by David Liss
He braced himself for that look now, but when she met his eye she paused, like she saw something she hadn’t expected.
“Okay,” she said. And she ate.
A half an hour later, Pete had pulled into the Home Depot parking lot where he could make calls and try to drum up business. When he turned on his work phone, there were nearly a dozen messages waiting for him, and he knew that couldn’t be good. Obviously, something had blown up with his lawsuit, and he cringed as he punched in his code to hear his messages.
It was a mix of call backs and follow-up requests, but there were also three requests for inspections. Three in one morning. That had happened before, but not since the lawsuit. Not since things had started to go bad for him. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe there really was something to all this paleo stuff.
The idea seemed laughable. A bunch of rich assholes chanted and made a few designs in goat blood, and after a good lawn-mowing Pete gets his wishes granted. It was too stupid to consider seriously, but, on the other hand, it also seemed to be true. Things were going his way, and all at once. Pete was a skeptic, and proud of it, but he had to admit this didn’t look like a coincidence.
And then there was the dog, Howard. It had really been Jenny’s dog – a big, slobbering golden lab. Pete had walked it and fed it and done all the things he was supposed to do, but he’d never been an animal person, and his relationship had never moved much beyond toleration. When it died, Jenny and Addison both cried their eyes out, but Pete had mostly felt relief.
He’d heard the dog last night. He was sure of it. He hadn’t been drunk, and being tired wouldn’t have made him imagine what wasn’t there. Now that he thought about it, the memory of the dog was clear and precise. He’d fallen asleep thinking that he hoped the fucking thing didn’t wake him.
Not that Pete believed in ghost dogs any more than he believed in caveman spirits. But still, it was kind of strange. Maybe it was even a little spooky, but in the light of day, in his truck, with jobs waiting on him, it was easy to push those thoughts aside.
Pete began returning calls furiously, and was able to set up an appointment for the late morning, and two for the afternoon. The rest of the week was already starting to fill up. This didn’t really solve his problems, of course. He still had the lawsuit to deal with, and he was going to lose that. When he did, he’d be screwed, and caveman mojo was not going to make things any better. Even so, income was better than no income. He couldn’t control the future, so he had to live in the now.
When he got home, he was covered with sweat and grime. It made him realize how much faking it these past few weeks should have been obvious to anyone paying attention. The first thing he had to do was shower, and as he was washing himself off, he was surprised, and not at all displeased, to see that he was sporting a massive, spontaneous boner. This kind of thing didn’t happen all that often anymore, and given that he hadn’t been working up any nasty ideas in his head, it was pretty much completely unexpected. He felt big, like maybe this was a bigger boner than he’d ever had before. Did this paleo crap worked like those pills you saw advertised on the internet? Anything, it seemed to him, was possible.
As he changed into a clean t-shirt and jeans, Pete couldn’t help but think that it had been way too long since he’d given Jenny some action in the sack. Maybe that’s what she needed. The more he thought about it, the more that made sense. She’d been down on him because his sex drive had been off, which was only natural since he’d been so worried about money. Now there was work, which wasn’t the same as the lawsuit going away, but it sure felt like things were turning around. A full schedule of inspections was all he needed to feel confident. He knew exactly what he had to do to get his marriage back on track.
During dinner he caught himself leering at Jenny, and a couple of times she asked him if he was feeling okay or if he had something in his eye. Addison, who was apparently more perceptive than her mother, turned away with a blush. Well, so what? He wasn’t ashamed of finding his wife attractive, and it was good for kids to see their parents behaving affectionately.
After dinner, Addison went off to her room to scroll endlessly on her phone. When Jenny had finished cleaning up, Pete put an arm around her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “What do you say the two of us go upstairs and take care of some business?” He put a hand on her back and let it drift downward.
Jenny shoved him away. “What are you doing?” She looked at him like he’d just shoved a dildo up her ass, which had not occurred to him until that moment, but now that he thought about it, he kind of liked the idea.
