I drove here straight from the meeting with the dean. I called John on the way. I’m coming over! I told him. I hope you don’t mind. I hope you don’t have a conflict.
Luckily, John never minds. John never has a conflict.
“No worries, Miranda,” John says now. “I was just watching the game, but I’m recording it, so no worries.”
I nod at the cracked garage floor, at the bright white of John’s humongous running shoes, patiently pointed in my direction.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”
I’m leaning against his rickety massage table, unable to stand, unable to sit, unable to look directly at John, who probably looks very confused. Understandably. It’s been a while since he last saw me. On the small table between us is an economy-size tub of lotion, which, if all goes well, John will soon be squirting into his large, hairy-knuckled hands, administering to my spasming flesh, while I weep quietly into the doughnut hole. But not yet. First, I must explain myself. My recent absence. Why did I disappear again? He doesn’t get it. He thought we were making such progress—We were really getting somewhere, weren’t we, Miranda?
“We were,” I whisper to John, “of course we were.” I lean more heavily against the massage table. Not quite bold enough to lie down on it yet. Waiting for John to give me permission. But he won’t do that yet. He must attempt to diagnose me first. This is the painful part. The part I have to get through. Watching John think.
John observes me now, arms folded and legs spread like a coach. He is frowning deeply. I always make John frown deeply. John is not a licensed physical therapist. He might not even be a certified physical trainer. He might just be doing this as a hobby. He was recommended to me by a woman in the history department who has been wearing a neck brace for as long as I’ve known her. I don’t ask her what happened because it feels like a private thing.
John is the best, she said to me. He gets it. He’ll get you there.
Get me there?
She nodded as much as she could in the brace. All under the table, of course. He doesn’t believe in the system. He’s been burned by it. Who hasn’t? she said to me. He’s a rebel. Totally antiestablishment.
Is he? And I felt it. The terrible swell of hideous hope in my heart.
She slipped his phone number into my hand. You’ll see.
And I did see. I stepped into the dark garage empty of all but the cheap table, saw John emerging from the shadows in his gym shorts with his lotion and his clipboard, and I saw immediately.
Still, I come to John’s garage for comfort. I come to John because his hands can sometimes work a brief magic. And because he is kind. Kinder than Mark. Far kinder than cruel Luke.
Now I can hear John’s wife upstairs banging kitchen cupboards. She’s pissed that I’m here. That I’m back. She thought I was gone for good.
“I have to say, Miranda, you don’t look good,” John pronounces at last.
“I don’t?” I’m shocked at the hope in my voice.
John shakes his head. Nope. “You’re all out of whack,” he observes.
“I am?”
John nods. “Oh yeah, you’re off. Totally off. Wow. Have you looked in a mirror at all?”
“No.”
“You’re all…” And then with his hands, he makes a tower that is leaning wildly to the left.
“Really?”
“Way off,” John says. “It’s weird. Last time you were here your pelvis was in alignment.” John is very concerned with things like pelvic alignment.
It’s good, I tell myself. It’s a sign of his expertise. Not everyone has to go to school to be an expert, do they?
John frowns now at my tilted pelvis, the right hip bone jutting aggressively forward. My right leg crooked and curled into itself like it wants to die. I’m veering off to the left like I am terrified of the right side of my body. He looks back up at me, but I’m avoiding John’s gaze. His clear, fawn-like eyes that only want an answer to a simple question.
“What’s happened since I last saw you? I don’t understand,” John says. Suspicious? No, not John. Merely curious. Merely genuinely mystified. I attempt to look mystified too.
“Me neither,” I lie. “No idea.”
“How long ago since I last saw you again?”
I gaze at the tub of lotion longingly. I pretend to think. “I’m not sure.”
“Been like a whole month, hasn’t it?” he says.
In which I tried Todd. In which I continued on uselessly with Mark. In which I tried the man with the pince-nez who stabbed my left boob with a long needle in an attempt to tap into my chi, then let me lie there for twenty minutes on his medical table like a corpse.