A Perfect Life Read Free

shoulder shrugs, and she did leg work holding thirty-pound weights in each hand. Now she was ready for the barbell.
    After she had returned the dumbbells to their spot beside the dresser, she carried the barbell to the center of the room and faced the mirror. She always worked out in the nude, and she always waited until the last two exercises—the ones with heavy weights—to watch herself in the mirror. By that point, she was pumped up. The muscles in her arms and legs were gorged with blood and tight beneath skin that glistened with sweat.
    Kate began to watch herself at this point in the workout because, she believed, it gave her a view of what she would look like in just a few weeks. Perfection was, in her mind,
always
just a few weeks away. And that encouraged her to go on, to push harder every day to get there. But she also waited for the mirror until the last two exercises for another reason.
    Watching her engorged muscles work and seeing the veins grow beneath wet skin, it was—well, she wondered if other women found it arousing to pump weights alone in their bedrooms. As she moved the heavy weights up and down, she wondered if her arousal was in anticipation of the way men would react when she
was
perfect, or was it some sort of self-worship, maybe even latent tendencies?
    She smiled at herself in the mirror as she arched her back to curl the barbell up where cool steel pressed against the tops of her breasts. After setting the weights on the rug at her feet, she stretched out her lower back and straightened up. Her heart raced; her chest expanded, her breasts rising with each breath. She smiled and wondered if the young shrink at the hospital, if Dr. Scott Thomas, could explain why she enjoyed watching herself. Now that he was in her head, Kate imagined him lying on the bed watching her pump weights, imagined his eyes transfixed as her perfect breasts rose and fell with every breath. He was cute. Some of the other nurses had told her that Dr. Thomas had been some kind of almost Olympic-class wrestler in college.
    Kate grabbed the beach towel off the floor and spread it carefully over her bedspread before lying down. She lightly touched the fingertips of her left hand to her collarbone, then traced a wandering path to her nipple. Now, as she concentrated on the last few seconds of her image in the mirror, she used her full hand to massage perspiration into her right breast. She closed her eyes and touched herself with her other hand. Seconds passed, then minutes. Kate hovered at the edge of release, but had begun to believe it wasn't going to come when the phone rang.
    Kate glanced at her bedside clock. It was seventeen minutes past one in the morning, and suddenly each ring of the phone seemed to pour her full of everything she needed. Kate was usually quiet when she was alone, but now she began to whisper words and utter sounds as if encouraging a lover. On the eighth ring, Kate Billings filled to overflowing and gave herself over to the mixture of explosion and release that her imagination and her fingers had been seeking.
    When her breathing had slowed, Kate leaned over and picked up the receiver. She punched in *69 and listened. She stood and walked over to stand in front of her mirror as she dialed the number recited by the operator's mechanical voice.
    Her friend answered on the first ring. Classical music floated through the earpiece, and Kate smiled at her reflection.
     
    Sirens squealed. The dark lawn tilted, and a mountain of bright flames morphed into a vinyl hospital sofa that melted into the rough shape of a Flexible Flyer. White tile flooring suddenly swept downward and curved out of sight like an enclosed roller coaster. The sled began to slip and swirl. Sirens wailed again from somewhere far away.
    Scott needed it to stop.
    The phone's ringing penetrated his sleep and pushed it aside. Scott reached over and fumbled among jumbled stacks of books and papers for the receiver. He knocked it off the