“What do you think I’m doing?” he asked, still trying to sound seductive, but he knew a little bit of his defensiveness was getting through. He had expected her to respond a little more warmly, not rebuke him.
“It’s 7:30!” Jenny shouted at him, like this was the single most damning indictment in the history of human depravity. Better he should have tossed a bag full of severed infant heads on the floor than touched her ass before eight.
“So what?” It wasn’t like they’d never had sex before bedtime before, though, admittedly, it had been a while since that had happened.
“I’m just, I don’t know,” she said, waving her hands around, now acting more confused than angry, like she was trying to recast her reaction. “You just took me by surprise is all.”
“Okay, then,” he said, “well, now that the surprise is over—”
“Forget it,” she said. “I’m not in the mood now. Not after that.”
“You’re not in the mood because I suggested we go upstairs?” Pete asked, his voice sounding sharp.
“Not when you take that tone with me” Jenny said.
“I didn’t take that tone before you started acting this way.”
“That,” she said, “is a lie. I don’t like to be lied to.” She leveled her gaze at him until it was absolutely clear that she had been injured and no ordinary apology was going to make this wound heal. She stared at him until he turned away.
Pete wandered into the living room and stood, momentarily dazed, his boner a distant, and inexplicably shameful, memory. Through the fog of confusion, disappointment, embarrassment, and anger, he could see no way forward that did not involve beer. He risked a snatch and grab in the kitchen for a can, and was ready to pry one loose. Then, thinking better of it, planning for the future, committing to a course of action, he grabbed the whole six and stormed out of the house.
He wanted Jenny to wonder where he’d gone off to, to worry about him, to fear that he had things going on, interesting things, that would leave her behind. He probably ought to get into his truck and go drive somewhere to drink his six pack, but he didn’t have the energy for it, not after working all day. So he sat down on the porch swing and popped the first can.
He was working on popping the fourth can when he saw William’s car pull into the circular driveway. When his neighbor emerged from his car, Pete gave him a wave with his beer. William began to walk over.
He wore a dark suit that, even in the dim glow of the porch light, Pete could tell was expertly tailored, showing off broad shoulders and a trim waist. The shirt was slightly wrinkled and a little bit untucked, affecting the kind of unkempt macho appearance of a magazine ad.
“What’s up?” Pete asked. “Beer?”
“I don’t drink beer,” William said, maybe a little sternly. “I told you that. You shouldn’t either.”
“Shit, I’m celebrating. Business picked up this morning.”
William nodded. Maybe a little bit of a smile crept up the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t the smile of someone who was happy for someone else’s success. It was the smile of a guy who has been proven right. “I told you what we do works. That’s why you should knock that off.” He gestured toward the beer. “It’s not paleo.”
Pete waved his hand. “Come on. It’s not like I joined a monastery or something.”
“No, it’s not,” agreed William, “because monks drink
beer. We don’t.” He looked at the swing like he considered sitting, but he likely decided it was too small, and sitting would be kind of gay. “You behave according to the rules of our tribe.”
“That’s pretty strict, don’t you think?”
“It’s the way it works,” William said. “Living like our ancestors is what grants us the power of our ancestors, dude. That’s the deal. You think I don’t like beer? You think, if we are just going on taste, I wouldn’t go for a Trappist Dubbel over a Châteauneuf-du-Pape?”
Pete, who suddenly had no idea what was being discussed, decided to say nothing.
“You can’t get something for nothing, brah,” William said. “What we’re talking about, is getting a whole lot for relatively little. You have to make a few sacrifices, sure, but those sacrifices make you healthier, so it’s really not such a bad thing.”
“I guess,” Pete agreed uncomfortably. He wanted to take another sip of beer, but thought maybe that would be the liquid equivalent of giving William the finger.
