All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

by Christopher Koehler

  “Do you, now? This wouldn’t have anything to do with an offer dangled in front of you by Pendergast, would it?” Lodestone’s brown eyes caught my gray ones and held them. For all my alleged cleverness, Lodestone saw right through me and always had.

  “I’ll catch you later, Remy.” Michael gave me a quick peck on one cheek.

  “No, you’d better stay.” Lodestone shook his head. “This concerns you, too. You need to know what your boy’s getting involved with.”

  Michael and I exchanged looks as we followed Lodestone back to his office. That didn’t sound ominous or anything. It made me wonder exactly what the implications of my CalPac coaches’ offer were. The chance to compete on a national or even international level had certainly dazzled me, and while I liked to think of myself as a practical soul, I now had the certain sensation that Lodestone was about to pull me rather forcibly back down to earth.

  “Have a seat, boys.” Lodestone usually pulled a chair around from behind his desk so that the three of us sat facing each other, but not this time. I wondered why he chose to maintain that distance.

  “So….” I started, but Lodestone cut me off with a gesture.

  “We all know what you’re going to ask me, Remy, so let’s get to the point. I know what your CalPac coaches have offered you, and I know they’ve given you permission to approach me about the kind of specialized, intensive coaching you’ll need. Frankly, it’s amazingly generous of them.”

  Okay, so much for building up to things, but then, cutting to the chase was more my style. “They get that I respond to you. You took me to the Youth Nationals twice. They think maybe you can take me beyond that, too.” I looked him in the eyes. “Can you? Will you?”

  Then the negotiations commenced. Negotiations? More like my one-time coach and mentor trying to argue me out of pursuing something most people never even dreamed of. Could I honestly say I dreamed of this? I wasn’t so sure. It had never occurred to me until Pendergast and Ridgewood had spoken to me about it.

  But spoke to me they had. They dangled that brass ring before my eyes, and now I wanted it more than anything. Yet there sat Lodestone, and unless I missed my mark, he appeared to be talking me out of it. What was up with that? Crush my dreams, will you? Ha!

  “Lookit, Lodestone, will you coach me or not? It’s not like you won’t be compensated, and you can essentially name your price. So cut the crap, because I know what I’m getting into: I’ll have to take a bare minimum course load, my mail will be forwarded to the boathouse, and despite the rats, I might as well sleep out here, because I’ll be here more than I’ll be at my dorm.”

  Lodestone gave me a long, serious look, like the one when he’d caught me with Josh Brennan a few years back, but worse because I felt like he was trying to take the measure of me. “Do you, Remy? Do you really know what you’re asking of us both? Because I can guarantee you that training on this level is nothing you’ve ever done before and will require sacrifices not just from the two of us but from our nearest and dearest. I can’t say Marissa’s thrilled at the thought, but then, she knew she’d be a rowing widow when we first got serious about each other.”

  I looked at Michael, but before I could open my mouth, he shook his head. “Don’t drag me into this. I row, so I have an idea what you’ll be facing. And it’s not like I can’t handle the logistics for our escape to the East Coast.”

  Oh bloody fucking hell, that. I didn’t know how I kept forgetting it. I didn’t want to face telling him about my change of heart, so I let rowing distract me. Uh… actually, yes, I knew exactly how I kept forgetting. Avoidance.

  Lodestone and I kept at each other, but the whole exchange annoyed me. Annoyed? Try pissed me off.

  “Seriously, Lodestone, if you don’t believe in me and my ability, why’re we even here? I’d like to think that after two trips to the Youth Nationals and a handful of gold medals, I’d have proven to you that I’ve got at least some native ability—you’ve got those on your coaching résumé, right, you hypocrite?—but no, I’m sitting here on the other side of your desk while you play devil’s advocate. At least, that better be what you’re doing. So cut the bouillabaisse and answer the question—will you coach me or not?” Then I had an idea, a horrible, rotten, evil idea. “Or have we finally found the limit of your abilities? If this is more than you can handle, there’s no shame in saying so.”

