twin forty-fives.
Rodney grunted, his arms trembling slightly as he started to lower the bar back toward the rack. J. T. moved behind the bench and put his fingers lightly on the bar, nudged it away from the rack.
“Jesus,” Rodney muttered. Arms wobbling slightly, his elbows caving in, he shoved the bar back up to full extension.
“Sheryl Mott. Used to hang around with OMG, tell us about her,” Cantrell said.
Rodney grimaced. Dots of sweat squirted up across his broad forehead. Strips of muscle jumped under the flushed skin of his shoulders. “Fuck you,” he hissed between clenched teeth.
“Again,” Cantrell said. He quickly plucked two more thirty-fives from nearby pegs, raised his leg, straddled Rodney’s torso, and slapped the weights on the bar, one side, then the other. J. T. maintained the subtle stand-off pressure on the bar. Cantrell looked down at Rodney, who was now making this deep grinding tectonic noise in his chest. “Sheryl Mott,” he repeated.
“Guys,” Rodney gasped. “You ain’t been around. I
“C’mon, Rodney,” Cantrell said impatiently. He was mashing the handles of the squeeze clip in one hand, reached up with other, selected the Pall Mall from behind his ear, and put it in is lips.
“You can’t smoke in here,” an indignant female voice said. Cantrell turned his head, saw a perfectly coiffed woman, maybe forty-five, cute little halter, Spandex shorts, bare midriff clean and smooth like it’d been run off a lathe. She glared at him through a sheet of meticulously applied makeup.
Cantrell took a Zippo from his pocket, popped it, lit the Pall Mall.
“Eekkk,” squeaked the woman, backpedaling like a mouse in
Cantrell turned back to Rodney, blew a stream of smoke in his face. “We’re waiting.”
“OMG’s bad folks, too bad for me,” Rodney panted. The pressure had traveled down his arms into his chest, up his red corded throat into his bulging eyes. Sweat streamed down his swollen arms as they struggled to hold off the inexorable weight pressing down.
Frustrated, Cantrell was now mashing the squeeze clip in his right hand. Inspired, he twisted, pressed the handles together, opening the spring circle, and thrust the clip into Rodney’s writhing crotch, probing the cod of bunched blue material for something to clamp down on.
“Okay, okay,” Rodney moaned. “What I hear…she’s the perfect chick. She loves to fuck and cook. Fuck bikers…and…cook…meth. Learned her business in some big lab in Washington state. All I know, honest.”
“See,” J. T. said, releasing the pressure on the bar. “That was easy.”
“Spot,
Shouldering through the gaggle of wide-eyed people rushing to Rodney’s aid, Cantrell said, “Not to worry, it’s the new Afghan extreme lifting-”
“The near-death school,” J. T. said.
Cantrell pointed out an alternate route of egress through the gym. Trailing a contrail of his cigarette smoke amid the aghast aerobics class, they beat it down another flight of stairs and out an exit door on the first level, next to the pool.
Chapter Thirty-five
An hour after he returned from his face-off with Gator Bodine, Griffin heard tires crunch through the windowpane in the puddles of his driveway. He walked out on his deck and saw the green Toyota Tundra pull up. Hello? Broker got out from the passenger side wearing cross trainers and an old blue sweat suit under his jacket. Nina lowered the driver’s-side window and leaned out. Kit waved from the backseat.
“Hey, Harry? You ever been to Dawn’s Salon on Main Street?” Nina said.
Broker held up his hands in mock despair. “I was getting used to her hair longer. Now she’s gonna cut it all off.”
Harry walked up to the truck and studied Nina’s face. “Going to the beauty parlor, huh?”
“Me too,” Kit said.
Nina nodded. “It’s time. Her cowlicks have turned into a briar patch the last two months.”
There was an ease in the talk Griffin hadn’t seen with these people since they appeared at the rental house in January. Nina said good-bye, put the truck in gear, and steered the Toyota back down the drive. Griffin walked Broker under the deck, into the lower level of his house. “When did she come out of it?” he asked.
“Yesterday, boom, just like that.”
“So?”
“If she stays steady, we’ll probably be heading back to the Cities in a week,” Broker said. “No sense hanging around. Kit needs to get back with her friends and activities.”
Their different styles collided awkwardly in the silent interval. Griffin was grinning, waiting for Broker to say more. But he’d known Broker for thirty years and had learned that the man kept his emotions carefully embedded between his mind and his muscles. More like the steady instincts of an elusive wild animal.
Broker had assessed a problem, laid out a plan, and soldiered through. His expression was not so much relief as a confirmation of the correctness of his decision.
“So,” Griffin said, “you ready to grab something heavy and pick it up?”
Broker looked at his old friend, unshaved, fairly vibrating with the caffeine shakes. Probably had one of his bad nights. But he did grin, this fond, indulgent exasperation. His thick eyebrows beetled as his eyes scanned the room where they stood. The walls were a gallery that marked the stations of Griffin’s errant life. Griffin had spiraled out of the Army and become an underground cartoonist. After he sobered up, he briefly became a newspaper artist.
Several of his old drawings had been enlarged and framed: a gaunt haunted depiction of Christ could have been a comical self-portrait. The Cartoon Christ trudged under his crown of thorns and a huge picket sign that bore the caption: “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30 Who Hasn’t Been Crucified.”
Another, a favorite of the old East Metro Drug Task Force, showed two hippie dopers looking up from lighting their weed as a ten-foot-tall tit smashed through the door. One of them said, “Cool it, man, it’s a bust.”
A talented, conflicted man who had loved and hated their war, Griffin had always rebelled against his true nature. Broker wasn’t fooled; he had seen Griffin in the field.
He’d assessed instantly what Griffin spent his life denying.
Harry Griffin was a natural killer. Broker had always approached this perception with caution. Acknowledging the fact that looking too closely at Griffin was like peering into a mirror…
He shook his head and turned his attention to Griffin’s latest Peter Pan fixation. The barbell on the floor, a leg press, an overhead draw-down lift, triceps pulls, a set of fly cables, and the crunch chair.
After Korean karate, yoga, and Transcendental Meditation, Griffin, looking sixty dead in the eye, had discovered high-intensity weight lifting.
So Broker tossed off his coat and actually laughed. “Christ, remember the time you tried to teach me to stand on my head?”
Griffin snorted and pointed to the barbell on the floor. It was fitted with two forty-fives and a twenty-five on each end. “Classic deads,” he said. “You first.”
Broker rotated his shoulders, loosened up, took the lift straps off the floor, inserted his wrists, looped the straps around the bar, snugged them up, and stooped.
“Remember, keep your shoulder blades tight and your butt back. Push down with your feet,” Griffin said.
“Yeah, yeah.” Broker took a breath, held it, and lifted the bar slowly. Ten-second count going up and then back down. By his third slow repetition, Broker was sweating and panting for breath.
“One more,” Griffin admonished with glee as he slapped half a ton of iron on the leg press, getting the next station in the torture ready.