“Tell you what?” William said. “Why don’t you come to one of our HyperStrong classes? You’re not going to believe how good you feel after.”
“Group exercise isn’t really my thing,” Pete said, feeling the flab in his arms and the softness in his belly like they were throbbing. He didn’t want William and his friends to see how out of shape he was or how much more they could lift than he could.
“You want to keep reaping the rewards of last night, right?” William said. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. “Just come to the class. You’ll see.” He took a pen and a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and wrote something down then handed it to Pete. “Be there,” he said, and it was not a request.
* * *
To know Pete, Pete believed, was to know that he did not like to be told what to do, so he had been completely prepared to crumple up, throw away, and possibly even flush the piece of paper William had given him. The chances that he would piss on it first were pretty high. He did not do any of that, however. Instead, he set it aside, because he liked to think that people also knew he was a thinker. Pete was a thinking man, and a thinking man liked to keep his options open.
So the next day, still stinging from Jenny’s rejection, Pete had to face a few more disappointments. At breakfast, Addison was back to being her usual sullen self, and while there were a few calls waiting for him on his voicemail, there were fewer than the day before, and a couple of cancellations as well. The paleo magic, it seemed, was fading, and rather than sticking to his guns and living by his principles, Pete knew it was maybe time to get back in the good graces of Douchebag William and his clan of the cave dicks.
Accordingly, Pete swung by the house, changed into his gym clothes, which smelled of the drawer they’d been sitting in, untouched, for two years, and headed over to Iron Grip HyperStrong Fitness and Lifestyle Studio, located in a former furniture store that had gone bankrupt. The building had sat empty for quite some time, but now it was full of weights and racks and bars, straps dangling from the ceiling, gigantic tires, sledgehammers, and fifty foot ropes as thick as Pete’s arm.
He showed up a few minutes early, and found Pete chatting up a woman, tan and blonde, as fit as a protein powder model. When Pete walked in, he immediately turned away from the woman and clapped Pete on the back.
“Great to see you here, brah. You are going to love it.”
Pete looked around dubiously, taking in the twenty five or so people, all at least ten years younger than he was, all incredibly fit. They moved with ease around equipment that all looked too heavy, too complicated, or too befuddling for Pete to even think about touching.
“I don’t know,” he said. “This seems kind of hardcore.”
“Completely hardcore,” William agreed. “But they modify it for beginners. You’ll be fine.” He waved over the blonde goddess. “Jordanette, this is Pete. He’s new, so you’ll cut him a few breaks, right?”
Jordanette looked him over, not bothering to hide her skepticism. “We’ll scale,” she said, and then turned back to a guy with arms like the hulk, both of them covered with bright tattoo sleeves.
“I’m not feeling too welcome.”
William shrugged, looking at the instructor’s ass as she walked away. “I’ve tapped that. Pretty sweet.”
“My point,” Pete said, “is that she doesn’t seem too keen on me being here.”
“Whatever,” William observed. “She is a fitness instructor. She’s here to serve you, so don’t let her intimidate you. The important thing is that you break yourself in, you get the ball rolling. It is going to feel like shit the first time, but that’s cool. It’s a first step, right? And you won’t believe the results. You in particular.”
“Meaning what? I’m out of shape?”
“You are completely out of shape, but that’s not what I’m saying. I just meant that, I don’t know, it’s hard to say. The spirits, man. They like you.”
“What do you mean? Things are already tapering off from the lawn business.”
“Yeah, that’s gonna happen, but you got hit hard, brah. And some of the guys, they didn’t get any benefits. Usually it’s spread all around, but it looks like you grabbed pretty much the whole pot. That doesn’t happen unless they like you.”
Pete looked around and saw that some of the guys from the ritual the other night were looking at him, and not in the friendliest way either. It was like – as ridiculous as it sounded – they were jealous of him. These rich, young, fit, handsome guys were jealous of him because the caveman ghosts or whatever had taken a shine to him.