  For a moment I thought I might have gone too far. Lodestone looked like I’d smacked him upside the head.

  “You… little… punk.”

  Michael watched us both with undisguised amusement… as he had for years.

  “What’re you laughing at?” I glared at him.

  “Two gifted, idiosyncratic men circling around each other. You’re going to work with each other, if only because you, Coach, won’t stand for someone else monkeying about with your greatest achievement. And you, Remy. You don’t actually listen to anyone but Peter Lodestone, at least not for very long, and we all know it.”

  We both stared at Michael. I mean, he was right, but did he have to say it out loud like that?

  I glanced at Lodestone. “Are you going to get this one?”

  “Me? He’s your boyfriend.” I’m sure he tried to hide it, but I knew Lodestone thought it was funny.

  “You’re delusional if you think I have any control over him.” Sure, this whole conversation revolved around training me to work miracles in thirty pounds of carbon fiber, but I was only human.

  “Get to the point,” Michael said. “I have to be home soon, and this ‘Coach kept me after practice’ bit only stretches so far before it’s too thin to be believable.”

  Lodestone coughed. “Right. So here’s what we’re looking at. I’ve already mapped out a periodized training and competition strategy that has you peaking at the U23 team selection trials in late June. I’ve worked backward from that.” He shoved a spreadsheet across his desk to me. It bristled with labels, each color-coded, but it gradually resolved into some sense and order the longer I studied it. “You’ll notice that if you make the U23 team, there’ll be another minicycle to bump you up before the Worlds selection camp.”

  Lodestone let the reality of the next six months sink in for a few moments before he continued. “You will be lifting, sculling, and erging. A lot. Plan on two practices—two long practices—a day that incorporate some combination of those. Plan on regular erg testing. I will assume total control of your diet, and you’ll start logging your food intake. If you bite it, you’ll write it, whether it’s coffee or a steak dinner or cheesecake for dessert.”

  I looked at Michael, whose eyes held a devilish gleam. “Stop that,” I said. Something told me Lodestone didn’t really want to know how many calories, carbs, et cetera a load contained.

  “What’re you two up to, now?” Lodestone said.

  “Nothing… yet.”

  Sure, Michael looked innocent, but no one in the room believed that for a second.

  “Anyway,” Lodestone said, “before we get any further into this, you’re going to have a complete physical and health screening as USRowing defines it. You haven’t had one of those yet, which is something of an oversight.”

  I’d expected that, but I had no idea how to go about setting up one that would “count,” if that made sense. I mean, sure, I could’ve gone to see my HIV specialist, but my meds and I got along fine, and we talked about HIV and competition a fair amount. The upshot was that HIV and competition at the highest levels got on well together, and there was at least one gold medal winner who was poz.

  “Because of the HIV? I thought I’d told you I’d been cleared—”

  “No, because you should’ve had an ECG long before now. Sudden death is the leading cause of mortality in endurance athletes, and it’s usually due to an undiagnosed but preexisting cardiac abnormality.” Lodestone sighed. “This one’s pretty much my fault, guys.”

  My once and future coach paused for a moment, and I could tell he sought for the right words. Experie
nce alone taught him he needed to tell me the truth, but maybe not all of it. “To be honest, I’ve had to consult with my old coaches at U-Dub. They’re the ones who shoved me in the direction of the USRowing health exams. We’ll fill out all of these forms, and your doctor here will administer the ECG, but experts in Boston will read and analyze them. USRowing contracts with cardiologists at Mass Gen to read the ECG in particular. They don’t want you keeling over on their watch, and neither do I.”

  “I don’t want you dying, either.” Michael took my hand. “I know how much this means to you, Rem, but nothing’s worth that.”

  “I know, believe me, I know.” I’d already faced my mortality once, and I had no intention of going down that road again. Did they not remember? Whatever. I did.

  There remained one topic to discuss. I hated talking about money, but it was a reality of adult life. “How much do you need for this? My grandparents will be paying your salary, so don’t lowball your needs. Oh, and you may end up talking to them about my equipment needs, too.”

