by Tracy Weber
I started by designing the studio’s layout and décor, naïvely agonizing over every detail. I shopped for hours at New Age stores all across Seattle, looking for the perfect selection of door chimes, water fountains, meditation cushions, and Tibetan singing bowls. I replaced the carpeting in the studio’s single practice room with solid maple flooring and strategically placed colorful pots filled with tropical plants all around the reception area. I even hung motivational artwork that implored my students to “live well, laugh often, and love much.” At the time, I thought every detail was crucial. At the time, I thought I was creating a sanctuary of physical and emotional healing.
I can only plead temporary insanity.
As my accountant had told me several times since, anyone with half a brain would have realized that I was constructing a 1,500-
square-foot money pit. Forget dining on caviar and sipping Dom Perignon. At the rate I was going, Top Ramen and tap water would soon become unaffordable luxuries.
Now that I was lucid again, one thing was brutally clear: teaching yoga was the most rewarding way to go broke on the planet. Yoga was a six-billion-dollar-a-year industry, so someone out there was obviously making money. Maybe the millionaires all operated those mega “hot box” yoga studios popping up everywhere. Or perhaps the riches were found in producing DVDs and selling designer yoga duds. Yoga’s megarich certainly weren’t getting that way running small neighborhood studios.
Fortunately, I had a full schedule of private clients the rest of the week. If none of them canceled and I timed things perfectly, I might not have to raid my personal savings account again. Alicia arrived right on time, as usual.
“Hey, Alicia. It’s great to see you.”
My words were true, for multiple reasons. Alicia was one of my favorite students, and I always enjoyed spending time with her. But more relevant to my current predicament, Alicia was also the studio’s landlord.
Landlord or not, broke tenant or not, I hesitated. Today wasn’t one of Alicia’s good days. She looked pale, tired, and significantly older than her true age of thirty-three, and her normally perfectly tailored clothes hung on her frame like hand-me-downs from a heavier sister. I gritted my teeth and plunged ahead anyway. “I hate to ask this, but money’s a little tight this month. Can I give you the rent check a few days late?”
I expected at least token resistance, especially since this was the second time I’d asked in four months. But Alicia smiled and said, “Sure. Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to my bookkeeper and let him know. And I’ll make sure he waives the late fee again.”
I sighed in relief. “Thank you. I’ll get the check to you as soon as I can. I hope I’m not causing you any problems.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said as she rolled out her mat. “Waiting a week or two for your rent money is the least of my concerns. I’m happy to help.”
She was right. About money being the least of her concerns, that is. Calling Alicia rich would have been an understatement. But as Dad used to say, money can’t buy everything. In her case, money couldn’t buy time—at least not enough of it.
Alicia was diagnosed with stage IV malignant melanoma last February. She celebrated her thirty-third birthday hooked up to an intravenous cocktail of immunosuppressing, hair-destroying experimental drugs at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Chemo or not, the survival rate for her condition was so low that her doctors didn’t even talk about it, except in hushed tones when they thought she couldn’t overhear.
I looked at those statistics myself. In most cases, Alicia’s doctors were probably right. In her case, however, those highly schooled, super-experienced medical professionals might just be mistaken. Alicia was determined to fight. And I’d seen too many miracles to completely discount her.
She used to love strong yoga practices, and I envied her ability to do complex balance poses with seeming grace and ease. Now she practiced yoga in an attempt to find that same grace and ease in the balance of her daily living. From what I’d seen, her inner strength put her former physical capabilities to shame.
I led her through a gentle restorative sequence designed to support her struggling immune system. We began with a few cycles of Nadi Sodhana—a breath practice also known as Alternate Nostril Breathing—to balance Alicia’s energy system and focus her mind. After a few minutes, we added some simple, gentle movements. Our first pose was Chakravakasana, loosely translated as Sunbird Pose.
