Pug Hill (15 page)

And I think,
I know this, I really do.
I nod back to her, and tell her, “I know.”

The buzzer goes off and Chloe yelps with delight.

“Thank God,” Kara says as she picks up the phone that connects to her doorman. “Please send him up, thanks.”

Chloe squeals, and claps her hands, and heads to the front door with Kara.

I go to the bathroom, the one in the hall with the red toile wallpaper, and cry.

Before I know it, it’s Thursday, the end of Thursday; the little bit of light that comes through the basement windows is diminishing, the conservation room is getting darker, and it’s time again for Overcoming Presentation Anxiety class.

I very slowly and meticulously press my paintbrush in the Naphtha Solvent that we all use now instead of turpentine, because it’s so much safer. I roll back a bit on my stool and stare at the corner of the red section. I’ve added some of my mixture of red restoration paints in, and I’m waiting now to be sure it’s a match. I don’t want to say for certain yet, but I think it might be. I stare at it more until my eyes get a little blurry and I know I’ve looked at this one spot as much as I can for one day. I know that at this point I’m just still staring at it because there’s a part of me, a big part of me actually, that would rather stay here tonight.

As I head in the direction of the sink, I try to give off an air of only the utmost normalcy, as I walk by Elliot. And then, of course, I’m done with washing my brushes and my hands and done with drying them, too, and I have to walk past him again. I wonder how long, how inhumanely, can this go on? And I know, from past experience, all too well, the viciousness of the circle that is unrequited love for me. I know how long these kinds of circles tend to keep me trapped inside them. I try not to think so long about the answer, because in the end, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.

“Good night, Elliot,” I say on the way back past him, pausing before I say it just to be sure something else doesn’t slip out, something along the lines of, “Are you quite certain then that you aren’t in love with me, and are you quite certain then that all this time I’ve spent, and continue to spend, mooning over you is really all for nothing? And do you maybe want to tell me that Claire really isn’t your girlfriend? Do you maybe want to tell me that Claire doesn’t really exist at all?”

And then, just like every other night, instead of “Hope, let’s you and I run away together and leave this crazy Conservation Studio that’s really just a basement behind,” he looks up from his easel only slightly, smiles even more slightly and says, “Good night, Hope.”

I enter Room 502 a few minutes before class is scheduled to start: an improvement on last time. I take a far less vulnerable seat: not on either end, nor right in the middle (which I feel could be dangerous, too) but a few seats into the horseshoe, on the side closest to the door, you know, in case of an emergency.

I can’t help thinking it will surely be another improvement. I look around and notice there seem to be fewer people here than last time. The serene girl who wore a wrap dress isn’t here, which I think is too bad, because I liked her, or at least I thought she lent a calming influence to the room. One of the two pantsuit-girls, the one who was supposedly here for her friend, but then ran from the room, isn’t here. Alec, so tall, so well-dressed, so good-looking isn’t here, either. That’s too bad, too. I mean what are the odds of there being a completely attractive man, who is also public speaking impaired and not only that, in your public speaking class? To beat all those odds and then have him show up only once doesn’t seem fair. It makes the absence of the serene woman in the wrap dress seem like nothing. I picture Alec, think of how he said he gets hot under the collar.
Hot under the collar,
I think,
I’ll
say. And then as soon as I think that, it’s pretty clear, seeing as my goal here is to embrace class and pay attention, that Alec’s absence might be for the best. Then Alec walks in.

“Uh, sorry,” he says, even though we haven’t started. Amy looks up from a notebook she’s been writing in and scowls at him. He sits down directly across from me. That makes me smile, in spite of the voice in my head that keeps reminding me that I don’t need to lust after any more guys, that Elliot, really, until I somehow manage to get over that, is enough. I have to agree. The voice in my head is right; I simply cannot spend my time in public speaking class the way I spend too much of it at work, staring across the room at a cute guy. As it is, even without Alec, I’ve been starting to wonder if somewhere along the way I have become a stalker. It’s not a nice thing to contemplate. I drag my attention, as completely as possible, away from Alec.

I rescan the room, recount my classmates, noticing Lawrence especially because he sits up so straight in his chair. Everyone else from last time is here. We’re only down two people. I consider that this makes me braver than two people. Beth Anne gets up from where she’s been sitting in the back of the room and takes her spot in the front of the classroom, right in front of the big metal desk.

“Welcome, class,” she says beaming, fanning her arms out to the side and holding them there outstretched. She is covered head to toe, shoulder to wrist, in a giant bright orange caftan. “Welcome back.”
Two down,
I think again, and consider that this possibly makes me not as smart as two people. Beth Anne refers to a clipboard on her desk and looks out at us.

“Lindsay,” Beth Anne asks, “will your friend Jessica be joining us tonight?”

“Uh, no,” Lindsay says, looking decidedly more hunched over in her chair than last time, and I think it’s too bad for her that her friend, whom she made the point of saying was such a true friend, seems to have left Lindsay, the victim of some bad accounting scandal, in the lurch.

“Uh, no,” Lindsay says again, a little bit sadly, “I don’t think she thought it was the best use of her time.” Just like true love, it seems the course of true friendship sometimes doesn’t run smooth either.

“Well,” answers Beth Anne, with one last look to the door, “let’s get started then, shall we?” She walks to the door, and seals us in, an airless grouping of anxiety, nerves, and deep-seated fear. I look around the room at this group I am part of, a group of people whose relationship to public speaking being described as merely “anxious” is an understatement at best. I can’t breathe.

