“Maybe I’ll buy her one of those beaded bracelets,” Sharon says. “They seemed to have some good ones at the Mercado. Jessica’s built like Neil you know.” She pauses with her chin down, looking up through her bangs. “Big boned,” she explains, and she holds out her own slim arm for comparison. “Even at the age of ten she had a thicker wrist than me.”

She drinks some of her iced tea. Sits back and glances around the room. Notices that Laura is one of the lunch servers. Absentmindedly twists her ring and watches the young woman.

Sharon is quite taken with Laura. She spotted her within an hour of arrival, and she followed her up the mountain trail on the first morning hike. In Sharon’s opinion, the word to describe Laura is “smooth.” Not slick: smooth. Clean smooth straight hair, strong smooth firm neck, round little shoulders above high round little breasts, smooth torso, lumpless hips, legs and ankles and feet as graceful as a deer’s. Even in her baggy knee-length shorts, Laura is elegant. On her, white toenail polish is chic.

And Laura is more than beautiful. She manages to personify California health and energy. When she guides the stretch class, she shows them how to reach with every fiber; she models sensuousness; she elongates arched neck to curved foot. She can fold up like a piece of paper. When she leads the NIA dance she stomps and whoops with unabashed vigor. She inspires the normally sedentary Sharon to take fitness classes. She makes Sharon wish her own breasts were small.

Sharon is not gay. Many of her clients are lesbians, and she claims three among her acquaintance-almost-friends, but she insists that she herself is only oriented toward men. She believes that gay women are sexless and pale, physically. “At least, that’s the truth about the ones I know,” she confides to straight acquaintance-almost-friends.

She doesn’t want to do Laura; she wants to be Laura. Same thing makes her find the pictures riveting in Playboy, or Elle…fantasizing what it would be like to be that sexy.

Sharon uncrosses her legs and then recrosses them with the other knee over. “The wrong knee,” she thinks as she remembers the Feldenkrais class. She watches a hummingbird in the hibiscus while she tips her head back to swallow the last inch of diluted iced tea, and she rattles the softening ice around as she lowers her glass to the table. She wills Laura to bring the pitcher. She smiles when that appears to work.

It’s a metal bowl-bottomed pitcher, dappled below its spout with shiny condensation, its handle swathed in a thin scrap of white towel, and it’s borne ahead of Laura like a ceremonial vessel. Sharon pushes her glass forward as Laura tips it and together they watch the caramel-colored liquid ribbon smoothly over the lip of the spout. A few ice pebbles flow along. Laura’s right arm tenses – wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck – and Sharon’s glass fills.

“Thanks.”

“You okay?” Laura sets the pitcher on the edge of the table and cups Sharon’s shoulder with her left palm. She has a warm disinterested way of touching people. She’s a hands-on kind of person. It’s obvious she loves her job.

“Oh. Yeah. I’m fine.” Sharon doesn’t leave it at that. She tosses the sides of her hair forward again, says “Ummm” a few times, pinches her bottom lip, and then offers, “I can’t figure out what to bring back for my daughter.”

“Well maybe I can help.” Laura shows smooth white teeth when she smiles. “How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Easy. I can relate. I’m twenty-one.”

Sharon is stunned. She knew Laura was young, but she had no idea how young. She lost all ability to guess a person’s age fifteen years ago, but she would have sworn that Laura was closer to thirty. Twenty-one! Sharon’s two sons are a decade older. Sharon has thirty years on her.