  “Remy? How well off are your grandparents?” Lodestone looked troubled, and I couldn’t blame him.

  “I have no idea. That they live on the Gold Coast in Chicago is about all I know, and they offered to do this for me.” I knew a lot more than that, but really? Talking about money with nonfamily members? Please. I knew I was brash and about as subtle as an uncontrolled chain reaction, but even I had my limits.

  “I’ll have to give this some thought, then. I made some assumptions that may not be true,” Lodestone said. “I’ll talk to some club members to see if they mind you trying out their boats. I want you to get a feel for what’s out there before I—or your grandparents—buy you a single. I may replace those sculls your parents bought you, too.”

  He referred to the pair of oars my parents bought me to entice me back into a boat when I was recovering from the initial infection with HIV. I’d recovered well enough physically, but psychologically? It hadn’t helped that a few ’phobes on the Cap City junior crew had made some unhelpful comments, either. In one of their rare moments of insight and sensitivity, Mom and Dad had bought me sculling oars.

  Replace them? Fine. He knew more than I did, after all.

  Then something occurred to me. “How will I get this future boat of mine back east for the trials?”

  “You won’t.” Lodestone made some notes on my training spreadsheet. “You’ll rent one, most likely from the manufacturer. Believe me, they’ve got quite the racket going with this sort of thing. We’d get there early to make the necessary adjustments to the rigging.”

  I glanced at the time. The sand was almost out in Michael’s hourglass. “Anything else? Michael needs to leave soon.”

  “You two really are joined at the hip, aren’t you?” Lodestone smiled.

  “Looks like we’d better be now, while we still can.” Michael glanced meaningfully at the training spreadsheet.

  Lodestone laughed softly. “Don’t worry about that. One, I’m not that cruel, and two, it’s periodized, remember? That means planned and regular periods of rest. Have you forgotten everything I’ve taught you about training? We stress the body to provoke deliberate changes, but we have to give the body time to adapt and make those changes. Otherwise I’m just tormenting you. So get out. I’ll see you both tomorrow. Remy, for you that means 5:00 a.m.”

  “We’re starting already?”

  “Yes.”

  OUT IN the parking lot, I did my best to get him to take some electronics off my hands, but Michael’s reaction to the Apple harvest matched Geoff’s.

  “I can’t take this.”

  I laughed awkwardly. I felt like I was pedaling things that “fell off the back of a truck” when I showed Michael the bounty of my grandparents’ largesse.

  “How on earth do you think I can use all of this? You don’t think I intend to share it with my parents, do you? I mean, come on.”

  Michael shook his head. “There’s no way I can accept any of this.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s my parents, for one thing.” The “duh” went unsaid but hung there in the air like a fart.

  Eye roll. “What do they have to do with it? Didn’t they impound your computer?”

  “Yes….”

  He was weakening. I could tell.

  “Do you have it back yet?” All I had to do was take baby steps down the primrose path.

  “Well… no.”

  One step after another.

  “So take the computer, and if they bitch about it, tell them you needed one for school and borrowed it from a friend.”

  Michael nodded. “So it’s a loaner?”

  “Don’t be ridic, you’re telling them that since they’ve got no connection to reality at this point. Say it’s from Laurel. You’ll know she’ll back you up. Take an iPhone, too. They bought me one, but the one I have from my parents is fine. That crappy little burner can’t be easy to use.” I sighed. “This way, if they try to take this one, you can tell them they’re committing theft.”

  Michael smiled, and I got all tingly. I wondered if he knew how much power over me he really had. “No, it’s really not. My thumbs are killing me, and before you ask, no, they haven’t given me my real phone back, either.”

  “So take the iPhone, and get a plan with lots of texting but maybe not so much on the data, because as I recall you don’t really download much.” It was going to kill me to break his heart about our plan for next year.

  “True fact.” He looked at his watch. “Okay, I really have to go.”

  We kissed good-bye for a few minutes, but really, his parents were insane and knew what time his practice ended. The whole situation was insane, really.