Alicia had done this posture dozens of times in the past, but I verbally coached each repetition anyway, hoping my voice would drown out any worries that might be echoing through her mind. “Please come to hands and knees.” She folded a blanket and placed it under her kneecaps, then positioned her palms on the floor underneath her shoulders. “As you inhale, extend your spine, lengthening it from the crown of your head to the tip of your tailbone.” Alicia’s spine grew subtly longer. “As you exhale, pull in your belly and move your hips back toward your heels.” She moved her hips toward her feet, bent her elbows, and rested her forehead on the floor in a position called Child’s Pose.
I continued coaching her. “On your next inhale, come back to hands and knees. Keep your elbows soft and your belly lightly engaged. Continue this motion, linking every movement with your breath. Each inhale, return to hands and knees; each exhale, fold back to Child’s Pose.”
As Alicia moved, her breath became slower and subtly deeper; the chemo-induced stiffness eased from her joints; the tired-looking wrinkles diminished around her eyes. I would even have sworn that her prana—yoga’s invisible life-force energy—grew stronger.
Alicia didn’t have much stamina, so I kept our practice short. But that didn’t make it any less powerful. By the time I rang the chimes at the end of our session, she seemed utterly transformed. She looked lighter—softer somehow. The circles under her eyes were less pronounced; a slight smile graced her lips. Our time together fed her in ways more powerful than food, rest, or a cabinet full of prescription medication ever could. Working with Alicia reminded me why, in spite of its challenges, I loved my profession.
We said our goodbyes as Alicia reached for the door. She paused after opening it, looking confused.
“Didn’t you lock up before we started?”
“I thought so, but the door must have stuck. It’s been giving us some trouble lately.”
Alicia pushed, pulled, and rattled the handle in a futile effort to lock it. “Kate, I wish you had told me. This isn’t safe. I’ll have Jake come by tomorrow to take a look.”
Oh no, not Jake. I resisted an urge to hide behind the display of yoga blocks. Even the thought of spending time alone with Alicia’s husband, Jake the Jerk, made the hair on my arms stand up.
OK, so his last name wasn’t actually “the Jerk.” I added that part. To be honest, I’d never liked Jake, or his dark brown goatee, either. But until recently, I hadn’t seen him very often. All that changed the day Alicia received her diagnosis. She quit her full-time job as property manager to become a full-time cancer fighter. Jake hired himself as her replacement.
I had no idea what Alicia saw in Jake, but she wasn’t alone. My female students used adjectives like gorgeous, funny, interesting, and intelligent to describe him. I used words like sleazy and used-car salesman. He stood a little too close, touched a little too much, and volunteered to come by after hours a little too often for my comfort.
So when the toilet overflowed, the heat stopped working, or anything else in the studio broke down, I did whatever I could to avoid calling him. I would have rather waded through waist-high raw sewage than spend an hour alone with that man. Dealing with a finicky front door was nothing.
“Don’t worry about it, Alicia. All you have to do is jiggle it to the right, push quickly to the left, then pull it out and snap! There it goes, right into place!” For once the gods were with me. Right on cue, the door finally latched shut.
Alicia looked skeptical.
“Honestly, it’s no trouble at all.” I fibbed. Fixing that door had been on my to-do list for weeks. “Please don’t bother Jake. I know he’s busy, and I don’t want him wasting his free time over here.”
Alicia furrowed her brow. “Well, I don’t know … I’d feel responsible if something happened.”
“Seriously, it hardly ever causes problems. Maybe it’s extra humid today.” I kept talking before she could reply. “I promise, if it causes any more trouble at all, I’ll give Jake a call. Besides, I’ve already spoken to the other instructors. Everyone knows to double-check the door before they leave. And if they forget, well, we don’t have anything here worth stealing, anyway.”
I gave her my most confident smile. Lying didn’t count if you crossed your fingers, right?
Alicia wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t have enough energy to argue, either. So I successfully avoided spending time alone with Jake, while the door continued to squeak, stick, pop open, and otherwise annoy the heck out of me.
