Chapter 26
I drive by the cottage to drop Hoover off and to change into some sweats and a T-shirt. At this point I’m glad I let Richmond talk me into going to the gym with him. After dealing with David, I have a ton of pent-up energy to let loose.
I dig the charger Hurley gave me for the throwaway phone out of my purse, plug it in, and put the phone on it. Then, since I have about fifteen minutes to spare, I hobble out to the woods to look for my other phone. The stink of burned everything is still hanging in the air and the smell gives me an instant throbbing headache. As I get closer to the site, I can see just how devastating the fire actually was. The entire front of the house is burned down to the foundation. At the rear, the kitchen—or what’s left of it—is fully exposed, though a good portion of the back wall is still standing. Most of the stairs I climbed last night are gone. Only the top four remain, hanging in midair, a giant pile of burned rubble beneath them. Everything is covered in water, ash, and soot—a soggy, blackened mess.
I thought I’d made my peace with the loss of the house when I moved out, and I truly didn’t think the fire would make that loss any worse. Now I’m not so sure.
A ruined, blackened hull is all that is left of what I’ve come to think of as the years BC—Before Cheating. I’ve been trying to think of the years AD—After David—as a new beginning, but seeing the total destruction of the house this way makes everything seem so utterly, irrevocably final.
I feel wetness on my cheek and for a second I think it has started to rain. Then I realize I’m crying. I swipe at the tears, turn my back on the house, and try to focus on the task at hand. After several minutes of scouring the grounds beneath the trees, I finally find my cell phone. Remarkably it is still intact, though it’s as dead as the throwaway phone. Praying that the battery is the reason, I carry it back to the house and put it on its charger. The tiny yellow light that comes on cheers me to a surprising degree. Maybe there is some hope left after all.
When I arrive at the health club, which is called Slim’s Gym, I see a guy behind the door who looks like a giant muscle on steroids. There is a look of horror on his face and at first I think it’s because of how out of shape I am. But that makes no sense because I remember seeing Richmond’s car in the lot and surely I can’t be viewed as any more of a challenge than he is. Can I? Or have I been totally deluding myself?
The reason behind Muscle Guy’s horrified look becomes clear as soon as I walk through the door. “Do you work at a funeral home or something?” he asks, efficiently bypassing any normal greeting. I notice he’s staring over my shoulder toward the parking lot.
“No,” I sigh. “That’s my personal vehicle.”
“Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack,” I say, smiling. He doesn’t smile back.
“Do you think you could park it around back? Having a hearse in our lot doesn’t give the type of first impression I’d like.”
“Fine,” I say in a way that lets him know how put out I am. I do an about-face, get back in the hearse, and drive it around to the back of the building, pulling onto a tiny, concrete pad that borders on a big cornfield. The space I have to park in is barely big enough for two cars.
When I head back inside, Muscle Guy is waiting for me. “Sorry about that,” he says. “But we do have an image to uphold here.”
“My name is Slim, as in Slim’s Gym. Get it?”
He says it like I’m five years old, and I’m tempted to fire back with a comment about how just because I’m overweight, it doesn’t mean I’m stupid. But instead I smile and say, “Cute.”
“Well, welcome. You’re new here, yes?”
“Obviously,” I say, figuring my physique should make that clear, given that a glance at the other patrons reveals people who are frighteningly fit and slender. I don’t see Richmond, however, and I wonder if they’ve managed to kill him already. Maybe that’s why they wanted me to park in the rear, so they could load Richmond’s body into my car without anyone seeing.
“Bob Richmond invited me as his guest,” I tell him.
“Oh, okay,” Muscle Guy says, nodding knowingly, as if this somehow explains everything. “Come into the office and we’ll get you started. First we’ll go over a questionnaire about your health and exercise habits, and then we’ll discuss your goals. Once that’s done, we’ll put together a routine of circuit training designed to help you meet those goals and then orient you on how to use the equipment. We assign everyone a personal trainer for the first week or so, until we think you’ve got the routines down pat. After that it will depend on your motivation. Your trainer will be Helga. She’s very good.”
I follow Slim into a cubicle where he hands me a piece of paper with about a hundred questions and check boxes on it. It takes me a few minutes to fill out the first side, and by the time I’m done I’m feeling pretty good given that I don’t have any major illnesses, don’t smoke or drink regularly, and don’t have to answer a question about weekly ice cream consumption. I do mention the broken toes, however. Then I flip it over. On the back side are places to fill in my weight, height, and a variety of body measurements, and below that there’s a drawn body that looks like a chalk outline at a murder scene. I hope it’s not a sign of things to come.
“Don’t fill in the weight and height section,” Slim says. “We’ll measure you in just a bit.”
“For now just circle the areas on the body outline that you want to focus on improving.”
I draw one big circle around the entire body and hand him the form.
He smiles and says, “Okay, come with me.”
I follow him out into the main part of the gym, which smells like old blood and sweaty socks. He leads me past several rows of machines that look like torture devices from a dungeon, to a closed room near the far end of the facility. When we enter the room, I finally see Richmond. He’s standing in front of a tall, slender woman who has a measuring tape wrapped around his ample girth.
Richmond glances over at me and smiles, but he looks terrified. The woman with the tape lets it go and then writes something on a piece of paper. “Okay, Bob,” she says. “That’s all we need for now. If you’ll go with Slim here, he’ll take you out and introduce you to the exercise machines.”
Slim hands my papers over to the woman and says, “This is Helga. Helga, this is Mattie.”
Helga, who is dressed in tight-fitting shorts and a sports bra, looks like a blond goddess. Judging from the six-pack on her abdomen and the size of her deltoid and trapezius muscles, I’m guessing she’s a body builder. We eye one another and acknowledge the introductions with a polite nod, but I’m not fooled. There is a distinct air of disdain in the arch of her left eyebrow and the pinched line of her lips.
Slim beckons Richmond to follow him out to the main floor area and Richmond does so, looking like he’s headed for his execution. He’s already sweating profusely and I can’t help but worry that he might flood the place once he’s actually done something.
Helga examines the paperwork I filled out, points to the scale, and says, “Step on.”
I brace myself for the bad news. I don’t have a scale in the cottage and haven’t weighed myself in several stressful months, and food is my primary coping mechanism for stress. First Helga uses the height bar, which measures me at six feet even. Next she slides the big weight on the scale to the one-fifty notch, and then starts nudging the smaller weight. When the bar fails to tip, she sighs, moves the big weight to the two-hundred mark, and then goes back to the small weight. I close my eyes, not wanting to see where it ends up. I listen as the little weight slides along the bar, praying it will stop soon.
“Well,” Helga says, and I detect a hint of a German accent in the way she applies a faint v sound to her w. “It looks like we have some work to do. Your BMI is firmly in the overweight category. In fact, you are just shy of obese.”
“I’m large boned,” I say, knowing it sounds pathetic. “And these clothes are heavy.”
Helga, to her credit, says nothing. Instead she takes a tape measure and wraps it around my bosom. When she reads the number her eyebrows rise, but she makes no comment. After writing the number down, she does the same with my waist and hips. Then she measures my arms, thighs, and calves.
“How did you break your toes?” she asks, glancing at my health questionnaire.
I’m tempted to tell her I kicked the crap out of the last person who told me I was on the borderline of being classified as obese, but I don’t. “I tripped over a tree root when I was running.” I figure wording it this way might
