The Bachelorette Party by Karen McCullah Lutz Page A

moments, it actually started to feel soothing. Something to do with releasing emotion through the diaphragm, according to the turbaned instructor.
    Most of the class entailed doing the same repetitive motion for six minutes, before switching to another repetitive motion for six minutes. The ecstasy came for Zadie when they were finally allowed to stop. She looked around the room. Some people were actually crying. Others were aglow with their newfound kundalini fire. Helen beamed like she always did. Betsy was digging her yoga pants out of her crack. Eloise was faking spiritual bliss, trying to outdo the person next to her. Skinny and Snotty were checking out Cindy Crawford’s butt as she did the plow position, mentally calculating if theirs was any bigger. Marci and Kim were chanting in perfect precision, clearly skilled at it after many episodes of singing along with Barney. Gilda was in child pose, napping. Plane Jane wiped a tear away. Whether it was from boredom or emotional release, Zadie couldn’t tell. Denise had long ago left to puke in the bathroom, or maybe just wander the streets.
    At the end of the class, they all got to lie on the floor in corpse pose and listen to some more chanting music. This was Zadie’s favorite part. But just as she was about to doze off, she was flooded with images of Jack. Damn that dog breath and its emotional release. The images came fast. She and Jack in bed, laughing at how ridiculously horny they were for each other. Jack’s infectious excitement after a good audition, and how he’d bring over In-N-Out burgers to celebrate. Jack kissing her in the fog the time they climbed up to the Hollywood sign and the entire valley was
covered in a cloud like they were looking down on it from heaven. Jack at her stove, scrambling eggs for breakfast while she watched from the couch, wearing his green Michigan State T-shirt. The day they got drunk at the beach on the one-year anniversary of the day they met, and slept it off in the sand, waking up in the dark, curled up in each other’s arms. All of it. All of the moments she hadn’t allowed herself to think about in the past seven months. Speeding past her closed eyelids. Her third chakra aching with the release.
    And just as quickly as they came, they were gone. Like she’d finally purged him. And as the instructor turned down the music and instructed them to let go of their tension and embrace the peace within themselves and recognize their divinity, Zadie had a brief feeling that her life would be okay. Maybe things weren’t so bad. Maybe she would be perfectly fine. She could almost see it.
    As they all namaste ’d and stood up, Eloise looked across the room and said, “Isn’t she on Days of Our Lives ?” Zadie looked to where Eloise was pointing and saw the anorexic redhead with the severely overplucked eyebrows who was kissing Jack the day she was forced to watch in the Jiffy Lube waiting room. She was giggling with her friend as she blotted her face with a towel. Having no idea she’d just stolen someone’s bliss.

fifteen
    When the limo pulled up at Elixir on Melrose, Zadie was the first one out. She’d just had to endure a running commentary on everyone’s reaction to the class, in addition to seeing these women naked in the locker room as they changed into their cute little skirts and sundresses for the remainder of the party. Zadie had brought a pair of jeans and a blue gauzy blouse.
    “Did you all love it? Wasn’t it great?” Helen was gushing. Everyone agreed, oohing and ahhing about their various states of nirvana.
    “For the first time, I honestly understood how the universe works,” Eloise said. Zadie looked at her like she was on glue. Eloise didn’t know how her ATM card worked, let alone the cosmos.
    “Zadie, did you like it?” Helen looked at her expectantly.
    “Yeah. It was different.” She’d never hallucinated during yoga before, so she wasn’t lying.
    “Don’t you just feel like everything is