“Okay, athletes! It’s hose day!”

It was five in the morning, but an audible whoot of excitement went up from the fifteen people gathered in the small gymnasium. Outside, it was below zero, wind howling and thumping against the small windows above the basketball hoop. 

The vision hole Paulina had drawn with the heel of a gloved hand on her iced over windshield hadn’t spread a single millimeter in the thirty minutes it had taken her to pick up her best friend Frankie and drive them to this miserable gym sandwiched between the Dollar Store and the Buckaroo movie theater—the “Buck” to Cheyenne locals. It was at the Buck that Paulina had lost her virginity fifteen years earlier to a coked up rodeo rider from Frontier Days who had just turned eighteen that morning. Frankie had stood guard in front of the theater door.

“I find these mornings exhilarating,” Frankie was saying, rubbing her mittened hands together. “We’re doing something new together. It’s good for us!” Even though Paulina’s annoyance with Frankie’s morning enthusiasm was as longstanding as their friendship, she secretly adored it. Frankie’s smile this morning was so full of absurd delight that Paulina felt her heart poke up into her throat. She would drive to Siberia, North Dakota, even Texas—anywhere, really—for her pain in the ass best friend who, since her marriage to Richie, had lost some of her dazzle. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Paulina whispered back to Frankie, who sat rapt, her lean legs crossed, staring up at Matthias, the giant, ginger-haired Fireman’s Workout coach. He was so tall everyone had to stand on tiptoes for the compulsory high five before beginning sixty minutes of “drills.” If you did get trapped in a fire, Paulina thought, a good strategy would be to scream at Matthias to stand in front of your lowest window as you crawled out onto his back to be spirited safely away before the house crumbled to ash behind you. No hoses required. His biceps were the size of an average woman’s thigh.

“Shhhh,” Frankie said, her eyes tracking Matthias like a cat following a laser pointer. He had just picked up a rope that looked like a fat, mice-stuffed cobra, made of wool and coiled end to end. The black leather tip on the end reminded Paulina of an enema, only big enough for an elephant. Matthias held the faux hose in his hands like a precious artifact. 

“This is almost the weight of a typical fire hose used for your average house fire,” he told the group. Paulina wondered what made a fire larger than average. Bigger flames? Higher body count? Like a fire at a mall?

“I sold that to him at Rope and Saddle,” Frankie said. This was the rodeo supply store where she’d worked for two weeks as a cashier, probably her tenth job in as many months. She said it like she was confessing to selling him jumbo sized condoms. 

“That’s not a hose!” Paulina answered in an angry whisper, but her friend wasn’t listening. Frankie’s long dark lashes blinked, blinked again. Her upturned nose; her pale, poreless skin that hadn’t aged since junior high; her cheeks still girlish and plump; her thick black hair that, even at thirty-five, was a nearly solid wall of color—only a few wisps of gray and only at the roots.

“I’m breaking up with you,” Paulina said into Frankie’s ear. “Don’t shush me again.” There was no way she was picking up that limp phallic toy rope and walking anywhere with it draped across her shoulders, which is what Matthias was demonstrating now, muscles straining under his tight, long sleeve shirt. He moved like a buff zombie across the length of the gym—more of a fast, low to the ground shuffle, no small task for such a large man—and then back. 

“This is lighter than an actual fire hose, of course,” he said, winking. Paulina hated him. “But it will give you an idea of how it would feel to run into a fire with a hose on your back.” 

“Carry my burden,” Frankie whispered, closing her eyes. Everyone but Paulina was wholly enthralled. Even the men appeared awestruck. As for Paulina, she was still sore from last week’s “simulated sandbag toss,” necessary in case water replaced fire as the immediate danger, and a running exercise called “doing lines,” which made Paulina think of her trembling, drugged out rodeo boy: the only time she’d slept with a man other than her husband or done cocaine, a single line off the back of an empty popcorn container, washed down with a swig of warm Dr. Pepper. She hadn’t liked the feeling, as if the top of her head were lifted off. But it was preferable to the fire in her lungs as she heaved her ass back and forth from line to line for what appeared to be no reason whatsoever.

