David Handler: The shimmering blond sister

But Hal, the trainer there whom Mitch lifted with three times a week, had urged him to try yoga to improve his flexibility and core strength. Why not, figured Mitch, a recovering shlub who’d taken off nearly forty pounds of man blubber after Dorset’s resident state trooper had accepted his proposal of marriage and then dumped him in the very same week. Now that he and Des were back together again, he wanted to keep those pounds off. He ran two miles every day through the Peck’s Point Nature Preserve. Lifted. Disdained all junk food. Most junk food. Actually, he’d thought he was in great shape when he signed up for his first class with Kimberly. He’d also thought yoga would be something gentle and soothing. Way wrong on both counts.

Right now this sadistic Zen drill instructor was sending them into their eighth nonstop round of sun salutations. Mitch flowed gamely along, every muscle in his body shaking. He felt certain that he was going to die there and then. By the time Kimberly mercifully allowed them to relax into Savasana-or Corpse Pose-it was not an exaggeration. Mitch didn’t just melt into the floor. He was the floor.

Kimberly owned the Dorset Fitness Center, which occupied a spacious windowed corner of The Works, the old red brick piano works on the banks of the Connecticut River that had been converted into a food hall and shopping arcade. She was in her early thirties and quite desirable, if your taste happened to run to blue-eyed blondes who were lovely, leggy, lithe, limber… were there any other L-words to describe Kimberly? Lissome. She was definitely lissome. And she cared about people. Taught yoga twice a week to the inmates at York Correctional, the women’s prison in Niantic. She also happened to be a Farrell.

Yes, one of those Farrells.

Kimberly did have a man in her life. She was engaged to some rich guy up in Cambridge who came to see her every weekend. Or so said Hal the trainer. Hal was a twenty-something jock who’d been recruited out of Dorset High by Boston College to play wide receiver. Hal wasn’t big-no more than five feet eleven-but he told Mitch he’d possessed world-class shifty moves until he blew out his right knee freshman year. He’d dropped out of BC after that. Returned home to Dorset and, near as Mitch could tell, morphed into the village’s preeminent stud muffin. Hal Chapman seemed to have his nightly pick of the college girls, secretaries and divorcees who found their way to the Connecticut shoreline every summer. This despite his truly appalling skullet haircut-a shaved head with a full-tilt mullet in back-and his rather broad snow shovel of a jaw. Hal also wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he had broad shoulders, slim hips, a complete six-pack of abs and an easy, upbeat personality. The ladies loved him.

As the class lay there in Savasana Kimberly urged each of them to gaze inside with their third eye and focus on their intention. Mostly, Mitch’s intention had been to survive until dinner. Although he was learning to use these introspective moments to connect more deeply with his new job. Mitch had been lead film critic for New York’s most prestigious newspaper. When the paper got taken over by a huge media conglomerate, they’d made him over into their resident cutesy cable news quote-machine whore. Or tried. But he’d walked away from all of that-handed in his license to shill and rejoined his old editor, Lacy Nickerson, who’d just launched a prestigious e-zine devoted to thoughtful criticism of the arts. His intention now was to write about whatever was on his mind. Hold nothing back. Just run with it. Working for Lacy meant less money, but who wasn’t working for less money these days? Besides, he had a contract to complete another film reference volume, Ants In Her Plants, which he hoped would do for screwball comedies what his first three bestselling guides had done for sci-fi, crime and the western. And now he was free to enjoy life in his antique post-and-beam caretaker’s cottage out on Big Sister Island. He puttered in his garden. Played the blues on his beloved sky blue Fender Stratocaster. And spent as much time as he could with the lady in his life. All talk of marriage was off the table. They were just letting it happen. Mitch, the Jewish movie critic from New York City. Des, the West Point graduate who was six feet one, black and knew eighteen different ways to kill him with her bare hands.

After Savasana they sat cross-legged on their mats and said “Namaste.” Then Mitch drank down an entire liter of mineral water and staggered to the showers, his arms so tired he could barely raise them over his head to shampoo his hair. But he did feel unbelievably mellow as he toweled off and put on his complimentary red Saw IV T-shirt, baggy shorts and rubber flip flops.

Hal was out on the floor working out a sexy young redhead in spandex. “Later, bro,” he exclaimed, bumping knucks as Mitch oozed on by. Hal had a tendency to lay on the “bro” thing a bit thick, but it didn’t really bother Mitch. Nothing bothered Mitch after yoga class.

The vast food hall, with its fragrant stalls and coffee bar and Parisian style seating area, was totally mobbed. It was a Friday afternoon, and during the summer the population of this quaint, historic New England village at the mouth of the Connecticut River doubled. It also developed a showier, more Hamptons vibe. Dozens of fashionably dressed young women with tanned legs and salon-streaked hair sat drinking iced mocha-whatevers and talking loudly on their cell phones. Mitch found himself looking forward to Labor Day, when Dorset’s population would return to its normal seven thousand cranky Yankees.

Mitch bought some fresh buffalo mozzarella from Christine to go with the tomatoes and basil that were growing in his garden. Then he ambled over to the fish market in search of something to throw on the grill that night. As he stood there trying to choose between the striped bass and the sushi-grade tuna, Mitch found himself shooting glances at the woman next to him. She was an attractive, frosted blonde in her late forties or early fifties, fashionably put together in an aqua-colored silk top, tailored white slacks and a pair of Manolo Blahnik gold sandals that had to run at least six hundred dollars. The Hermes handbag she was clutching would easily go for at least twice that.

Mitch smiled to himself, thinking: Yet another one. Whenever he saw a shapely, good-looking blonde of a certain age, he always thought of Beth Lapidus, the sexy divorcee who’d lived in the apartment across the hall from him in Stuyvesant Town when he was thirteen. She and her son Kenny-a blinky, twerpy little ten-year-old whose nickname on the playground was Spiny. Beth Lapidus held an exalted place in the pantheon of Mitch’s romantic life. She was his first true love. The unwitting object of his sexual awakening. God, how he’d adored her. Whenever he’d heard Beth’s hallway door slam shut, he’d race to his bedroom window to watch her stride across the Oval, her hips swaying, blond hair shimmering in the sunlight. Mitch was heartbroken-truly devastated-when she got married to a rich Park Avenue eye doctor and moved to Scarsdale. He never saw her again.

Maybe it was the yogic glow on his face. Or maybe it was his stint as a big-time TV celebrity. But this particular frosted blonde was smiling at Mitch.

“Why, Mitchell Berger, it is you, isn’t it?” Her voice was soft and slightly trembly. “I used to live across the hall from you in Stuyvesant Town. Beth Breslauer? I was Beth Lapidus then. My boy, Kenny, was always so fond of you.”

Mitch swallowed, dumbstruck. Because this wasn’t really happening. He was still on his mat in Savasana. Had to be… Omm…

“I’d heard that you had a place in Dorset,” she went on. “I’ve been hoping we’d run into each other. I figured it was just a matter of time.”