Gargantuan by Maggie Estep Page A

to sufficiently heat it, so she’d elected to stay in her own apartment.
    Ruby and Jane had launched into some sort of discussion about yoga. I knew from overhearing some of Ruby’s phone conversations with her friend that these two could go on for hours about intrigue and personnel shifts in the world of New York City’s yoga centers. A world that, for all its promise of physical flexibility and spiritual equilibrium, was evidently as cutthroat and fraught with drama as horse racing.
    Sal was getting restless. I had a feeling he wanted to tell Ruby his troubles, but not with the rest of us present. Eventually, he announced that he was going to go visit a friend over in Sea Gate, the strange gated community south of Coney.
    “I’ll keep my phone turned on if you need me,” he told us.
    Ruby and I both nodded at him. The big guy was hesitating though. His face clouded over and he shifted his weight from oneleg to the other. Then he reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.
    “I’d feel better if you two went and stayed in a motel for a while till this crap blows over. I can give you some money.”
    Ruby and I protested both the motel and the money but Sal insisted.
    Eventually Jane piped in. “It might be prudent,” she said.
    We all stared at her.
    “Yeah?” Ruby squinted. “What about my cats?”
    “Take them,” Jane said.
    “Yeah?” Ruby seemed to be warming to the idea.
    She looked at me. I shrugged.
    “Okay, Sal,” she said, “we’ll do it. Put your money away though. We’re fine.”
    Sal grudgingly put his wallet back in his pocket. He contemplated us for a few moments longer then grunted his good-byes and walked heavily down the stairs.
    “I think he’s got a problem with his wife,” I told Ruby after we heard the door close behind him.
    “Yeah,” she sighed and tilted her head, “he usually does. He’s desperately in love with her. He’s always telling me he never should have married someone he was that much in love with. Which is ridiculous.”
    Ruby frowned now, clearly miffed with this notion. I tended to side with Sal on the matter though I didn’t volunteer this opinion. I’d been desperately in love with Ava and it had led to fifteen years of torture. I was crazy for Ruby now, but it was different. A little saner. Thinking about her didn’t make my heart stammer with doubt.
    Jane announced it was time for her to head back to Manhattan. She rose from her stool, stretched her arms out, then unceremoniously bent at the waist, put her palms on the floor next to her feet and wiggled her butt.
    “Stop that!” Ruby exclaimed. Jane ignored her.
    “She’s always stretching in public,” Ruby said, turning to me. “It’s embarrassing and disgusting.”
    I didn’t think it was either of these things, but I was a little surprised when, continuing the display, Jane suddenly propped her foot against the wall, at the same height as her head, then leaned forward, draping her torso along the extended leg. Ruby protested a bit more and finally Jane, her muscular kinks evidently dispensed with, began putting on her many layers of sweaters, coats, and scarves. She wrapped the final scarf, a brown thing with pink polka dots, around her head, draping it under her chin. She looked like a demented Russian farm girl.
    After extracting a promise that Ruby and I would in fact go stay in a motel, Jane bid us farewell and descended the creaky stairs. At last, I was alone with my girl.
    I folded her into my arms, nestling my face into her dark hair that smelled of cigarette smoke and salt.
    “Wanna go to a motel, baby?” I said into her ear.
    “Yes,” she said in a soft voice.
    “What about that place in Sheepshead Bay? You know, that weird little motel we passed by the other night?”
    I felt her body stiffen.
    “No,” she said, pulling away from me
    “Why, it’s a dive?”
    “No,” she said again.
    “What’s the matter?” I looked down into her gray eyes. They’d turned