The only trail in the limited navigable land around the Rope went down a long sloping gravel road that ended at the shore of a small finger of the lake. Heavy machinery and supplies required by maintenance were off-loaded there so they could be more easily transported to the maintenance building behind the housing area.
Thirty yards before the boat ramp, a sketchy trail veered to the left, leading up through dirt, rock, and scrub to the top of a knoll. From there it descended to an upthrust thumb of earth and rock over a hundred feet high. The only access to the thumb was a narrow land bridge. When that eroded away, the thumb would be an island. The trail wound around its base. Jim Levitt, who ran most evenings, said the circuit from housing around the rock and back was close to a mile.
Before Anna reached the point where the trail left the road, she was panting. By the time she’d run the little distance to the land bridge, she had a stitch in her side. Forced to walk a ways, eyes on her feet so she wouldn’t stumble, she began to notice that what she had spurned as sterile desert was nothing of the sort. Just as the brochure had promised, Glen Canyon boasted a rich and varied plant life. Unlike the east, where plants were grand and green and rushed into spring and summer with a blaze of color, the plants of Glen Canyon were spread out, careful to claim sufficient space so they could collect water enough to survive. Fierce and independent, they protected themselves with spines or tiny fine hairs that prickled out from the fleshier leaves. In place of the infinite palette of greens Anna’d seen in the eastern forests, here the palette was in subtle hues of sage and gray. Leaves that looked more blue than green and leaves that turned silver in the sunlight.
It surprised her to see flowers. Deep in the arid heat of summer, their defiant blues and hot pinks struck her as courageous. They did not clump together in gay profusion. She had to look for their small insistent glory and was inordinately pleased when she found it. Next time she ran, she promised herself, she would bring the brochure so she could introduce herself properly, name for name.
Breath recovered, she began to run again. Twice more she stopped and walked, but by the time she made it back up the incline to the duplexes, she guessed she’d run easily a third of the one-mile circuit.
Bethy was sitting in a lawn chair on her porch when Anna came puffing into the square. Anna didn’t know whether it would be better to ignore her or greet her as if nothing had passed between them. Either way, she figured she was going to get a black eye out of the deal.
Bethy spared her the choice.
“Your face is the color of Rudolph’s nose,” she said, looking up from the magazine opened across her knees. The comment wasn’t particularly complimentary, but the tone of voice didn’t seem malicious. Not that Anna could discern.
“I’m not used to the altitude,” Anna said, having no idea what the altitude of Glen Canyon was.
“I saw you go running,” Bethy said and pointed at the side of her duplex. “Through the kitchen window. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
Anna looked at her warily. “Okay,” she said, carefully neutral. “I’m back.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” Anna couldn’t tell if the slight reticence in Bethy’s voice was from shyness or because she was about to launch a particularly nasty verbal assault and was saving her strength.
“Okay,” Anna said again. “So talk.” Turning her back on the other woman, she went to her and Jenny’s porch. Putting her left heel on the raised platform, she began stretching the way she’d seen dancers do after rehearsal.
“I guess I kind of wanted to say I was sorry for, you know, like, waking you up the other morning.”
“Sorry I laughed,” Anna said in payment for the apology, though she wasn’t in the least sorry.
“I know you aren’t after my husband,” Bethy said. She said “husband” as if it were a unique and grand acquisition.
Anna lifted the other heel and stretched down over her leg, her hands folded around the instep of her foot. The black leather of the Reebok was hot both inside and out. The thin soles wouldn’t last long in country as rough as she’d traversed today.
To Bethy’s comment, she said nothing. There was no response to it that wouldn’t be more damaging than silence. It was clear Bethy thought her husband irresistible to women. If Anna said he was, Bethy would assume she was after him. If she said he wasn’t, they’d be back into carpet sweeper territory.
“I mean, you’re a lesbian. Lesbians don’t like men.”
The silence that followed was as tense as a mousetrap waiting to be sprung.
Anna straightened up and, hands on hips, turned to face Regis’s wife. “My sexual orientation is not up for public discussion,” she said evenly.
“So you are?”
Anna just looked at her.
“I mean, I don’t care. I’m not like a lot of these people. It’s not like a man being gay or anything. You don’t have to stick anything anyplace or anything. Ugh! Anyway.” Bethy gusted out the last word. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Anna said acidly.
Bethy didn’t feel the sting or, if she did, hid it admirably. “What I wanted to talk about was that other thing. What I said. I was jealous. But only because you’re so pretty and small and delicate and I was like that, but now I’m not and Regis loved me like that. I mean, like, I had bigger tits than you. I always did even when I was thin, way bigger, and he didn’t mind that, but now the rest of me is like, you know, porky and you’re still thin and that long hair. Regis really needs me, but, I don’t know,” Bethy ran down. “You know what I mean.”
Anna had a few vague notions of what Bethy Candor might mean, but she was not fool enough to put voice to them.
“Anyway, could I work out with you? You know, run, and there’s some machines maintenance has, like a kind of weight room, and we could do that.”
“Sure,” Anna said because it was the only thing she could say. The fact that Bethy probably wouldn’t follow up for a single run made it almost easy.
“Want to go now?” Bethy asked, surprising her. “Or are you all tired out from running?”
That pricked Anna’s ego. “Now would be fine,” she said.
The weight room was tucked behind a row of generators in the long low-roofed maintenance building. It was built on a concrete slab and had thick cinder-block walls. Anna guessed it had been designed to house some volatile piece of electricity-generating machinery that was never installed. The space was small, eight by eight feet, and dim. The only light coming from a high slit of a window made for ventilation. The weight-room gear was as basic as its housing: a bench with a weight rack, round weights of various sizes scattered near the bar, and a metal unit holding barbells.
“Do you want me to spot you first?” Bethy asked.
Anna didn’t know what that was and didn’t want to admit it.
“Back when I was me, I used to work out with my housemate. She was really into it. Here, I’ll show you like she showed me.”
Back when I was me. The phrase unsettled Anna. She must remember to ask Molly about it when next they talked. Pleased that Bethy had chosen not to notice her ignorance, Anna followed her instructions and lay down on the bench.
“Okay.” Bethy picked a silver bar off the floor and fitted it into the two Y-shaped holders. “Lift it off the stand.” Anna pushed it up. “Now bring it down to your chest.” The bar felt heavy, but it triggered no new pain in her healing shoulder, so she lowered it to her chest. Bethy put her hands to either side of Anna’s and pressed down; the bar slid from chest to neck, the weight on Anna’s throat.