It seemed like a good trade-off at the time.
five
“Kate, are you in there?” Jake rattled the studio’s door handle the next morning as I hid, crouched among the dust bunnies under the front desk. For once, the infernal lock held. “Kate?” Alicia must have told him to stop by the studio.
I glanced at the clock. Eleven-fifteen. Bummer. The instructor for the lunchtime meditation class wouldn’t arrive for another thirty minutes. I’d locked myself safely inside the studio, hoping to work on the monthly newsletter. Instead, I was trapped, knees screaming, hunched under the desk in the world’s sloppiest Half Squat.
I pinched back a sneeze and nestled up to the filing cabinet, determined to wait Jake out until the end of time—or at least until an unsuspecting yoga teacher discovered my mummified corpse. Jake knocked a few more times, then dropped an envelope through the mail slot.
I held my breath, waiting.
Silence. Was it safe to come out?
“Well, hey there, gorgeous. What are you doing here?”
Jake’s voice startled me and I jumped, bumping my head against the drawer. Who was he harassing now? I rubbed the bump on my head and considered my next course of action. I wanted to know who Jake was stalking, but if I stood up, he’d see me for sure. I decided to play hide and go peek instead. I scooted to the window, parted the leaves of the schefflera tree, and cautiously looked outside. Jake sidled up to Jenny, a student from my nine o’clock prenatal class.
“I don’t think they’re open,” he said.
“Oh, no, they can’t be closed!” Jenny wailed. “I forgot my purse inside! I was so blissed out after class that I walked all the way home before I realized I’d driven to the studio. So then I walked back to get my car, only to realize I didn’t have my purse. I left it by the yoga mats. And my car keys are inside it!”
Several non-yogic phrases entered my mind, but I managed not to say them out loud. Still using the plants as cover, I crawled out from behind the desk, snaked along the wall, and craned my neck to peep through the door to the yoga room. Damn. There sat Jenny’s purse, plain as day, on top of the yoga mats. I skulked back to my hiding place by the window and continued eavesdropping.
Jenny wept. “How can I possibly take care of a child if I can’t even remember a purse! I swear all of these pregnancy hormones have given me that forgetfulness disease. You know, the one old people get? Oh lord, what’s it called again?”
Alzheimer’s, I silently answered.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Jake replied, wrapping his arm around Jenny’s shoulders. He hugged her close and whispered in her ear. Jenny covered her mouth and blushed, tears suddenly abated. I glowered at Jake through my leafy green canopy. I knew it was customary to put your hand on a pregnant woman’s belly, but I could have sworn I saw Jake’s hand wander to an entirely different part of Jenny’s anatomy.
This conversation had to stop. I couldn’t just sit here and allow Jake to harass Jenny. Not even if she appeared to enjoy it. Not when I had the keys to her getaway vehicle.
I reluctantly abandoned my sanctuary and sneaked back across the floor. Once inside the yoga room, I stood up, dusted off my pants, and pounded the achiness out of my thighs. Then I grabbed Jenny’s purse, pasted on a fake smile, and confidently strode back across the lobby.
“I thought I heard someone talking out here,” I said, as I unlocked the door. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but I was using the restroom.” I held up the purse. “Is this yours?”
“Thanks, Kate,” Jenny replied, gratefully taking it from my hands. “I swear this pregnancy brain is going to be the death of me.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh no! And now I’m late for work!”
“See you later, sweetheart!” Jake yelled as Jenny hurriedly waddled to her car.
Irritation crawled up the back of my neck to the top of my scalp. “What do you want, Jake?”
Jake’s flirtatious smile vanished. He picked up the envelope he’d dropped through the mail slot. “I stopped by to give you a copy of your rental agreement.”
I must have looked confused, because he kept talking. “Alicia told me your rent check’s going to be late again. This is the last time, Kate. Alicia may be a pushover, but I’m in charge now. From now on, you’ll pay the fifty-dollar-a-day late fee, like everyone else.” He edged closer, his dark, bristly whiskers advancing dangerously close to my cheek. “Unless, that is, you want to start giving me some private lessons?” His expression feigned innocence, but the implication was clear. Even thinking about it made me want to toss my morning muffin, so to speak.
