The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part V

The line of cars waiting to negotiate the traffic roundabout at the end of Music Row stretched for three long blocks.

“My god, how much further,” Stan asked, trading barks with a German Shepherd in a pick-up truck beside us. “I gotta piss.”

Constructed five years earlier, the Music Row Roundabout was a valiant but vain attempt at auto vehicular cross-culturalism. Its intended purpose had been to ease the intersection of six streets at the top of the Row, the pair of avenues on which the majority of Nashville’s recording studios, record labels and music publishing houses resided. On paper, the Roundabout must have seemed like a fine plan but, in reality, its requisite winner-take-all approach to motoring, so exciting when circumventing the Arc De Triomphe or Parliament Square, did not suit the city's motorists, a particularly passive/aggressive group long accustomed to engaging in superfluous head nods and hand signals for communication with fellow drivers. The consequent brou-ha-ha during rush hour was a cacophony of car horns and obscenities blurred by the unmistakable tang of burning brake pads. Not helping matters was a sculpture entiled 'Musica,' which rose 60 feet from the island in the middle of the Roundabout, obscuring sight lines and attracting tourists with its ten naked lizard-like nymphs, their oversized genitalia swaying in the wind. In spite of its posted 15 mile per hour speed limit, the Roundabout had become the city's number one location for accidents and moving violations.

Up ahead, the traffic began giving way. I could just make out the nipples on one of the female nymphs. “Almost there,” I reassured Stan. “Maybe you should ease up on the brandy.” He was halfway through the bottle of E&J he had opened this afternoon at the barn.

“Maybe you should go suck an egg,” he grimaced.

Ten minutes later we parked in front of Cummins Station, one of the first in Nashville’s long line of former industrial manufacturing buildings now renovated into office space. After Stan noisily relieved himself in a flower bed, we made our way inside and took a freight elevator down to the first floor. We followed the scent of Nag Champa incense to the end of a massive corridor and stepped into a bright room with large windows overlooking an abandoned rail yard. The floors were cork, the walls lime and orange, and the hypnotic drone of sitars and synthesizer floated in from an adjacent room. A large shelving unit containing multiple rolled rubber mats of various colors stood to our left; in front of us, a reception desk of birch, glass and soft angles was empty and completely free of clutter save for one tall white orchid, swooning to one side as if overcome with emotion.

“I smell pussy,” whispered Stan, his nose twitching.

I stuck my head around the corner of the wall behind the bookshelf. A group of twelve women in a rainbow of form-fitting clothing was spread around the room, each of them balanced on one leg and bent over at a ninety degree angle, arms out at their sides, their free legs stuck out straight behind them, like a squadron of Lycra swans about to take flight.

A chestnut-haired Jewess walked amongst the group, correcting the angles of legs and arms, intoning in a sing-song voice, “OK ladies flat backs, flat backs now stay here, stay here, breathing into the pose, now we’re cultivating our attention, cultivating our attention to the present moment. Good. Now on the next exhale bringing the right foot back to the floor, Warrior One, arms in prayer position over your head, now arms down to your third eye, your forehead, third eye, yes, that’s good, now feet back to Mountain Pose, hands to your heart...” The canned melody of a cell phone suddenly cut the air in the room. One of the women broke position and scurried over to a corner to answer it.

The Jewess barely acknowledged the distraction. “Outside Trina, outside,” she pointed towards the door, then paused to pull gently on one of the student’s shoulders. She walked back to the front of the room. “Now inhale, lift you arms over your head, fold over your chin, your truth, yes, inhale, bending your knees, now your right foot back, left foot back, now into Downward Dog, let your knees kiss the earth, now fold back into Child’s Pose...” She spotted me. Her face registered surprise for a moment, then softened again. She held my gaze and continued speaking to the class. “OK. We’re going to stay here for awhile, we’re breathing, we’re breathing...”

Moments later she walked into the reception area and stopped in front of us, her hands on her hips. “David Mead,” she apprised, folding her hands across her chest. “Nice of you to show up. You’re about seven years late.”

“Woah,” said Stan.

Liz Workman had soft, almond-shaped eyes and the body of a dancer. We both lived in New York once. In between classes at Columbia and commuting from the Upper West Side to my apartment in the East Village, she had usually managed to burn about 4,000 calories a day. In a gym, on a bike, at the running path around the Central Park reservoir, in a yoga studio... Liz was all action.

“This is my dog, Stan.” Stan hated it when I used him as a social lubricant. I hoped he could see that I was in a bind.

She crouched down and stroked his head several times. “Stan. That sounds like a detective or something. Would you mind if I call you Stanley?”

“You can call me Doryce,” said Stan, his eyes half-closed under the pleasure of her caresses, nose twitching uncontrollably, “if you want.”

“What a big nose you have,” she said.

“Ahem. So,” I began, “I know this is kind of awkward, and I really hate to bother you.”

“It’s no bother,” she replied, standing back up. “Look, I’m not mad at you anymore. You can stop hunching.”

I straightened my back and cracked my knuckles.

“Whatever happened, it’s fine. Let’s be in the present moment. You have come here for a reason, Grasshopper” she smiled, spreading her arms, “ now talk to the fucking Goddess.”

She was radiant. “Could I still buy you that sushi I promised you seven years ago?”

“Ha.” She considered for a moment. “How about this. I will allow you to chaperon Stan and I to dinner. I get to choose the place.”

“Great.”

"And you can pay," she added.

"Fine."

“‘A woman is like a tea bag,’“ quoth Stan, “‘you cannot tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.’“

“Sylvia Plath?” asked Liz.

“Nancy Reagan,” cooed Stan.

“’Baby, you can drive my car,’” she smiled, and walked back into the studio to finish her class.