Jonathan, card in hand, went to head back up the stairs, then stopped. He remembered he had to ask the two super geeks in the living room something. He wasn’t sure how to phrase it.
“Guys, if you were going to watch a movie,” he paused, “something with a guy who needs to learn certain things, like fighting, or killing monsters...”
Collin’s eyes were growing large. He seemed to be waiting for Jonathan to give him a complete thought.
“Do you know any movies about people who are badasses?” Jonathan asked, wincing at how ridiculous the question sounded even to him.
Hayden smiled.
“You’re going to have to narrow that down. I think you just asked me about 75% of all modern mainstream cinema.”
Jonathan had an idea.
“If you were writing an essay on the modern hero story, and you wanted to start doing research. What would you watch?”
Hayden’s eyes seemed to twinkle. He smiled, then looked to Collin, then back to Jonathan. They knew he wasn’t writing such a paper, none of Jonathan’s classes would assign such a topic, so they had to wonder where his interest was coming from.
“Jonathan, I think most nerds dream about being asked that question. So, if you would like me to sit on that couch and give you my doctoral thesis on every action movie that has been released in the last thirty years, my answer is yes. A million times, yes.”
“Count me in for that.” Collin put in, grinning.
“Count me out,” said Paige, with a look that said: You can’t make it to school, but you have time for this crap? Paige had mastered the art of speaking with facial expressions this morning.
Jonathan walked down one of the steep sloped streets that passed over the freeway connecting Capitol Hill to Downtown Seattle on his way to meet Grant. When he’d called, the man had answered his phone excitedly but soon seemed confused by Jonathan’s peculiar request.
“Jonathan!” Grant said. “You find that bastard?”
Jonathan had fudged the truth.
“Um no, nothing like that,” he’d said.
Technically Heyer had found me.
“Grant, actually I was hoping, and I’m not sure how to ask this, but I was wondering if you might teach me a thing or two about putting on some muscle?”
There had been a pause on the phone as Jonathan waited for Grant’s answer.
When he finally responded, it was as though he felt a responsibility to say yes but didn’t want to.
“Sure, I could help you bulk up,” he’d said. “When did you want to start?”
“As soon as you can,” Jonathan said. “Today, if possible.
Grant seemed hesitant. Jonathan almost asked him to forget it. The offering of the business card was just an unspoken politeness. Grant was just trying to impress Paige, and now he was putting him out by calling him on it.
Still, Grant had agreed to meet him at his gym downtown.
“You’ll need to get a membership, so I’d get there early,” he’d said.
It occurred to Jonathan then that he didn’t have a great deal of extra money to fund whatever plans he might make. He was going to need to pick up more shifts.
Damn alien tells me to get ready for a fight, he might have thought about what I had to work with.
He was missing school, he was changing his schedule; the reality of what it might take to survive was starting to take shape, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. How was he going to maintain a semblance of his life? College students scraping by on student loans and part-time jobs don’t have disposable income, and he was already so far behind. What would he tell people?
He’d put three years of his life into college, he’d invested too much of himself, he couldn’t just drop it. His mind rebelled at the notion. His freedom taken away, aliens and alternate worlds now a reality, it was hard to believe that the question of school could weigh so heavily on him. As if, should he find the means to escape it all tomorrow, he would go back to the life he knew? Yet he felt he had to get back to that life. It wasn’t just his freedom that would be taken if he didn’t, but who he was.
Until he freed himself of this mess, he had to find a way to put his real life on hold. The college had already given him the option of a grace quarter. He would have to take it, postpone attendance.
I might be dead at the end of the quarter. Jonathan winced at the thought and got angry with himself. Stop! There’s just no damn point thinking that way.
When he turned the next corner he saw the gym. As he passed the front windows, he walked by a man leaning against the wall talking on his cell phone. His sheer size was intimidating. Jonathan figured the guy must have weighed 250 pounds and it was all muscle. He wondered if that was what he had come here to be and tried to imagine adding that much weight to his body. He couldn’t picture it. How long had it taken that man to become what he was?