“If they like me already,” Pete said, “why do I need to do this?”
William slapped him on the back. “So they’ll like you more. You’ll see. You’ve only scratched the surface. You need to make sure you keep getting their attention.”
Jordanette blew a whistle, and everyone lined up. Pete got into line next to William, and Jordanette began shouting orders at them like she was a drill sergeant. She made them run and then flip down and do pushups, jumping up after each pushup. They did this an interminable number of times, until Pete thought he was going to vomit, and then they ran some more. Finally, she told them they could stop. The warm-up, she said, was over.
Pete wanted to shout out with rage that this was only the warm-up, but he didn’t have the strength. He was bent over, barely breathing, his face hot and his extremities tingling. Meanwhile, everyone else was getting ready for the major workout of the day. They were to do fifty body-weight bench presses, thirty pull-ups, and then twenty body-weight squats. This was to be repeated three times. Everyone lined up to get on the scale to find out what their lifting weight would be.
“I can’t do that,” Pete complained.
“I told you,” Jordanette said, not bothering to hide her impatience. “We’ll scale. For you.”
Scaling meant that while the other people in the class were bench pressing with multiple massive plates on their bars, Pete was lifting with only one small plate on each end. Then, while they did pull-ups, he used a pull-down machine. Finally, while they squatted massive weights, he did body weight squats, or at least tried to. Jordanette kept yelling at him that his thighs had to be parallel, whatever the hell that meant. It would have been humiliating enough, but when they reached the end, he was more winded than the guys who’d been lifting three times as much as he had.
Pete leaned against the wall, a cone-shaped cup of water in his hand. His heart pounded, his head throbbed. His mouth was so dry it was painful, but drinking didn’t help. He felt sure his pulse was erratic, and there was actually a pretty good chance he was going to have a heart attack and die right here.
While he worked on controlling his breathing, William walked over to him and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Fuck,” Pete gasped.
“Pretty amaze-balls, right?” William said.
“No,” Pete croaked. “It sucked.”
“You say that now,” he
laughed, “but I guarantee you’ll be raring to go again when you wake up tomorrow. This is the shit, my man. And let me tell you, you’ll see real changes. In your body, sure, but I’m talking about with the other thing. Our helpers, they love it when we live the lifestyle.”
Pete waited until after everyone else had finished in the locker room before he showered. In part, he didn’t want the guys to see what he looked like under his baggy gym clothes, but the main reason was that if he were to have a heart attack and die, he didn’t want it to be while he was naked.
By the time he got back to his car, he was tired and starving and thirsty. Part of him did feel pretty good. There was a certain pleasure in the sensation of his muscles buzzing, his pulse thrumming, all his parts working the way they were supposed to. On the other hand, he figured there would be an even greater pleasure in eating something with a crap load of melted cheese, so he drove to the nearest Taco Cabana and ordered a chicken quesadilla and a margarita and sat by the window, staring at traffic, watching nothing in particular. Mostly he just enjoyed his food and drink and thought about the paleo spirits and how nothing they offered could possibly be as good as Mexican food.
* * *
One chicken quesadilla had been enough, but one margarita proved insufficient, and so he’d ordered a few more. By the time he returned home, his problems had moved from troubling and infuriating to a foggy notion easily dismissed. Things, he decided, were not so bad. He had a wife he loved, and if she were difficult sometimes, so what? That’s what marriage was about. Addison was moody and remote, but that was the age. She did well in school, avoided trouble, and seemed to be on the right path. This paleo shit? That didn’t matter. He could distance himself from Douchebag William, no problem. It was time to deal with his life his way. He didn’t need to follow someone else’s rules.
These good feelings lasted about as long as it took him to find Jenny on the couch, a glass of piss-yellow chardonnay in her hand, glaring at him. “I just got off the phone with Rick Hudson,” she announced like she was holding up a hammer coated with blood and skull fragments she’d found in his toolbox.