Frankie, of course, had been gleeful. “Reminds me of basketball practice!” she shouted, sprinting past Paulina, already three line laps ahead. Frankie, despite her scrappy size, had been an ace player, remembered for her winning three-point shot in the last second of East High’s 1991 championship win against Carey. Paulina, six inches taller, could hardly dribble the ball without falling over. 

Genetics could be deeply unfair.

After that first week of fireman drills—“They should call it fire people,” complained her oldest daughter, a card-carrying member of the language police—Paulina had hoped that Frankie would abandon this early morning bonding and replace it with a late, liquid breakfast of two-for-one margaritas at Guadalajara, the only Mexican restaurant in town. Or maybe some garage sale thrifting, pawing through other people’s discarded crap. Anything but this. Putting the dishes away after dinner last night, she’d felt like her limbs were made of tin.

What might next week’s exercises involve? Simulated electrical shocks in case you were ever interrogated by your own increasingly fascist government? She didn’t even whisper that to Frankie; half the room wore MAGA hats.

Now they were standing up, stretching—okay, this was hopeful—although Paulina’s neck made an audible crunching sound, the kind she heard daily at her morning breakfast table, her three girls snorting through bowls of cereal, all on their devices, forcing her or their father to ask the same questions at least three times before someone lost their temper. Usually Paulina.

It was intimidating, this pack of fit bodies, Matthias’s “athletes,” the likes of which she’d never seen in Cheyenne, and she’d lived here all her life. Paulina wondered where they came from, such a critical mass of them that a pre-dawn class in the dead of winter with the wind chill in the negative double digits was full. Did they work at the capitol? Maybe they were lawyers, politicians, overpaid state employees trying to drag Wyoming out of the dark ages in all the relevant categories that might dissuade or encourage new residents: schools, restaurants, tourism, HOTTIES. Well, there’s no real estate tax, her husband Earl liked to say, an insufficient incentive in Paulina’s view. 

“Okay, let’s line up!” Matthias shouted, clapping his enormous hands. Time to move fake hoses to fake extinguish some fake fire.

“Wait,” Paulina said, “is this going to be like Mrs. Chang’s dance class, where we have to go one at a time?” The theme song from Flashdance began playing in her head. She felt hives coming on.

“Dunno.” Frankie stepped away, eager to get to the front of the line.

Paulina panicked. It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to do this; she didn’t know if she could, and she didn’t want a host of people she didn’t know—all with asses tighter than hers—watch her try and fail. She’d had three babies over a decade and had never lost the pounds she’d gained for each. This didn’t bother her; she had happily taken to her role as a stay-at-home mother who helped her husband with the books for his veterinary clinic. Occasionally, she was called upon to help with the birth of a calf and did so joyfully. Her home life growing up had been so chaotic, the learning curve was steep; she had a lot to practice and absorb. 

“I want to give you peace,” Earl had said in an exchange of private vows before their wedding ceremony, while Frankie trembled with happiness the entire time. Earl didn’t know the half of what had happened to Paulina. Only Frankie did. 

 So, oh well, she’d never been an avid exerciser, but Frankie always wanted a partner and that was Paulina. They did step aerobics in the 1990s, which meant the song “Push It,” by Salt-N-Pepa; Pilates in the early 2000s, which felt impossible, but was at least less sweaty; spinning mid-decade, which was gross; CrossFit a few years ago. For months, Frankie would only eat bison jerky and boiled eggs until Paulina threatened to crumble a Krispy Kreme into one of her butter coffees. And now this shit. She’d been decent at dance, but that was decades ago.

These days, when Paulina slept on her side, her stomach spread out alongside her like pancake batter she could press her palm into, like the clay prints kids made in preschool so their parents could remember how small and sweet they were. Paulina couldn’t be vain in the way Frankie could be but wasn’t: Frankie with her flat-chested, nymphish body, her sharp jawline and doe eyes, an out of place Audrey Hepburn, all of which she took for granted because she didn’t see it. Paulina was “plain,” as she was proud of saying: mousy brown hair, big blue eyes (that was a definite asset), an exaggerated pear shape, and a husband who loved to go down on her. This vindicated, in her mind, all other possible physical failings. Whatever else, Paulina had Earl’s full attention. Frankie drew every man’s attention, and it had done her no favors.

