He groaned.
“Don’t drop it,” she said. “Makes a loud noise.”
He let the weights down quietly and looked into her eyes.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re going to do eight of them in a row. I’m giving you every motive. Breathe.”
He breathed and lifted.
On the third lift, he found his legs straightening, his heels sliding along the rug.
She did not fall off his thighs. Through the mirror he saw that she had hooked the calves of her legs around the legs of the bench. At each lift she pressed the palms of her hands into his stomach muscles.
“Breathe,” she said.
“That, too?”
After he did eight lifts, she flicked the front of his shorts with her fingernails. “You’re healthy enough. I thought so.”
He raised his knees.
“I’ll take your sweat,” she said.
She leaned forward and put her breasts, her stomach on his. She raised her legs and put her thighs on his. She rolled on him, just a little.
As soon as he gave in to irresistible impulse and put his arms around her back, she was up and away.
She stood under the chin-up grips. “Come on.”
“Who said exercise has to be boring?”
As they moved in the brightly lit room, their infinite reflections in mirrors on all sides made it seem as if each were a legion moving with martial precision.
“Put your hands on the back of the grips.”
Standing on his toes, he stretched totally and put his hands around the grips.
“No,” she said. “Put your hands further back on the grips.” He did so. “Now do a chin-up.” He did so while she watched. “Again,” she said.
While he was lifting himself a second time Cindy jumped up and grabbed the grips just in front of his hands. Her body knocked against his.
She lifted herself with him, their bodies just brushing. She stared into his eyes as they lifted themselves slowly, together, lowered themselves to full stretch, up again.
“Now, stay up,” Cindy said.
“As if I had a choice.”
She wrapped her legs around his hips.
Slowly she relaxed her hands on the grips.
His body took her weight.
She wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Now let us down slowly.”
She opened her mouth and put her teeth hard against his taut neck muscles.
As he lowered them, every muscle, ligament, tissue, and piece of skin in his body above his waist was stretched to its maximum.
There was a delirious crackling up his spine, a small explosion in the back of his head.
As his feet settled on the floor, his knees buckled.
Tangled, they both fell on the mat.
Cindy laughed. “Not everybody can do that.”
Their legs were tangled. He put his arms around her. His shoulder muscles felt inflamed, inflated.
She kissed his neck, where she had bitten him.
Then he felt her tongue licking around where she had kissed him.
“I’m lapping up blood,” she giggled.
“Gym class was never like this.”
“You went to the wrong school.”
“I always suspected that.”
“We’ve got lots to do yet,” she said.
“Will I be up for it?”
“I’ll see to that.”
Cindy had not yet untangled herself from him when the door to the corridor opened.
She jumped. She looked up at the doorway in genuine surprise.
“What’s your game?” Marta asked Fletch from across her desk in the executive office of the Ben Franklyn Friend Service.
“Game?” Sitting in a small wooden captain’s chair in front of the desk, Fletch looked down. He was still breathing somewhat heavily, still sweating, and the front of his flimsy yellow shorts indicated to any observer that his attention was still elsewhere. “Warden, I’m suffering.”
Marta picked up the phone on her desk and pushed three buttons. Into the phone, she said, “Cindy? Get dressed. Then come in here.”
“Take pity on me!” Fletch said.
Reluctantly, he had followed Marta down the dark, carpeted corridor to the office behind the reception room.
Walking, Marta had more of an atheletic spring in her step than sexy wriggle in her hips.
“You’ll calm down in a minute, boy.”
“I don’t think so. You may have created a permanent condition here.”
“Don’t you wish.”
The ferns in this office were alive.
On Marta’s desk was a stack of bills which looked suspiciously like seven twenties and a ten.
“Am I being expelled from the Ben Franklyn Friend Service?” Fletch asked. “Won’t you be my friend?”
“I asked you what you’re playing at.”
“I’m just a red-blooded boy out for a morning of sport.”
“Like hell you are.” Marta fingered the pearls draping her stomach. “I remembered where I saw you before.”
“I know!” Fletch said. “I just remembered, too. Sunday, at the Newcomers’ Coffee, at St. Anselm’s Church.”
“You’re right about Sunday,” Marta said. “You want something. And I think I know what.”
“You’d be right.” Leaning forward, elbows on knees, Fletch put his face in his hands. “Nothing so wicked has happened to me since Sue Ann Murchison’s parents came home early from the first
“I saw you on Sunday. You ran in the Sardinal Race.”
“I didn’t get any understanding then, either. They threw me out. It was a real cold night. There’s a danger in brittleness, you know. If I hadn’t kept my hips absolutely straight as I went down their front walk…”
“You hound-dogged the girls all through the race.”
“… why, I wouldn’t be here today.”
“Why?”
“If you excuse me, I think I’ll go for a run now.”
“Sit down.”
“I’ve got to do something!”
“You’ve got to answer me, is what you’ve got to do. I asked you: Why did you follow us all through the Sardinal Race Sunday?”
