Page 12 of The Deepest Lake
“I didn’t get the email,” Eva says in a low, throaty voice. “Ever since Simone left me high and dry, I haven’t been able to manage the inbox.”
She gestures to the stone bench. I sit. She doesn’t. “You said you’re a yoga instructor?”
“Among other things,” I say, ready to rattle off my resume: Planned Parenthood internship, various short-term secretarial gigs, tutoring.
Eva glances toward the doorway where a teenage Guatemalan girl has appeared, wearing a traditional long skirt and woven faja sash. A tucked-in T-shirt reads “GUCCI.”
“Gaby. This is . . .”
“Jules,” I offer.
In fluid, accented English, Gaby says, “Hans wants to know if you’re still going to eat the yogurt or if he should put it away.”
“Never mind the yogurt,” Eva says.
I pull my backpack onto my lap sideways, talking over it. “I saw on your website that you have a new workshop session starting in four days, which is awesome—”
“Gaby,” Eva says, just as the teenager is turning to leave, “you’re off the hook.”
Gaby’s mellow smile fades into a confused pucker. “You don’t want the coffees now?”
“No. I don’t need you to teach yoga to the women who are coming. We might have a real teacher.”
“Oh,” I say, realizing what I’ve done, and only by mistake. “You were going to be the new yoga instructor?”
Gaby’s shoulders droop.
“Now, now,” Eva reprimands her, “there’s plenty to do in the kitchen. We’ve got to prep meals for thirty people, and Mercedes hasn’t been feeling well lately.” Eva turns to me, explaining, “Mercedes came to us when no one else would hire her. Epilepsy and a developmental delay of some kind.”
“But you promised,” Gaby says, pouting.
“I’ve actually never taught adults, only kids,” I clarify. “And you don’t have kids here, right? So, Gaby’s probably the better choice.”
Eva doesn’t seem overly offended by my transparent fib—or does she believe it? I wrack my brain for another way to pitch my higher-level skills, already second-guessing my attempt at altruism. Maybe I shouldn’t have turned down the yoga job so soon? Maybe Gaby would have been happier in the kitchen?
Eva turns to Gaby. “Go get the coffee. Just one, with ice. Please.”
Just one coffee. Interview over.
“It’s too bad,” Eva says, still standing. “I mean, you were the perfect package: available right now, admin skills, plus yoga. But you don’t do adult yoga.”
I glance past the balcony’s edge, down to the lawn, where sometime later this week, on a fresh and misty morning no doubt, a dozen yoga mats will unroll in silent preparation for a glorious sunrise—and I won’t see it.
What I love about writing, as versus life, is the endless chance to revise. There must be some way to start over, but I’m blanking. Gaby has a job. Even Mercedes has a job, thanks to Eva’s kindness. I’m Eva Marshall’s biggest fan, at a critical juncture in my life—and I wrecked my chance. I feel like I’m watching a drawbridge go up, staring at some fantastic castle, and I’ve gotten myself stuck on the wrong side of the moat. It’s a melodramatic thought, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something even more operatic tonight, back in town, moaning into a margarita glass the size of a goldfish bowl about how close I came to my dream job and how quickly I botched it.
Frazzled, I reach into my backpack and slide out Eva’s first memoir, the one I was rereading at the pizzeria. “Would you sign it, before I go?”
Eva rearranges her lips into a thin-lipped smile of benign indulgence, taking the book in hand. She flips it open—not to the first page, but to the middle—and extends her arm, seeking the right distance to correct the focus. (No reading glasses. My mom won’t wear them yet, either.)
Ten seconds pass. Her smile relaxes and broadens.
I lean forward and see what she’s seeing: my underlining and margin comments. The smiley faces are the marks I left when I was only fifteen. The more thoughtful scribbles and private codes are from early college. Oh my god. How can I explain? I’ve been making notes in this book’s margins for seven years.
Is this the time to tell Eva Marshall that I first read Last Gasp when I was a sophomore in high school? Should I admit that, after losing my virginity to a guy I didn’t like in the bathroom of a Subway sandwich shop that reeked of ham, I went home and cried and didn’t feel better until I’d reread the scene in which she lost her virginity on a London park bench to a man who smelled like glue?
“I get ‘exposition’ and ‘flashback,’” she says. “But what’s ‘A’?”
“Awesome,” I say, tongue thick in my mouth. There’s nothing worse than letting someone see directly into your brain and discovering there isn’t much there, but I have no choice.