A thirtysomething guy with a man bun and arms covered in rose tattoos in various arrangements—some pierced by arrows, others dripping blood—struggled down the length of the gym, dropped to his knees, then dragged the hose back behind him. “Fuck, that was hard,” he said, stating the obvious. 

Now it was Frankie’s turn. She bounced up and down, toe to heel, cracked her knuckles, rolled her neck in one direction and then the other. Paulina was sure the hose weighed more than Frankie by a lot. How was this going to go? But she also knew her friend would figure it out, as she always did, and Paulina got a proud thrill watching her do so.

Matthias draped the hose gently over Frankie’s pointy shoulders, and she began to walk, slowly at first, and under so much strain you could predict every move she made before she made it, the muscles under clothes gripping bone, sweat stain spreading on her back. At the other end of the gym, she turned slowly, slowly, a half smile on her face, chest heaving, and began to walk back toward them, this time with the confidence that only a petite woman hauling a fire hose could exude. 

“Wow,” Matthias said, and the mesmerized fit flock nodded in robotic agreement. The guy with the man bun looked at the suddenly very fascinating floor. Paulina swelled with pride. That was Frankie; her size and beauty meant people constantly underestimated her. She was wonderful that way.

Frankie began to struggle in the final meters. Paulina didn’t want to watch. Her friend’s limbs were shaking, she was gritting her teeth, her face literally draining sweat. That’s when Paulina—and everyone else—noticed the bruises, underneath the makeup running in thick lines down Frankie’s face and neck. These bruises were yellow, perhaps faded, but clearly bruises. Paulina couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed before. Now she knew why she hadn’t seen Frankie for a week. Her knees felt liquid, her spine suddenly unreliable. She felt the shift in the air; people who had been impressed with Frankie’s strength and will were now judging her. Paulina was familiar with the logic. Why stay with such a husband? Why not tell anyone? What a shame, such a smart girl making such bad choices, tsk tsk. Paulina felt so lifted by anger and shock—almost liberated—that she started to hoot and holler and clap: “You got it, girl! You fucking did it!” Then, several others began a light golf clap that grew louder, looking at Matthias, who was silent and stupid-looking.

Frankie looked up, saw Paulina’s face, and let the rope fall from her shoulders behind her before she ran from the room. Paulina quickly collected their gym bags and followed, leaving the gaping, silent strangers to do jump squats or whatever the fuck else was on the day’s agenda. 

Frankie was standing in the hallway, still out of breath. “Let’s go,” she said, snatching her bag. 

On the drive home, Frankie pulled a long black scarf from her bag and looped it around her neck. 

 “Want to get a latte?” Paulina asked.

Frankie shook her head. “I have to get to work.”

“But hours from now, right? Who’s taking you? Do you need a ride?”

Silence hung between them. Paulina knew to wait. After a few long minutes, they pulled into the driveway of Frankie’s shit shoebox of a house. In the passenger seat, Frankie shrugged and said, “Well, he’s seeing someone, that I know.” Across the street, the oil refinery was pumping out world-killing, economy-fueling smoke; living down here must feel like sucking from a gas pump each time you took a breath. At this hour, before the sun could blast away some of the ugly, it looked like a scene from a postapocalyptic movie. Frankie’s Miata sat crumpled in the driveway, headlight dangling like an eye from a busted socket. It had been a few weeks since Richie wrecked it.

“Insurance?” Paulina had asked, knowing the answer.

“Was he drunk?” Frankie hadn’t been sure. 

Frankie told Paulina she’d found a bunch of photos on their shared computer while looking for flights to Las Vegas as a surprise for Richie’s fortieth birthday and their first anniversary. “She’s blonde. Huge tits. The exact opposite of me.”

