ten.
I pulled the van between the faded yellow lines of a space. To my astonishment, quite a few hardy souls were already parked in the rec center lot. Somehow, I had imagined I would be doing this bodybuilding work in solitude. I devoutly hoped these fitness freaks were swimming laps. The thought that someone I knew might see me in sweats was more than I could bear. My shoes gritted over gravel sprinkled with rock salt to melt the snow on the rec steps. Supported by an area-wide tax imposed by the residents themselves (since Aspen Meadow was fiercely proud of its unincorporated status), the rec was a no-nonsense sort of place with an indoor pool (shared with the public high school), a gym, a meeting room for senior citizens, and three racquetball courts. Here there were no steam rooms, no saunas, no massages, no tanning booths, no carpeted aerobics room, no outdoor pool. I didn’t even know where the rec’s weight room was until the woman at the desk, who at the age of forty had decided she needed braces, told me. She took my twelve dollars and then, through a mouth crisscrossed with vicious-looking metal, announced that they’d recently converted one of the racquetball courts.
“Folks just want to lift weights,” she said with what I thought was too lingering a look at my lower-body bulges.
I felt my heart sink with each step up to where people actually lifted heavy things because they thought it was good for them. I mean, these people wanted to be big, they wanted to gain bulk, and they didn’t want to do it by eating fettuccine Alfredo and sour cream cheesecake! They used powdered diet supplements! What were they, nuts? With some trepidation, I pushed open the door.
The place didn’t just smell bad, it smelled horrific. It was as if the walls had been painted with perma-sweat, guaranteed to stay wet. Sort of an unwashed rain-forest-in-the-gym concept.
When I was about to pass out from the stench, a big guy ? I mean a really big guy ? with lots of knots and bulges and popping-out muscles on his arms and chest and massive legs, sauntered up to me. He growled, “You Goldy?”
I swallowed and said, “Aah ? “
His eyes, tiny sapphires set in an expanse of facial flesh, flicked over me contemptuously. “Don’t work out much, do you?”
Not a good start. I looked around at the different instruments of torture, things you pushed up on, things you pushed down on, things you watched your shoulders dislocate on in the bank of ? yes! ? mirrors. Men of all ages, and one woman who I at first thought was a man, were grunting and groaning and pumping. It didn’t look like fun.
“Really,” I improvised desperately, “I’m just looking for somebody… .”
“You’re looking for me,” said Big Guy. “Come on over here. I’m Blaster.”
Not one to argue with one so massive, I followed dutifully behind. I had a terrible blinding thought: What if I saw my ex-husband here? John Richard Korman would laugh himself silly. I cast a quick glance around. No Jerk. He preferred the more chi-chi athletic club. Thank God for tiny favors.
“First we stretch,” announced Blaster. Well now, stretching was something I knew about. I said hopefully, “I do yoga.”
Blaster did a prune face of disdain and thrust a long metal rod at me. He said, “Do what I do,” and then he threaded his huge arms around an identical metal rod. As he twisted his sculpted torso from side to side, I struggled to follow suit. But in the mirror I looked too much like a chunk of meat skewered on a shish kebab, so I stopped. Unfortunately I also let go. The rod Blaster had given me clattered to the floor with an unhappy thunkety- thunk.
“Hey!” he bellowed.
“Oh, don’t be too hard on her,” Hank Dawson said. “She had a really rough day yesterday. And she’s a big Bronco fan.” Unlike the young jocks in their scoopneck sleeveless shirts and tight black pants, Hank wore orange sweats emblazoned with the words DENVER BRONCOS ? AFC CHAMPIONS! “Finger okay?” he inquired as he extricated himself from the thing he was pushing his elbows together in and walked slowly up to my tormentor and me. One thing I had noticed about how the men moved in the weight room: They swaggered around bowlegged, as if at any minute they were going to face off against Gary Cooper. Tromp, tromp, tromp, don’t be too hard on her tromp tromp a rough day tromp, draw on three, pod’ner.