He couldn’t help but question Heyer’s judgment as he thought this. If there was a guy like this working out at a gym a few blocks away, how the hell did Jonathan get picked to fight the Ferox? This guy looked like he’d been preparing to fight monsters his entire life, like he was perpetually built to be a warrior. What was the alien thinking, throwing someone like Jonathan into this situation?
Genetic and psychological compatibility, he remembered.
“Really Carla!” the big man said, yelling into his cell phone. “You want to get your BMI back down to nineteen but you want to reschedule training?”
What’s a BMI? Jonathan thought as he couldn’t avoid eavesdropping.
“Well, I’m already here waiting.”
It was the last part of the conversation he overheard as he entered the double doors into the facility.
The gym was alive with activity. The front desk was checking people in, handing out towels, answering phones. Everywhere he looked there was someone doing cardio on a treadmill or a StairMaster. High energy hip hop music was blaring over the sound of machines, even though everyone in the place seemed to be plugged into head phones. The floors were carpeted wall to wall with some type of rubber foam, the walls made up entirely of mirrors.
He could smell sweat. It wasn’t as bad as a locker room, but it was still hard to miss.
He talked to the girl at the counter briefly. She asked him to wait while she got a membership salesperson to come speak to him. This was nothing like what he remembered from the local gym in high school, even if he’d seldom actually gone in there. The walls near the front desk were lined with shelves and displays. The shelves were stocked with tubs and bags, the kind Jonathan had only seen in vitamin stores at the mall. He had no idea what any of the stuff was supposed to do.
Crap, will I need to know?
He looked at the labels. He recognized some of the words from his classes, but had no idea what function they served as a supplement. What was nitric oxide and creatine? What was a BCAA? Every vial or tub looked expensive to his college student-sized wallet.
As he waited, the big guy from outside came in. He still looked pissed off. He stopped by the front desk to talk to the girl handing out the towels.
“I’m sick of training these wanna-be models,” he said, “they all want perfect bodies, then they ignore it when I tell them it’s 80% diet and they can’t blow off training. You know they’re gonna blame the trainer when they don’t get the results they want.”
The front counter girl nodded at him in agreement. She seemed only half interested though, like she heard the complaint frequently. The big man walked away from the counter, into the gym. Jonathan watched him go. He was so large people moved aside like they would for a semi-truck merging into their lane on the freeway.
He was growing more and more intimidated with just how much there might be to this whole working out plan when the account representative finally showed up. He took one look at Jonathan and something about him seemed to waiver, but he quickly put on his sales face. After thirty minutes of Jonathan explaining to the guy that all he could afford was the s
implest of memberships, the guy stopped trying to sell him every service the gym offered and finally let him buy a membership.
Standing there alone, Jonathan felt like some kind of tourist as he waited for Grant. His crappy t-shirt and cargo shorts made him stand out. Everyone he could see seemed to be in some dress code he hadn’t been told about. Synthetic fibers, tank tops, and various off shoots of spandex were all around him. He was unforgivably aware that he was the only person here who wasn’t already in shape. He’d at least expected to see some overweight people on the cardio equipment, but it wasn’t the case.
At first he thought it might be a Friday morning phenomenon and the out of shape people didn’t show up until after working hours; then he thought about who sent him here. Grant had probably chosen this place because it catered to people who were already athletes.
He grew anxious quickly, unsure what to do with himself. Grant was going on forty minutes late.
He had to remind himself that Grant wasn’t aware of the urgency to get started. How could he be? It wasn’t as if he had explained to the guy that he had a bout with a seven foot tall monster scheduled three months out and needed to make sure he was ready. Jonathan didn’t even know if three months would be enough time to matter. How much ‘mass’ could he gain in that amount of time anyway? Eventually, feeling silly, Jonathan tried to start without him.
Almost immediately he realized he had no idea even how to begin. The gym was so full of options and he didn’t know if there was, in fact, a right or wrong place to start. There were muscle machines. Should he start with those? Most of the big guys in the gym didn’t seem to be using them. They all seemed lined up with the spare benches and dumbbells, but even that was daunting.