“Maybe it’s just porn,” Paulina said, trying to be reassuring.

“Yeah, because you’d love to find out that Earl was jerking off to someone who looked nothing like you.”

Frankie’s anger rose like a bright flash, another behavioral tick that had started since her marriage, and Paulina knew it was shame, anger’s longer, nastier shadow. I’ll take your burden, girl, she thought. 

“That’s not what I meant,” she told her friend. “Listen, come and stay with us.”

Paulina was exhausted and hungry and her shoulders ached. Exercise made her emotional; another reason she didn’t like to do it. All the feelings you were trying to keep in check moved out of your skin along with your sweat. 

 “He’s hurting you!” she blurted. “He doesn’t have the right to do that to you!”

“I love you, Paulie,” Frankie said. She opened the door, stepped out of the car, and gave Paulina what looked like a thumbs up, although it was hard to tell in her mittens, before disappearing into the dark house.

“Goddammit,” Paulina said. She lingered in the driveway until she saw the edge of a curtain pull back slightly and then fall closed. She drove home blinking away tears, the sun finally emerging over a raft of gray cloud to make the ice lining I-80 sparkle, which was all the beauty this interstate had to offer in a deep freeze.

  *

That night she asked her eldest daughter, Francesca (named after Frankie), about the hipsters at her fitness class. She was trying to make a meaningful connection with her increasingly angry and withdrawn teenager who had the soft, open face of her father, complete with dimples and light brown eyes, and the unyielding personality of her mother. 

“Do you think they’re refugees from Denver?” Paulina wondered. She flicked a drop of water into the pan, checking to see if the oil sizzled. Frankie wouldn’t text her back, wouldn’t answer her phone. The disconnect rattled her, made her want to keep the peace at home, but she should have chosen Daisy, who was still playing with dolls and telling herself stories out loud and asking to wear pigtails in her hair at age ten; or stoic eight-year-old Pearl, who locked herself in the bathroom under the pretext that she was doing her chores. Paulina would crack the door open hours later and find her perched on the radiator, reading. Sorry, Mom, she’d say, scrambling down. The toilet can wait, Paulina would answer. Finish your book, baby. She was desperate that her children feel free to be who they were, but she wondered if that would bite her in the ass. Francesca was a live wire, not unlike her namesake.

“MOM! Refugees are a protected category of people. What the fuck?”

“It’s a metaphor, a figure of speech or whatever. And don’t say fuck.” Paulina placed a few Beyond Burgers in the pan—the most expensive butt plug of all time, as Earl described them—because all three kids had become violent vegetarians. 

I see a pig and I see bacon, Frankie liked to say. Paulina agreed. Pigs were nasty little fuckers anyway.

“It’s damaging communication,” Francesca told her mother, twisting her nose ring. “It’s like saying you’re paralyzed with fear or crippled by sadness.”

“And that is…” Beyond Burgers looked and tasted like the mud patties she had made as a kid.

“It’s ableist, Mom, HELLO. All bodies have value. Did you grow up under a rock?”

“I grew up here.” What she didn’t say: I didn’t grow up, I never had that privilege, you ungrateful shit. She was guilty and angry at once. “Jesus Christ.” 

“That’s rich coming from a Mormon.”

“Ex,” Paulina said sharply, and the tone of her voice made Francesca go silent. 

Later, Earl offered to give her a massage, but she couldn’t get in the mood. He settled back against the headboard, pants unzipped, pointing at his erection.

“Thoughts?” 

“I can’t deal with your boner right now, sorry,” Paulina said. Whenever she knew she wasn’t pleasing him, she felt a jolt of panic; what would the punishment be? But with Earl, there wasn’t one. It hadn’t been the only reason she married him, but fifteen years on, it was what kept them together when things got shaky. Bodies sag, kids sap your energy, sex gets weird, everyone has a “change of life,” although women were the only ones who copped to it. But a truly sweet man will always be sweet, she thought. It was the ones who pretended to be sweet you needed to watch out for. Like pretty houses that are crumbling inside, Frankie had said once, and it was so often true. Scratch the nice paint and there’d be rotting wood beneath. Men like her father, like her brother. Men like everyone Frankie had ever dated, including the useless Richie, whom she’d married in Las Vegas after knowing him a whole two hours. We weren’t drunk, though, Frankie said, as if that mattered. It was love at first sight.