“Actually,” I said, turning pained eyes up to Blaster, “I did suffer from a terrible spider bite yesterday… .”
But Blaster had already clomped off to what looked like a stretcher lying on an angle. Hank Dawson gave me a grim apologetic look. “Are you sure you’re well enough to do this, Goldy? Did you hear Elway pulled his shoulder in practice yesterday? I’m surprised you’re here.”
I said feebly, “So am I.”
He grinned. “You know they hate food people here.”
“I’m beginning to think this whole idea was a mistake.” I meant it.
Blaster roared, “Hey, you, Goldy! Get on this thing head down!” Several men turned to see if I would do as commanded. I scurried over to Blaster.
“You don’t seem to understand, I’ve changed my mind…”
He pointed at the stretcher. It was a long-fingered commanding point, not unlike when God brings a flaccid Adam to life on the Sistine ceiling. “Decline sit-ups,” he boomed.
“You see,” I ventured tremulously, “there was this black widow…”
The remorseless finger didn’t waver. “Best thing for it. Get on.”
A man of few words.
And so I started. First, sit-ups with my head lower than my feet on the stretcher, which seemed unfair. Why not at least be level? Then incline leg raises and crunches (sit-ups on a level surface-why bother when I’d just defied gravity the other way?), then more torso twists with the skewer rod, then leg presses, leg extensions, leg curls, bench presses, and front lat pulls.
I’m dying, I thought. No, wait-I’ve died and I’m in hell. In the mirror, my face was an unhealthy shade of puce. My finger throbbed. Rivulets of sweat ran down my forehead and turned into a veritable torrent inside my sweatshirt. Blaster announced we were almost done, and that I would do better next time. Hey, Blaster! There ain’t gonna be a next time.
Finally, finally, Egon Schlichtmaier walked in with none other than Macguire Perkins. Why I had not made an appointment just to see Schlichtmaier at the school was beyond me. I was going to need a heating pad for a week. No, not a heating pad ? an electric sleeping bag and months of physical therapy.
“I need to talk to you,” I panted when the two of them sauntered, John Wayne-like, over to where I was slumped on the floor, collapsed and terminally winded. Before they could greet me, however, Blaster loomed suddenly overhead. I was looking straight at his calves. Each resembled an oven-roasted turkey.
Blaster’s beady blue eyes had a bone-chilling God-surveying-Sodom-and-Gomorrah look. “You’re not done.” His voice echoed off the dripping walls.
“Oh, yes, I am,” I said as I scrambled to my feet, not without exquisite and hitherto undreamed of pain. “Stick me with a toothpick. I’m as done as I’ll ever be.”
But he was waving me over to the Stairmaster, unheeding.
Egon Schlichtmaier said, “It’s not so easy the first time,” only it came out, “Id’s not zo easy ze furst time.”
He gave me his big cow-eyed look. “Like sex, you know.” The muscles in his back and arms flexed and rolled as he escorted me over to the aerobics area.
I hated him. I hated Egon Schlichtmaier for his muscles, I hated him for sleeping with those undergraduates, and I hated him for comparing what we were doing in this chamber of horrors to making love, which I had just begun to enjoy lately, thank you very much.
Blaster was punching numbers into the Stairmaster’s digital readout with that meaty finger I had come to dread. He looked at me impassively. “Get on. Ten minutes. Then you’re through.” And joy of joys, he stomped away. I faced Egon Schlichtmaier and scowled.
“Better do what Blaster says,” came the unnaturally low voice of Macguire Perkins; “Guy has eyes in the back of his head. We’ll get on the treadmills and keep you company.”
With such sympathetic exudings, the two of them mounted the treadmills and effortlessly began to walk. I wanted Macguire to go away, because what I was about to say concerned only Arch, Schlichtmaier, and me. Perhaps Macguire sensed my disapproval. He pulled out a headset while he was walking, tucked on earphones, and