I remember how last time Beth Anne had her name written across the blackboard, so many loops and swirls, and how comforting I found that to be at the time. I look to the blackboard again, the blackboard I’m sure, is a good place to look right now. Or is it? There, Beth Anne has written, from top to bottom, in big, capital letters, no loops, no swirls anywhere:

Oh,
I think, no, because I just don’t think there’s any way to look at a list so cryptic, and so surely boding of ill, as this one, and think anything else. I look quickly around at the remaining classmates. I want to see that everyone else looks just like how I feel: nervous and closed-in, like a rat trapped in a corner. Lawrence looks ecstatic; Amy looks pissed; and Martine, the hostile French woman, the very thin one with the need to make speeches about breast-feeding, looks haughty. Everyone else looks a little scared. There’s that.

But even still, even with the fear camaraderie, I dread the thought of the next step. It’s like an emotional minefield in here. Every step can bring disaster or at the very least despair. It is extremely discomforting to see words like that, words I don’t understand, just written across the blackboard so menacingly. I read the lines again:
One Nostril. Lion. Deity.
I decide for certain, there is something quite ominous about them.

“The most important thing is ...” Beth Anne pauses in a way that can only be described as meaningfully. I forget instantly about being a trapped rat and lean forward a bit in my seat. I, for one, am quite interested to hear what the most important thing is. Maybe I should get out my notebook.

“Relaxing,” Beth Anne says next, and I, for one, am a little bit let down. “Relaaaaxing,” she repeats, saying it slowly, stretching it all out, all the emphasis on the
aaaaaaax.
She points to the first line on the blackboard: ONE NOSTRIL.

We all watch silently as Beth Anne begins to demonstrate the somewhat—now that I think about it—less cryptic, possibly even self-explanatory, One Nostril Breathing. She holds her thumb over one nostril and breathes in deeply, then she uses her index finger to pinch both nostrils closed for a moment before she releases her thumb and exhales. After each exaggerated step she pauses to nod eagerly at us, eyebrows high, like a mime that wants so much to say, “Yes, class. Yes, yes.” From what I can see out of the corner of my eye, a few people are nodding in agreement with her.

“Why doesn’t everyone give it a try?” she says encouragingly, and suddenly, I feel better than I have felt since I first set foot in this classroom. I feel a way I never imagined I would feel, not for the duration of Overcoming Presentation Anxiety at least. I feel advanced. Quite advanced, at least for this particular second, and I am for the briefest of brief moments, at peace.

See, now that I’ve seen it demonstrated, I remember that, believe it or not (well actually you should just believe it) I have actually done One Nostril Breathing. Once, in yoga class when the Asthanga-influenced and very hot (my God, is there anyone I don’t lust after?) yoga teacher was in India learning more, I assume, about Asthanga, there was a sub, a follower of what must apparently have been a more breathing-based yoga practice. The sub—who seemed to lack any understanding that seeing as we were at a gym, everyone in the class wanted their yoga to be more athletic and calorie-burning in spirit—had us do One Nostril Breathing. He called it something else though, hence my delay in recognizing it. He had us all do it for half an hour once. Then I think someone complained to the management, and he didn’t come back again. I confidently take a few alternating breaths, quite proficiently, adeptly, if I do say so myself.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Martine. Martine is clearly not someone who has spent a tremendous amount of time in yoga class; she is scowling at her thumb and index finger as she holds them a few inches away from her nostrils. Next to her, Lindsay seems to be having some struggles with coordination. I think how very possibly I am the best in the room at the One Nostril Breathing. It’s sort of sad, I know, that this makes me as happy as it does. But it does.

And then it doesn’t anymore, because Beth Anne is now saying something how Kalabati helps, too. Kalabati isn’t even written on the board. Kalabati definitely sounds like it might have something to do with yoga-breathing, too, but, as you know, the time I had with the breathing yoga teacher was brief, perhaps too brief, and I’m no longer leaps and bounds ahead of my classmates. I am no longer the star, if, come to think of it, I ever really was. Now I am just one of the many people in the room who has no idea what is going on. I’m back to thinking that around any corner there could be danger, and if not that, at the very least, despair.

“Kalabati,” Beth Anne explains to us slowly, “is also called Breath of Fire.” Amy raises her hand.

“Yes, Amy?” Beth Anne smiles at her brightly, clearly Beth Anne is a big, big fan of class participation.

“How come Kalabati, or
Breath of Fire,
isn’t written on the board?” Beth Anne furrows her eyebrows as Amy continues, “I mean, why just write One Nostril? If this is like a whole separate category of relaxation, then why not write it down, too?”

“Well, I would say it’s a subset,” Beth Anne says, in a way that makes me think she’s slightly thrown.

“If it’s a subset why not write it, but indent?” I wonder if Amy is going to be the one who wants, more than she wants to overcome her presentation anxiety, to ruin it for everyone else. There’s usually one in every group, the one who just likes to hear herself talk out loud. I’d been thinking though that this group would be exempt from that since the people in this group, by the very nature of their fear, might tend to not like talking out loud in a group, let alone being heard talking. I look over at Amy: regardless of any public speaking impairment she may suffer from, she does indeed look like a good candidate to be one of those people who just likes to hear herself talk. It could be an occupational hazard for her, since she’s a novelist and all. If you think about it, her job might provide her with even less of an opportunity to talk to people than mine.

Beth Anne seems to be opting for not answering Amy. Amy scowls slightly, but then snaps to attention, as we all do.

“Okay,” Beth Anne says, clapping her hands together sharply, quickly, twice. “KALABATI!”

Beth Anne bares her teeth and begins breathing in and out through her nose really quickly. I can see her stomach pumping through the thin material of her caftan.