Lakewood(13)

“Change into this gown.”

When Lena returned, she hopped onto the table and put her feet in the stirrups. On the ceiling were several posters of a golden retriever puppy and a duckling. She guessed their fuzzy proximity was supposed to imply best friendship.

“This is going to be cold,” Dr. Maggie said.

Another poster showed a lightning bolt hitting a tree, with INSPIRATION! written beneath the image. Lena wanted to know who in the history of the world had ever gotten a great idea while receiving a pap smear. If she had chosen the posters, there would have been one that read, TURNING YOURSELF INTO AN ABSENT VOID. Or maybe PATIENCE, with a picture of an egg and a timer.

Then booster shots. While Dr. Maggie stuck in needle after needle, she asked Lena questions. What are your views on organ donation? Poke. What’s your definition of excellent health? Sharper poke. And what are your feelings about aging? What do you think people mean when they say, “You’ve gotta take good care of yourself”?

The questions were asked lightly. The doctor wrote nothing down, just kept injecting Lena. When it was done and everything was put away, Lena realized she should’ve asked what exactly they were “boosting” and what additional vaccinations they thought she needed.

“Let’s go have some fun,” Dr. Maggie said, handing Lena workout clothes. Another outfit change, and they walked into a room filled with exercise equipment. Lena’s arms ached. She shook them out, tried to stretch. Dr. Maggie put a CD in a boombox that looked exactly like the one in Lena’s room. The music that came on was some kind of off-brand jock jams, a voice saying “Whoo” and “Yeah” mixed in with a bass beat and applause. Lena hopped on the nearest treadmill. As she ran, her brain emptied itself out—every thought blasted away by the pleasure of being in motion after hours spent hunched in chairs. She ran until there was sweat dripping off her forehead and the back of her tank top had turned charcoal with sweat.

“I know you probably want to shower, but I think you should eat again first,” Dr. Maggie said.

She took Lena down to the first floor. The door closest to the staircase led to a dining room. Inside were two small tables with two wooden chairs next to each one. A bowl of salad was waiting at one, a plate with chicken and vegetables and rice next to it. A large counter was built into the wall farthest from the door, holding water bottles, pop, a coffeemaker, and an open brown box filled with tea packets. The floor was old wood. What looked like a small drain was installed in the middle of the floor. The chicken smelled too good for Lena to go investigate it. She picked up the largest chunk of broccoli and popped it into her mouth. As she chewed it, Lena went through the salad, picking all the red onions out, making a pile on one of the napkins.

“Lena?”

She jumped a little in her seat. Standing in front of her was a man who looked almost identical to the one she had tried to draw earlier. He was Korean, though, and had more hair than she remembered.

“Hi.”

He told her to look at his face. Memorize it. His eyes were large, the irises so dark brown that they made his pupils look unusually big. He had thin lips and a wide mouth. A small brown birthmark was on the left side of his neck, near his Adam’s apple.

“Got it,” she said.

He nodded and walked out. As he left, Lena noted that he was probably around average height for a man and when he walked, he moved his right arm much more than his left.

“They’re testing my memory,” Lena said to herself, then absorbed herself back in eating. There was a green in the salad Lena had never tasted before. It tasted peppery in a good way, but it made her mouth feel extra-juicy. Maybe she was allergic to it, but she couldn’t stop eating. Everything that had happened during the day had placed a kind of spell on Lena because she had thought so much, talked so much about her body, it no longer felt like hers. It was closer to a piece of fine jewelry she was having assessed for sale: here’s the gold, here are the gems, let’s peer closely at their condition. Being alone, eating this thing that made her hyperaware of the spit rising along the ridges of her teeth and the plateau of her tongue, made Lena feel a little more herself. She rubbed her face and took another bite.





6


In the morning, Lena felt the braids she had hastily put into her hair. She had missed a clump of hair and it angled against her neck. Her calves ached from running yesterday, her voice was hoarse from talking so much. Closing her eyes, she heard the pleasing sound of heat pumped through a vent. A knock at the door.

“This is your ten-minute warning. We’ll be back to take you to Session 1.”

Lena changed quickly, spending most of her time re-braiding her hair, working out the tangle on her neck as best she could with her fingers. After being walked downstairs by a bored woman in a navy dress who responded to all attempts of chitchat with variations of “Yeah,” she was taken to Dr. Lisa’s office. She was settled back into the chair and poured a glass of water. The doctor fiddled with the settings of her fountain.

The first question: “How did you sleep?”

“Like I was dead.”

Then an awkward first date style barrage.

“Do you prefer dogs or cats?”

“Dogs.”

“What is your favorite color?”

“Neon-pink or maybe neon-blue. Neons are underrated.”