V Is for Vengeance

would have to find a pretext for bringing a doctor in to check him out. His father had no tolerance for sickness or infirmity. He’d never admit he might be subject to weakness of any kind.
    Dante carried his drink into the kitchen, where Sophie was cleaning up the dinner dishes, loading plates into the machine.
    “You seen Lola?”
    “An hour ago. She was in workout clothes, heading for the gym.”
    “Great.”
    Dante went down to the basement level. One of the appeals of the house had been the elaborate underground rooms. Not many California homes had basements. Digging twenty-five feet down was a nightmare of rocks large and small, sandstone boulders sunk in heavy clay soil that cost a fortune to remove. This house had been built in 1927 by a guy who made his money in the stock market and held on to it through the Crash. The house was solid and gave Dante a sense of safety and permanence.
    He came up the stairs into the pool house. He knew Lola was on the treadmill because the sound on the TV had been jacked up to account for the grinding noise of the moving platform and the thumping of athletic shoes. He paused in the corridor, watching her through the half-open door. It had been a mistake confiding in Talia. He might have gone his whole life without opening himself up to her candor and her acid tongue. He’d done it because he knew she’d play straight and shoot from the hip. He thought he’d blocked Talia’s comments, but she’d changed his perception in twenty-five words or less. He could already feel the difference, how Lola had looked this morning, sprawled across the bed in sleep, and how she looked now. She wore makeup when she worked out even knowing she was alone. She still had the same dark eyes, lined with charcoal and looking enormous in her narrow face. She still had the mane of dark hair. It was straggly at the moment because she was sweating heavily, but he didn’t mind that. What he saw, thanks to Talia’s remarks, was how tiny she’d become. Her shoulders were narrow, her head incongruously balanced on a neck as thin as a pipe. She looked like one of those elongated creatures who steps out of a spacecraft, moving languidly through mist and smoke, oddly familiar and at the same time not of this world.
    When she caught sight of him, she muted the sound but continued to run. She was wearing sweatpants and an oversize long-sleeve T-shirt with the cuffs turned back to expose wrists that were all bone, fingers strung together with tendons that lay along the tops of her hands like piano wire.
    He said, “Hey. Come on. Pack it in for tonight. You look pooped.”
    She checked the readout on the machine. “Five more minutes and then I’ll quit.”
    She popped the mute button again and the sound blared as she ran on. While he waited he puttered around the place. The room was twenty feet by twenty, lined with mirrors and fitted out with weight-lifting equipment, two treadmills, a recumbent bike, and an upright stationary bike. How many hours a day did she spend in here?
    When her time was up, the machine put her through a five-minute cooldown and then she finally shut it off. He handed her a towel, which she pressed against her face. When she blotted the sweat that trickled down her neck a peachy beige foundation came off on the towel. He put an arm across her shoulders and walked her to the door, shutting off light switches as they passed.
    Lola put an arm around his waist. “So what’d Talia say?”
    “About what?”
    “Come on, Dante. You know what.”
    “She wasn’t thrilled.”
    “Of course not. She thinks I’m neurotic, temperamental, and self-centered. I’m sure she thinks I’d suck as a wife and suck even worse as a mom.”
    “She didn’t say that.”
    “Would you stop trying to protect me? I’m a big girl so spell it out. I want to know what she said.”
    Dante sorted through Talia’s objections and picked one. “She wondered about the weight gain. She thought a pregnancy would be hard on you.”
    “And?”
    “She might have a point. I worry about you.”
    “I know you do and you’re a sweet guy. You can tell her the baby’s a nonissue. I haven’t had a period for a year. She’ll be tickled to death.”
    “Let’s not talk about that now. We have time once you get healthy again.”
    “Ha.”
    “You know there’s help out there if you’re interested.”
    She leaned her head against his shoulder, matching her step to his. “That’s what I love about you.