been spent any other way, shelter the homeless, feed the hungry. Or to make a good movie with talent that would appreciate the opportunity. I was very embarrassed. I’ve hardly left Vindemia since. See what I mean by always being pushed? Who needs it?”
“What do you like to do?” Jack asked.
For the first time a light came into her eyes. She breathed through slightly parted lips. “Sex. I really like sex.” She looked into Jack’s face, at his neck. “You like sex?”
“Sure.”
“I mean, it’s the greatest thing. If you can play at sex, why would you do anything else?” Alixis wet her lips with her tongue. “Why isn’t that enough for anyone? Everything else just takes energy I’m happier spending on sex.”
The girl was getting warmer.
“Ah.” Jack stood up. “I guess I better go over and see what needs doing to clean up the gym.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her tanned knees. She swung her legs back and forth from the bench, watching her muscles work.
Jack swept the clay court and then went around picking up the balls, putting them in their net bag.
She remained on the bench, watching him, swinging her legs.
When he returned, Alixis said, “Guess I should go, too. So I can mention I spent some time in the gym this afternoon.”
•
“Hey, fatstuff,” Alixis said.
The young man did not speak. He glanced angrily at his sister.
He was way overweight, soft-looking. His skin was sallow.
The four of them came together entering the gym. The two men wore greasy overalls, work boots. They had gotten out of a tow truck.
“This is my brother Duncan,” Alixis said. “Jack Some one-or-Other.” Duncan looked at Jack’s uniform shorts and did not speak or offer to shake hands.
Jack had shifted the three tennis racquets to the hand carrying the net bag of tennis balls.
“The man who helps Duncan waste money on cars,” Alixis drawled. “Alfred?”
“Albert,” corrected Albert.
“And on other things. What are you goin’ to do, brother? Surely not exercise.”
“Take a steam.”
“No, Duncan.” Alixis sounded genuinely stern. Jack wondered if Duncan’s eyes were characteristically angry.
“Duncan,” Alixis said, “you’re full of shit. I can tell. You always are full of shit. Going into a steam room in your condition might kill you.”
“So?” Duncan opened the door for himself. “Who cares?”
“You could have a heart attack.” Alixis followed him through the door. “An aneurysm.”
“Shut up.”
“If you exercised instead of using that stuff—”
Duncan turned on his sister. “Shut your damned mouth.”
“—and then you’ll take more shit later.”
Followed by Albert, Duncan went through a swing door.
Alixis said, “I don’t care. Go kill yourself!”
Jack was looking for someplace to put the tennis equipment. There was a closet door. He opened it. Inside were more tennis equipment, basketballs, a volleyball set… All the equipment appeared new, unused.
Alixis said, “The boxing-wrestling room has a door on it that locks.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean. We were talking about it.” Jack’s heart raced. “What were we talking about?”
“Sex.”
“You and me?”
“I don’t see anyone else around.”
“No,” Jack said. “Not now. Maybe later. I have work to do.”
“You agreed!”
“I did?”
“Oh, fuck you!” she said. “Go fuck yourself!”
“I work here,” Jack said.
“I don’t think I like you at all, Jack!”
“Sorry.”
“Fuck off!”
“I knew you know that word.”
Forearms crossed, she walked away from him, through the main glass doors into the sunlight.
She did have gorgeous legs.
•
“I need another six hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” Over the sound of the steam, people are apt to talk louder than they know in a steam room. They think they can’t be heard outside their tiled room through the thick wooden door. “I’ve told the old man that, time and again! Why doesn’t he just give it to me?”
Jack had checked the equipment in the weight room. No parts needed replacing. Put the free weights in their rack. Vacuumed the rug. The full length, full width mirrors on the walls did not need cleaning. He dry mopped the floor of the basketball court. Vacuumed the whirlpool.
As he went around the gym building he picked up dirty towels, few of them still wet.
The laundry cart was outside the steam room’s door.
“He told me to write a proposal,” Duncan scoffed. “Can you imagine that? Me? write a proposal? for a measly six hundred? So I did. You know what he did, the bastard? He corrected my spelling in red ink and sent it back to me.”
“Should have used a word processor,” Albert said. “They have Spellers.”
“I did. I didn’t use the Speller. I was in a hurry. The bastard! No other comment! Not yes, not no. Who does he think I am?”
Duncan and Albert had left all their greasy clothes on the floor of the corridor outside the steam room. There was no evidence they had showered.
“How much you already spent on the cars, Dunc?”
“Altogether? Not much. Million, million and a half.” Albert said nothing. “Well, I won in Utah!”
“The mirror car was the only car in its class.”
“Well, I won, didn’t I?”
“You won.”
“I mean, there’s no point in getting into racing unless you’re willing to spend the money. That’s understood.”
“Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars seems like a lot of money,” Albert said. “To me.”
“Not to my father. I don’t have his support at all. Every time I see him, he asks me what business schools I’ve applied to. Everything is what he wants me to do, not what I want to do.”
“What business schools have you applied to?”
“None.”
“I thought you had.”
“I lied.”
“He wants you to learn Business Administration so you can help him out.”
“Who cares about his business? He built it; he can suffer for it.”
“It pays the bills.”
“There’s enough money so no one needs to work at it. No one needs to work at anything. Discipline! I’m disciplined.”
“Sure,” Albert said. “Ingest and press the pedal to the metal.”