 When Earl first met Richie, at an awkward dinner during which Richie used his mashed potatoes as an ashtray, he turned to Paulina once they were heading home and told her, “I know Cheyenne isn’t exactly a Tinder hot spot, but …” Before he could finish, Paulina burst into tears. Her precious friend, whom she loved like no other—not her children, nor her long suffering and long dead mother—was now legally tied to a total loser who never took his hand off some part of Frankie and looked as if he wanted to eat her alive. “He’s a predator,” she told Earl, who thought she was overreacting. She did not agree.  

“It’s cool,” Earl said now, and because it was him, it was. He kissed her and snuggled up next to her so she could put her hand on his head. His curly blonde hair was thinning slightly at the top, but his body was firm as a plank; he had a great ass. He also had the kind of face that made you want to sit down and talk to him, know him. A face you’d be happy to wake up next to for the rest of your life. 

“Hey,” she said, turning to grab her tub of hand lotion off the nightstand. “Do you ever have to give a horse an enema?” She was thinking about the ersatz fire hose again. “Do they even get constipated from eating all those apples and carrots?” She wanted to keep it light, as if that would erase the bruises on Frankie’s neck, or her skittishness after class. She wished she knew a hit man or an assassin or somebody willing to take out Richie—a ridiculous but comforting thought. 

Frankie had been the girl who stepped between Paulina and her father and said: NO MORE. Two words from a tiny girl still a year away from taking a legal drink, wearing pegged, acid-washed jeans, a side ponytail, and heaps of blue eye shadow. Paulina stood behind her, holding the arm she knew was broken. It was the first time Paulina saw her father look afraid. It stunned her; she had only known his face when he groped her, hit her, yelled. It helped that Frankie was holding a loaded shotgun she’d taken from her own house, and that she knew how to use it: how to fire it close enough not to scare you, not to hit you, but to make you leave. This is what Paulina’s father did less than an hour later, Frankie standing in the doorway with her gun until he drove away in his little red truck. Then, she locked the gun in the closet and drove Paulina to the emergency room.

 For the next year, until Paulina met Earl, she and Frankie lived in a studio apartment behind the Harley-Davidson dealership. Frankie had moved in the week before, with just this plan in mind. Two girls against the world of men, Frankie promised, as the nurses were casting Paulina’s arm. But of course, that wasn’t how it happened. Frankie loved the world of men, it turned out.

 Paulina still counted the afternoon with the shotgun as one of the most pivotal in her life, although only she and Frankie knew the full story: the hitting, the touching, the drinking. Nobody else would ever learn those details. Not her mother, who was dying in the hospital of breast cancer. Not Earl, who was possibly the only man under forty-five in the entire state who didn’t hunt.

Now Frankie was afraid, and Paulina didn’t know what to do.

“Hey, honey?” Paulina said. But when she turned to face her husband, he was asleep. She touched his forehead and turned off the light. Earl’s large veterinary practice was busy; animals had their own flu season, and he’d been attending sick sheep all day and smelled like a dirty wool sock. She hit the lights, climbed under the blanket with him, and lay awake worrying about Frankie, which is what she’d done nearly every night since her friend had wed.

Why are you awake? Frankie would ask during those first sleepless weeks in the studio, two girls entirely on their own.

Because I ran out of dreams, was Paulina’s response. She meant it literally, but what if Frankie had run out of the other sort of dreams: those for a happy, or happier, life?

*

The next morning was mayhem. Francesca hadn’t done her math homework, and Paulina knew she’d get a call from the school later that day about the failing grade. Pearl was inconsolable over the end of Where the Red Fern Grows, which schools still assigned to kids, apparently to scar them for life. Daisy was upset because everyone else was upset and also nervous because no one had asked about her climate change presentation. “The world is entering an ice age!” she shouted. “Climate change is not a joke.”

