Tales from the Yoga Studio by Rain Mitchell Read Free Book Online

everyone starts filing out, she stays on her back and starts doing some sit-ups. There’s probably something anti-yoga about doing a sit-up, but too bad. Plus, it lets her stay a little low-profile. She hates it when she gets recognized and someone starts making a fuss over her and hates it even more when no one does. Lose-lose.
    Ever since she lost the baby eight months ago and went into a very well-deserved depression, everybody’s been saying: Try yoga, try yoga, try yoga. Like what? That’s going to make her un-miscarry? It reminds her of the kinds of moronic things people said when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her mother should be drinking green tea. She should stop eating sugar. Has she tried aromatherapy? It’s not a headache , she always felt like screaming. It’s cancer!
    Good old L.A. Everyone’s got the answer to everything, and she wishes that just once it didn’t come down to the same hocuspocus New Age holistic bullshit. There’s nothing she loves more than hearing advice about an herbal cure for cancer and the horrors of the legitimate medical profession ( Western medicine is inhumane! ) from someone whose face, body, and teeth indicate she’s spent more time in hospitals than Dr. Kildare.
    She’s up to one hundred sit-ups and she’s not stopping until she does another one hundred.
    Another thing is Silver Lake. She’d never been up here before, even though she lives nearby in Los Feliz, but two weeks ago, when she was driving around in the aimless way she’s taken to doing in the past month or so—afternoons can be surprisingly long when you’re not working and your husband is a doctor—she headed up this way. She was shocked by the laid-back atmosphere, a crazy mix of new hippie, old-style rock-and-roll, and California cool, all blended in with sidewalk cafés and vintage clothes shops, loopy murals, and a surprising lack of chain stores. Everybody seemed to be hanging out. Like her, but less guilty about it. She made a mental note when she passed the yoga studio. Maybe this was what she needed. An out-of-the-way place where everyone was low-key and artsy-fartsy enough to guarantee a small class of eccentrics who never watch TV and wouldn’t recognize her from her X.C.I.A. glory days. Wrong again. The classroom was jammed, half the students looked as if they stepped off the cover of Yoga Journal or Vogue , and a few of them did a double take and whispered when they saw her walk in. And okay, she still gets a charge from that, but not when she’s about to make an ass of herself trying to stand on her head. (Who knew she’d find it so easy?)
    Out in the reception, the crowd has thinned, but the beauty with the black hacked-off hairdo and tribal tattoos on her biceps who was practicing next to her is still there, chatting with a little group, including the teacher. Who, Imani must admit, is also a beauty. She has dirty-blond hair and well-bred bone structure, intelligence and kindness that radiate off her in waves.
    The tattoo girl introduces herself—Katherine—and is so friendly, Imani doesn’t mind when she says, “I recognized you right away. And awesome padangustasana, by the way.”
    Imani can’t help but laugh at that. “Pada what ? ” she says. Half the poses were referred to with animal names and the rest with this pretentious language that was obviously Sanskrit. Or meant to sound like it.
    â€œWait. You don’t mean that was your first class, do you? ” Katherine asks.
    The incredulity in her voice is maybe the most flattering thing Imani’s heard since the L.A. Times TV critic referred to her as “Halle Berry—if Halle Berry could act.”
    â€œGuilty.”
    â€œOh, my God! You were amazing!” This is from the short, brown-haired woman giving off heavy “wannabe” vibes. D-girl, obviously. “You are a total natural. And can I just say,