One look at my face, and Jake wisely stepped back, holding up his hands. “Mellow out, Kate. I was kidding.”
I resisted the urge to stomp on his foot.
He grinned. “But think about it, just in case.” He handed me the envelope and walked away, whistling.
_____
I still felt slimy after the meditation teacher left two hours later, so I cleansed myself with a short yoga practice. I was literally hip deep in the luscious stretch of Pigeon Pose when I heard the magnificent sound of Bella’s unmistakable bark. George was back! I grabbed a dollar for a paper and ran to greet him.
I threw open the door and froze. George wasn’t alone. The stranger standing next to him wore a bulky camouflage jacket and pushed a bicycle piled high with a mountain of army green duffle bags. No smile graced his dirt-smudged face; I had a feeling it never did. I couldn’t quite hear them, but based on their low, almost growling tones, I suspected they were arguing.
I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, shivering. I felt uneasy about this stranger, though I couldn’t quite articulate why. It wasn’t his disheveled clothes or even his thick, dark beard. In some odd, intuitive way, I sensed his energy. It felt jagged, unpredictable somehow—like an irritable mountain lion, newly escaped from its cage.
“Is everything OK over there?” I asked. The stranger muttered something to George, handed him a black nylon gym bag, and walked away, grumbling and pushing the bicycle beside him.
I walked up to George. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” George said. “Just a little disagreement over property rights.”
George and I watched the departing stranger, now half a block away. Bella growled softly at his retreating shape.
“Bella, you hush now,” George said. He ruffled Bella’s ears before smiling at me. “Don’t you worry about Charlie there, ma’am. He’s a friend of mine. He likes to act all gruff, but he’s harmless enough. He even hides my stuff when I can’t watch it. Sometimes I just have to remind him it’s mine, not his.” He patted the gym bag. “But it’s all good now.”
I would have probed further, but I got distracted. “Hey, Bella looks better!”
Bella seemed happy and energetic; I could even have sworn that she smiled. Her r
ibs were still visible, but her eyes sparkled, and she looked like she’d put on a pound or two.
George, on the other hand, looked awful. His dull, depressed eyes were underscored by purple-gray smudges, and his shoulders rounded forward in an uncharacteristic slump.
I kneeled down to scratch Bella’s neck. “I’ve missed you two the last ten days. I was starting to get worried.”
“Sorry about that,” George replied. “We’ve been out of town. Bella’s tests took three days to come back, so I stayed down south. It’s not like I have a phone they can call with the results.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “What did you find out?”
“It’s not good. Bella has EPI, which is an autoimmune disease. Evidently, she can’t digest food anymore. That’s why she’s always hungry and keeps losing weight no matter how much I feed her.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Neither had I. It’s pretty rare, but over half the dogs that get it are German shepherds. That’s what made the vet think of it. He gave me some medicine to mix with her food, and so far it seems to help.”
George’s dismal demeanor confused me. “Well, that’s good, right? At least now you know what’s wrong with her, and she’s starting to get better.”
George sighed and absently rubbed Bella’s fur. “I suppose. But the medicine’s expensive. The vet gave me a bottle that had been donated to the clinic, but it normally costs over $200.”
No wonder he seemed so sad. George could never afford $200 medicine. “That is expensive,” I replied. “But we’ll figure out a way to get you a refill if she needs it. Maybe I can host a fundraising event.”
The grim line of his mouth turned into a sad smile. “That’s very kind of you, ma’am, but a bottle only lasts two weeks, and Bella will need this medicine for the rest of her life.”
My heart sank. “The rest of her life?” I could never raise that much money.
“Yes, otherwise she’ll starve. The vet even hinted that I should put Bella down, but I couldn’t do that. She’s my life, and she’s so young, you know?” He looked away to hide the tears in his eyes. “She’s not even two yet!”