“We didn’t know,” Pearl said, and paused. “About the presentation. We know about global warming.”

“Not the point,” Daisy said. “And global warming and climate change are two different things.”

Pearl shrugged. “I mean, okay.”

“You’re being an idiot, Mom!” Francesca yelled. “Who needs to know algebra in practical life! It’s just a dumb exercise with letters and symbols!”

“I’m being an adult!” Pauline yelled back.

“Same thing!” Francesca shot back. And with that, Pauline’s oldest daughter slammed the front door of the house as the other two burst into tears. 

By the time Paulina got them all to school and returned home, Earl was sitting in the kitchen. He was drinking vodka.

“It’s 9 am,” she said. 

“Paulina,” he said, and when he looked at her, she knew. 

“What happened? Where is she?”

Earl was crying now. “She’s dead.”

Richie had rented a U-Haul, packed up their things with the promise of moving to a new place, for a new start, and then, when Frankie had stepped into the driveway—Paulina could see her, pixie hair jelled into little peaks, blue bag on her shoulder, that same girl who made the final three-point shot all those years ago, and stood in front of a bad man with a gun, that brave, beautiful girl who longed for challenge, for adventure wherever she could find it—Richie ran her over with the truck. Not just once, three times, reversing, going forward, reversing, going back.  Paulina imagined her calls going to voicemail while Frankie packed boxes in good faith, thinking new start. 

“Where is she? I need to see her.”

“You can’t see her,” Earl said. “I talked to the police. You can’t see her. Please. You can’t.”

“Why? You have to tell me. She’s my best friend.”

 “All her bones are crushed. Her head was … crushed.”

That was the last thing Paulina heard.

For the next three days, Paulina made plans on autopilot: booking the retired pastor who hadn’t known Frankie but kindly agreed to do the service; calling Frankie’s useless sisters, all of whom were too busy to attend; talking to the police until Earl told them they needed to interview her another time; explaining to her girls why Aunt Frankie wasn’t coming back.  Then, the night before the funeral, Pearl cried out, which was unlike her. Paulina found her in bed clutching her skinny legs and rocking back and forth.

“What is it, P? What’s wrong?” 

“My bones hurt,” her daughter said. “They ache.”

Paulina sat at the edge of Pearl’s bed. “It’s growing pains, honey. It just means you’re getting taller. It’ll pass.”

Paulina rubbed her daughter’s perfect soft legs, and the even, precious, girl bones within them, and felt a heaviness she didn’t think she could bear. “Oh,” she said, and took a few deep breaths—in and out, in and out—waiting until her daughter fell asleep. Then she went to the bathroom to be sick.

Eventually, Paulina rejoined the Fireman’s Workout, which had been renamed Fire Safety and Self-Defense. It took a month, during which Frankie was buried in Paulina and Earl’s family plot, even as winter continued raging. Nothing was different but everything had changed. Matthias was still there, and Paulina held herself together until she saw the hose in the bucket of toys used for the workout.

She stood up while Matthias was talking and said, “Give me the rope. Give it to me.” The guy with the man bun and rose tats leapt to his feet and dragged it over. Paulina took it up. The weight on her shoulders was enormous, almost crushing. She could feel her stomach fat fold over, and she began shaking before she could even take a step. She didn’t care about that, though: didn’t care how she looked; didn’t care who saw her falter; didn’t care if she failed. She wanted to get strong, and she wanted it to hurt. Paulina took a step, and then another, and another, imagining she was carrying Frankie away from Richie, out of that oily, uninhabitable house. 

If only, if only, Paulina thought, and only when Matthias was lifting the rope from her and putting a hand on her back, saying gently, “It’s okay, Paulina,” did she realize she was crying. She gripped Matthias’s massive arm. If only she had been able to lift her friend up on that day; if only she’d been able to save her from the rage of men, knowing better than most that Frankie could have escaped safely from any fire—any world—but that one.