At the time, the woman at the gym was young, still in school, as I recall, or maybe just out of school. Art school. I remember very clearly what she looked like because she was so pretty, with features that were vivid and dramatic even without a touch of makeup, and how I was reminded of a story about a movie director saying about a child actress that she shouldn’t be filmed wearing all that makeup, only to be told that little Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t wearing any makeup.

The woman at the gym was also blessed with what would have been a great body even without all the effort she spent working out. Over time, though, her looks have changed, I wouldn’t say drastically but more than most people’s do. In middle age she is toned but overweight, her precise features have blurred, the dazzle is gone. No one is more aware of this than she is. In the locker room she sits hunched and swathed in towels with a look of grievance on her face. Why do they have to have all these mirrors in here, why do the lights have to be this fucking bright?

I agree about the lights. They are fucking bright. But her remark about the mirrors confuses me. I have no trouble ignoring them.

How was it possible, the woman in the locker room wanted to know, for a person to work out every day and watch every bite she ate and still not lose weight. She now ate half of what she used to eat, she said, but every year she had to eat less just to keep from becoming a blimp. At this rate, she’d soon be down to a carrot and a hard-boiled egg a day. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t hurt, she said, but when her stomach was empty it was like a rat trying to gnaw its way out of there, at night sometimes it was so bad that she couldn’t sleep. She knew it sounded crazy, the woman in the locker room said, but when her sister got cancer and lost thirty pounds she couldn’t help wishing it would happen to her. And was it so crazy? After all, always hating the way she looked, always fighting against her own body and always, always losing the battle meant that she was depressed all the time, more depressed than her sister had been about getting cancer. And anyway her sister was fine now.