  Chapter 21

  LOOKING BACK, I should’ve kept Michael in the parking lot longer. I should’ve boned him in the back of the car. I had never been this tired in my life. Yes, Lodestone had warned me. Sure, I had that colorful spreadsheet. I posted it in multiple places, almost every vertical surface by late February. In fact, a picture of one was the first thing I put in the training log I started keeping for my grandparents for them to show off. Those “off” weeks in Lodestone’s periodization? I caught up on sleep, and not even Brady and his petty annoyances could disturb me. Actually, I think he started to feel sorry for me. I wouldn’t have thought I’d reached a point in my life in which regular team practices were my easy weeks. It’s not like Pendergast went easy on us or anything, but given what I was doing on my own time, nothing he threw at me mattered.

  Pendergast. It took remarkably little time before it became blindly clear to everyone that I’d outgrown Ridgewood’s team. Okay, sure, let’s get it out there that I was a rowing prodigy, but anyone who put the butt time in the seat with the kind of attention Lodestone gave me would improve by leaps and bounds. But then, nothing came for free, and as my grandfather had said, I’d determined what I wanted, and I was paying the price. I don’t think people understood that.

  One morning at practice as I warmed up with the usual JV guys, someone I barely recognized came up. Steven, I think his name was, a senior and a varsity rower. “You’re Remy, right?”

  I glanced up from my erg. “Yeah.”

  “Coach says you’re with us today.”

  “Um, okaaay.” I glanced at Robbie, the JV team captain, who shrugged, as mystified as I was.

  I went back to erging.

  “Now, man. We leave earlier than JV.”

  I climbed off the erg. “Nothing like advanced notice.”

  “Yeah, whatever. I’m Steven, the team captain. Try not to suck.”

  Oh, really? Allow me to humiliate you and hand you your ass, bitch. “Try to keep up.”

  I walked past him to the bay housing the varsity boats. I enjoyed that practice. I wish I could’ve said I earned his grudging respect, but I think he resented my presence, if not my rise through the ranks. I never did determine if it was because he’d been assigned as my babysitter or if he simply didn’t like m
e. I was told some people didn’t. Whatever. I had better things to concentrate on, like rowing. Or seat racing. I wanted his.

  Seat racing was both fun and sadistic. It made for faster boats, but it did so by setting members of a squad against each other. Take two fours and fill them with people you wanted to compare. Race them down a set course, usually a kilometer, tracking the times. Then bring the boats into alarmingly close proximity, like the “riggers of one boat touching the hull of the other boat” proximity. Then, through a complicated ballet, switch the people who rowed the same seat in each boat, such as each two seat, for example. Then repeat the process. Sometimes the stronger rower—strength or technique or both—became clear immediately. Otherwise, lather, rinse, repeat. Coaches could tweak lineups this way indefinitely.

  I never managed to take Steven’s seat, but the fact that I made him sweat for it made his jaw drop. The fact that I did it without appearing to work myself into a lather filled him with disgust. No, I eventually ended up in the engine room in the varsity A boat, and that worked out fine. I pulled hard and rowed my seat without having to think too much. I wondered if that was what Pendergast had in mind.

  I might accidentally on purpose have been eavesdropping when Pendergast told Peevie Steevie, “You know he has a decent shot at making the U23 National Team, right? When you bring that to the boat, you can be obnoxious, too, and to be honest? He’s not that obnoxious.”

  I’d have taken the time to savor the moment, but I was ramping up on another of Lodestone’s cycles, and what I truly wanted to do was sleep for a week or three. Preferably snuggled up to Michael.

  But I swear Pendergast was out to get me one morning. “Remy, do you do any yoga? You’ve got uncommonly good balance in the boat.”

  “Yes.”

  I must’ve looked a bit hesitant, because he laughed. “Relax. I’ve been trying to get through to these lugs the importance of balance and flexibility. We still have that damn shimmy, and it’s costing us time. Maybe if you show them, they’ll listen.”