust me, but you won’t admit it! In what situations will you trust me with our son? Who knows, Janine. But he is my son too. And I deserve the right to do with him what I’d like to do. Your attempt to stop us from being together is wrong, and will only turn your son away from you. You’ve got problems, Janine. What do I feel is the best way for me to help you? Hell, I don’t know, I’m no expert. But what else can Craig do except eventually walk away from you? Over time, you’ll see СКАЧАТЬ