We started going at the same time, angling to get a spot not too close to the front of the mirror, but not too far in the back either. One day Jan and I both showed up wearing identical black and white-patterned leggings.
“We could be twins,” she said. Not quite. I was older and thirty pounds heavier, which is why I had signed up with my high blood pressure. She’s this little thing, a ponytail pulled so tight, I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head. She’s the chatty type, small and chatty. Next class, she told me a story about her aunt who’d raised two sets of twins. Every week she had another update , the story about a neighbor who sold an ice-cream truck route for $100,000, or someone with two tiny uteruses who was going to be interviewed by People magazine.
“Is that the aunt who had two sets of twins?”
Months later she whispered right before a Wednesday class, “I’m leaving him.”
“Leaving who?”
“That bastard.”
I’m on the elliptical and feeling like a Clydesdale horse. Clop. Clop. Clop. The doctor said I have a heart murmur. No more zumba. I never saw her again.