Anna was waiting for me at my house, having made us a dinner of leafy plants with seeds and rice the color of dirt. Afterward, she rubbed my legs so hard I winced. Later, she said she had not made love five nights in a row since college, but was going to give it a whirl.
She had set the alarm on her phone for 5:45 a.m. because she had to get a lot done. She made me get up, too, allowed me a single cup of coffee, then made me put on my running clothes.
“My calves still hurt,” I told her.
“Only because you are telling yourself they hurt,” she said.
“I don’t want to run this morning,” I complained.
“Tough titties, baby.” She threw my sweatpants at me.
The morning was cold and misty. “Perfect for roadwork,” she said. She forced me to imitate her twelve-minute stretching routine right there in my driveway, setting a timer on her phone with a tone that bing-ed every thirty seconds. There were twenty-four body positions I had to hold, each one stretching some sinew or muscle inside me, each one making me wince, cuss out loud, and get light-headed.
“Atta baby,” she said. Then she explained the route we would take around my neighborhood, twice for her, once for me. Mr. Moore was getting his morning paper from his front lawn just as I was running by.
“Was that your woman? Who ran by a minute ago?” he called to me. I was panting so hard I could only nod. “What the fuck she see in you?”
A few minutes later, Anna lapped me, spanking my buttocks as she passed. “Atta baby!”
I was home and in the shower when she joined me. We kissed a lot and touched each other in our wonderful places. She instructed me on how to scrub her back and told me to come to her office at lunch so we could study our scuba workbook. I had yet to read the first few pages, but she had already completed half of it. When she had the time is beyond me.
I spent the afternoon hanging around her office, answering multiple-choice questions about scuba equipment and its uses, scrolling through some real estate listings (I still dabble), and trying to amuse the women who were bent over their graphic work. No dice. All this while Anna took a long conference call with a client in Fort Worth, Texas, designed new title pages for a series of textbooks, proofread three projects, helped her at-risk intern with her geometry homework, reorganized a supply closet, and completed the second half of the scuba assignments. We had yet to take our first classroom session.
Not that it mattered. We were the only students. We watched videos about the glorious underwater world, then got into the pool. We stood in the shallow end while Vin, our instructor, explained to us every piece of the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. That took a long time, mostly because Anna had at least five questions for every bit of gear. Finally, Vin had us put the regulators in our mouths, drop to our knees so our heads were submerged, suck in the metallic-tasting pressurized air, and blow out bubbles. The class ended with us taking a water fitness test by swimming ten laps. Anna went to the task like an Olympian and was out of the pool and drying off in a few minutes. I swam a languid breaststroke, finishing a distant second in a race of two.
Afterward, we drove to the East Village Market Mall to meet Steve Wong and MDash at Ye Olde Sweet Shoppe for milkshakes. Anna had a small cup of sugar-free nondairy yogurt with a dusting of real cinnamon. Sitting there, enjoying our treats, Anna tucked her hand in mine, a gesture of affection that did not go unnoticed.
In her bed that night, Anna was going through her pre-sleep iPad scroll when I got a text from Steve Wong.
SWong: U boffing A???
I pinched out my reply.
Moonwalker7: Your bizniz?
SWong: Yes/no?
Moonwalker7: 
SWong: U Nsane??????
Moonwalker7: 
Then MDash joined the chain—
FACEOFAMERICA: 
Moonwalker7: I was seduced
FACEOFAMERICA: “when cooks fuck the stew burns”
Moonwalker7: who says that? The village shaman?
FACEOFAMERICA: “when coaches fuck the team loses” Vince Lombardi
And so it went. Steve Wong and MDash saw no good coming out of the pairing of Anna and me. Too bad! That very night Anna and I went at it like stew cooks in Green Bay, Wisconsin, hell-bent on pleasure.
“Should we have a chat about our relationship?”
That was me asking. I was standing in Anna’s kitchenette, wrapped in only a towel after a shower, plunging her Swiss press coffee apparatus for my morning elixir. She had been up for an hour and a half and was already in her running togs. Luckily, my cross-trainers were back at my place, so no marathon training for me.
“Do you want to have a chat about our relationship?” she asked, cleaning up the few outstanding coffee grounds that had fallen onto her surgically spotless countertop.
“Are we an item?” I asked.
“What do you think?” she asked back.
“Do you think of me as your boyfriend?”
“Do you think of me as your girlfriend?”
“Is either one of us going to make a declarative statement?”
“How should I know?”
I sat down and took a sip of coffee that was too strong. “Can I have some milk for this?” I asked.
“Do you think that gunk is good for you?” She handed me a small bottle of nonpreservative almond milk, the kind that has to be used up in only a few days, the kind that is sold as “milk” but is actually liquefied nuts.
“Could you buy real milk so I can have it in my coffee?”
“Why are you so demanding?”
“Is asking for milk a demand?”
She smiled and took my face in her hands. “Do you think you’re the man for me?”
She kissed me. I was about to make a declarative statement, but she sat on my lap and undid the towel I was wearing. She didn’t get in her morning run.
Being Anna’s boyfriend was like training to be a Navy SEAL while working full-time in an Amazon fulfillment center in the Oklahoma Panhandle in tornado season. Something was going on every moment of every day. My 2:30 naps were a thing of the past.
I was exercising regularly, not just the morning jogs but also swimming in scuba class, doing yoga stretches for what grew into a half hour, and joining Anna in a hot-room spinning class that was so taxing I upchucked. The number of errands we went on was maddening, and they never came from a to-do list or shopping helper app, but were all spur of the moment, ad hoc. Incessant. If unoccupied with work, working out, or working me over in the sack, Anna was making something, looking for something, asking to see what the store had in the back, driving to an estate sale across town, or going to Home Depot to ask Steve Wong about a belt sander for me, as the top of the redwood picnic table in my backyard needed smoothing. Every day—all day—I spent following her orders, which included precise driving instructions.
“Make the next left. Don’t get off here. Take Webster Avenue. Why are you turning right now? Don’t go past the school! It’s almost three o’clock! The kids are just getting out!”
She organized a rock-climbing demonstration for Steve Wong, MDash, and me at a newly opened adventure superstore that had a climbing wall as well as an indoor rushing river to demonstrate white-water canoeing and a skydiving chamber—a huge fan that blew straight up a silo with so much force it simulated free fall for helmeted customers. Need I say that in one evening the four of us did all of them? We were there until closing. Steve Wong and MDash felt like he-men after a full day’s work wearing those unisex aprons at Home Depot. I was exhausted, having been on Anna’s overloaded schedule too long. I needed a nap.