“Nothing. Everything.”
She widened her eyes and laughed.
So did I, but I wondered when I would laugh again.
7
Portia left before I finished my breakfast. She told me she was going for a morning swim and then, after a massage and a session with Claudine Laffette, who had promised to give her a new hairstyle that was the rage in Paris, she would have lunch and rest before dinner. She said she didn’t expect to see me again until then.
“You’ll be much too busy.”
“I can see that,” I said, indicating my schedule. “How long are you going to be here?” I asked before she walked out.
“I’m leaving tomorrow. You’ll have the whole place to yourself for a while, I think, although we never know. Good luck,” she said.
I looked at the clock on the wall. I had ten minutes. I finished most of the fruit in the small bowl, drank some more coffee, and then picked up my schedule card and rose just as Randy returned.
“All alone? They deserted you on your first day. How sad,” he said.
“I’ve been alone a lot longer than this,” I told him.
“Poor pretty thing,” he said, and began to clear the table. “Well, I hope that will end soon and forever and ever,” he muttered like a silent prayer. I watched him carefully pick up cups and plates in small, dainty moves, as though he was trying not to make a sound. He smiled at me and shrugged his left shoulder. “I’ll see you at lunch. Don’t worry. I’ll help you in any way I can during the training.” He winked and returned to the kitchen.
Exercise was the first thing on my schedule, so I headed for the gym, where I found Lance Martin doing stretches. He saw me enter but didn’t stop. I stood waiting and watching for almost five full minutes.
“Sorry,” he said, rising off the mat, “but it’s very important to begin with stretching and not break your concentration. I’m Lance Martin.” He held out his hand.
“Roxy Wilcox.”
It wasn’t much of a handshake, more like just touching as if he was afraid he’d pick up some evil bacteria.
“Have you done much physical training?”
“None,” I said. “Unless you count brushing my teeth every morning and evening.”
He nodded without breaking into a smile. I imagined a sense of humor wasn’t part of the program.
“You don’t look much older than sixteen. Mrs. Brittany’s going to market you as the ingenue, I imagine.”
“Me? Sweet, innocent, and virginal? I doubt it.”
That brought a smile. He had a very strong mouth and deep-set hazel eyes. He was dressed now in a pair of swimming trunks and a tight-fitting T-shirt, and I could clearly see the perfect symmetry of his muscles. I couldn’t see an inch of fat on him. He looked unreal, more like a mannequin created to depict the ideal manly physique. I thought he had a waist only an inch or so wider than mine. Tanned, with neatly styled short dark brown hair, he was one of the healthiest-looking men I had ever seen, but there was something almost asexual about him at the same time. I didn’t feel any erotic excitement or attraction. It was as if everything about him, even his facial expressions, had been sanitized. He was the sort of man who worried about his own well-being and health so much he probably avoided sex with anyone except another health and fitness mannequin. Mrs. Pratt needn’t have been worried about my seducing him or him seducing me, I thought.
“Ingenue,” he repeated, looking me over. “It’s a matter of marketing, not reality. You have your sports bra and panties on?”
“Yes, why?”
“Please strip down to them,” he said, then reached for the tape measure he had lying beside a clipboard on the mat. He looked up at me, surprised, when I didn’t take off the sweatsuit instantly. “Don’t tell me you’re bashful,” he said. “If so, you’d be my first.”
“Hardly,” I said, and took off the sweatsuit. He stared at me a moment, walked around me, and then began taking measurements of my thighs, calves, waist, arms, back, and shoulders. He looked at my breasts for a moment. “Are you firm under there?”
“What?”
“You’re not one of those girls who go braless most of the time, are you?”
“Not most of the time, why?”
“Old gravity has a say in what shape you’ll take. You can be defiant and free like some feminist if you want, but stretching won’t be attractive.”