Hers was the second dead body I’d ever seen, not counting my mother’s. My mother doesn’t count because when people died in nursing homes or hospital beds or a worn lounge chair they had ‘passed away’. Dead was bright-red blood—striking even in almost complete darkness. Hers was the second dead body I’d seen in as many months, and it was, if I’m honest, two too many for someone with my gag reflex.
‘What the fuck?’ I kept saying. Over and over, like a chant. ‘What the fuck?’
‘I can explain,’ Luna said, wiping the knife on the leg of her cargo pants, as if it were paint or chutney or nothing at all. ‘But first we need to move her body.’
She said it as though it was something I’d already agreed to—as if I’d known this was where we’d end up. And at first it made me mad. But I was tired. In my body, yes, but also in a grand, spiritual sense. And because I was tired, and I’d already sunk so much of myself into believing that this was the right place and the right time, I said, ‘Okay.’
The cycle studio was called Ride On!, and the exclamation mark was compulsory. It was located in Richmond; a neighbour-hood of Melbourne that most resembled a kind of Corporate Disneyland—everything in Richmond was designed to meet the needs of ambitious young professionals. As I stabbed the studio key towards the lock in the freezing dark of early morning, so hungover I was probably still drunk, I was reminded of the fact that I was neither ambitious nor professional, and even my youth felt questionable.
When the lock finally sprang open, I bolted up the stairs, the shadow of four consecutive negronis prodding at the back of my throat. When I made it to the landing, I ran my fingers over every light switch and snatched up the heating remote. The heater clicked on, then off, then on again, then it stalled. I stared it down, my right eye twitching in time with the machine’s little ticks, and eventually heat flooded the reception area. I leant over the desk to steady myself. I was not going to be sick. I checked the time: 5.41. Technically, I was supposed to open the door to clients at 5.45, but anyone who arrived a full fifteen minutes early to a 6 a.m. weekday cycle class was probably dangerous. The instructor and studio owner, Steffani, was also yet to arrive.
Ride On! was essentially a hallway with a collection of rooms that ran down the left-hand side. First, there was the Pilates studio. A woman called Freesia taught reformer Pilates four nights a week, and I often caught her taking photos of herself on the equipment before and after class. I say ‘caught’, but she rarely flinched when she met my gaze in the mirror. She was a micro-influencer as well as a fitness instructor, and also a floral designer. Anyone with under 100,000 followers apparently qualified for the title of micro-influencer, which seemed depressingly inclusive to me.
Anyone with under 100,000 followers apparently qualified for the title of micro-influencer, which seemed depressingly inclusive to me.
The second room was the cycle studio—the main event—which held thirty stationary bikes and an intricate lighting rig. The instructor’s bike was presented on a raised platform, which most of the instructors were fine with given they were also actors or failed actors. Classes took place in a lighting state you might describe as ‘in the club’, which tricked people into thinking that 45 minutes on a stationary bike was a fun and rebellious thing to do after populating spreadsheets all day. Behind the cycle studio were a small kitchen-cum-staffroom and two oversized changing rooms. The changing rooms were demarcated by gender, although the clientele at Ride On! was almost exclusively wealthy women.
When I started my role at Ride On! I thought that working there could fix me. But, just over a year later, Steffani was really on my case about signing up for the Ride On! teacher training, and I realised that any hope I had for transformation had vanished. I couldn’t stop making glib jokes about Ride On!, which meant that it really was all over. I had a habit of chasing belief with scepticism, but never scepticism with belief again. My pattern was: belief, scepticism, something new. I’d told Steffani I was considering the teacher training, but I was considering it about as much as I was considering moving to Norway. It was a year since my mother had died, and I was still bumping around in the dark, trying my best to make out the shapes of people and places. I wanted to keep this a secret, but the smell of grief was thick in my hair, like a bonfire or last night’s vomit.
After I’d prepared the cycle studio—powered up the club lights and selected a playlist titled ‘Empowering Weekday Wakeup’— I did a sweep of each of the changing rooms to make sure no one had forgotten their sweaty underwear the night before. When I returned to the reception desk, I heard knocking. 5.52. I ran down the stairs and unlocked the door. A woman who came to class most days stared back at me, her skin bright with little flushes of pink. She had long, dark hair and an angular body, the kind of body the early 2000s tried to strongarm women into believing was the only possible body—that is to say, despite her sharp edges, her frame also carried a pair of enviable breasts. The pace at which these thoughts appeared to me was truly shocking. The call was definitely coming from inside the house.
‘Hi,’ she said, smiling expectantly. I smiled back. After a moment, she added, ‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course! Sorry.’ I pulled the door towards me, which only left her with a small gap through which to enter the studio. She wore a fragrance I’d smelt before but couldn’t place. It was floral, but also somehow woody. Herbal, maybe. I followed her up the stairs.
‘I’m Rose,’ she said, when we made it to the landing. ‘Rose Liu.’
The computer screen was dark, but I fiddled with the mouse beside it anyway. ‘What size shoe?’
‘Eight.’
I handed her a pair of worn riding clogs. Steffani called them ‘clip-ins’, but the only way to describe them on an aesthetic level was a velcro clog. Rose smiled again and walked towards the changing rooms. She moved as if she’d never slept through an alarm, or perhaps never needed to set one in the first place. I flopped into the reception chair and pressed the computer’s power button. As the screen lit up, I picked at the balls of fabric that lined the inner seam of my leggings.
She moved as if she’d never slept through an alarm, or perhaps never needed to set one in the first place.
‘Do we have tea, Marnie?’ Steffani said, bounding up the stairs. ‘Where’s the tea?’
She dropped her duffel bag on the floor beside me and slid a sweaty can of Red Bull from the side compartment. She stared at me as she chugged from the can.
‘I’ll make some now.’ I made a feeble attempt to stand up, but my heart wasn’t in it.
‘No! Don’t bother. The stampede will be here any minute.’ I nodded.
Steffani was six foot one, blanketed in lean muscle, and had a perpetually hoarse voice. Her hair was long, thick and bleached blonde, but she got her roots done so often I never discovered what her natural colour was.
