She drove out to Venice behind a Kharmann Ghia with a license plate that read BURRRPP. She knew the route by heart so she didn’t even have to concentrate. She thought she was a wonderful driver, and she wished she could build a healthy self-esteem from that foundation. When it got down to the larger issues, though, she didn’t think believing in yourself as a driver meant that much.

With the sunroof open, the windows down, and the radio up full blast, Suzanne felt at peace. She had once decided that God was in her car radio, and He would play her songs she liked when He was happiest with her. The week before—when God was evidently not that happy with her—she had blown out her amplifier playing a Pretenders tape. The speakers had gone dead after she went over a speed bump during “Middle of the Road,” and she’d driven around after that in a daze of silence. She’d had it repaired the next day, and now the music—Bob Seger’s “Still the Same” as she headed west on Olympic—was so loud it made her legs vibrate. She was always a little sad when she turned onto Lincoln Boulevard, because it meant she had only one complete song left before she got to Gold’s Gym.

She liked going to the gym, or rather, she liked having been to the gym, and the only way to have been was to go. She liked that little blip that she got between her shoulder and her triceps from lifting weights. Still, she knew that no matter how much work you did, the only way to get your body to look really great was to eat right. Suzanne only knew how to eat wrong.

She had always eaten wrong. It was a tradition in her family. Dairy, red meat, salt, sugar, caffeine, and fried everything: American food. She knew what it did to you, but she couldn’t do without it for too long. Her diets lasted until about four thirty in the afternoon, when she couldn’t stand it anymore and ate something absurd like teriyaki beef jerky.

She didn’t like preparing food or sitting down to a meal, maybe because when she was young her mother had the children sit and “visit” after the meals. Suzanne felt that eating was a private thing that should be done in corners or in cars. Food was simply fuel for the body. Her car didn’t “visit” with the other cars when she filled its gas tank. She smiled as she drove past McDonald’s and Jack in the Box and smelled their familiar sodium fumes.

She got to Gold’s Gym fifteen minutes late and saw her trainer Michelle waiting in front. Michelle was a muscular blond girl from back east who had been a PCP junkie and who now used the gym to give her what drugs had.

“Sorry,” said Suzanne.