Do I just pick up a weight and start pumping? Just go until I can’t lift it anymore?
Looking around, he couldn’t tell. Some guys seemed to do a certain number of repetitions, others had people around them to help as they pushed until they couldn’t lift the weights anymore. This wasn’t nearly as straight forward as he had hoped. Finally, frustrated with the thought of such a monumentally small thing getting in his way, he decided he would try the machines.
It was hard to push the atmosphere away. He felt like amateur hour in the presence of hardened professionals. As he walked over to the machine area, he stopped politely to let two girls pass in front of him. They looked to be about 18, a blonde and a brunette decked out in expensive gym attire and makeup. Once they passed, he overheard the brunette talking to her friend.
“Ugg, as if I’m getting a membership here. Place claims it’s exclusive. That guy looks like a homeless person buying a membership so he can use the showers.”
Jonathan felt his face redden as he turned around to watch them walk away. The blonde was nodding her agreement. He was stunned; he thought this kind of rudeness only existed in movies. Making it worse, he noticed the muscled trainer watching him just then. The guy was scowling at him from behind his cubicle desk. Jonathan couldn’t tell if it was that he agreed with the girls or because he thought they were out of line.
He snapped out of it. Turning back to the machines and leaving the man’s line of sight.
Being embarrassed is hardly relevant. Screw them all and go do something.
He was pumping the leg press machine an arbitrary number of times, trying to get an idea of what to set the weight at when he overheard the trainer answering the phone from behind a set of cubicle walls.
“This is Lincoln,” the voice said. “Yeah, like the car or the president.”
Jonathan eavesdropped again, he hadn’t thought to bring headphones as he’d assumed he’d be taking instruction from Grant, but seeing as how the guy was now an hour late, he only had his troubled thoughts to keep him company. He’d been unprepared for the culture shift in the gym, so he figured that understanding how the place worked might be wise. Lincoln was clearly an indoctrinated member of the place, so he might be worth paying attention to.
“No mam, the parking garage is not open on the weekends, but there is plenty of street parking,” Lincoln said, followed shortly by a “you’re welcome.”
Jonathan heard the sound of the phone hanging up.
Then again, maybe it won’t be that insightful.
He continued to pump the leg press until his legs felt like they were going numb. He had to assume that meant he’d exercised them and moved to the next machine. It was some type of shoulder exercise where he flapped his arms like a chicken. The doubt in his mind kept building. He couldn’t tell if he was wasting his time on the wrong things; the possibility was a perpetual discouragement. He didn’t have time to be wasting, he didn’t have time to figure this out; he needed to know what to do so he could stop focusing on if it was the right thing and focus on damn well getting it done.
“Hey, Lincoln,” a voice Jonathan recognized as his account representative whispered into the cubicle, “come check this out.”
Jonathan stopped flapping his arms and watched as the account representative pointed to the two teenage girls from earlier, setting up a bench press a little ways off.
“Those two over there,” said the account rep, “they came in on free day-passes, wouldn’t even listen when I tried to sell them a membership.”
“Okay,” Lincoln said, waiting for the story to get interesting. Jonathan was waiting as well, but more he wondered how the girls had gotten free day-passes while he had to buy a membership.
“So get this, they wanted to make sure this wasn’t the type of gym where they would be ‘getting hit on’ all the time,” said the rep incredulously, using his fingers to make air quotes when indicating he was reciting the girls’ exact words. “Apparently, they’ve had ‘a lot of problems’ with that in the past.”
Jonathan took another look at the girls. He didn’t see it. They were in decent shape but hardly distracting. Perhaps, being snubbed by them earlier was coloring his opinion of them.
Nope, he decided.
This ‘problem’ definitely existed in their absurdly inflated self-images. Jonathan frowned as Lincoln stepped to the front of his cubicle. He could see the trainer was frowning as well as he watched the girls setting up the bench press.
“Watch this,” said Lincoln, walking toward the girls.
The membership rep looked around nervously, as if he’d just set into motion something his managers might get upset about. When he saw no one was paying attention, he became more interested in what was about to play out in front of him.
Lincoln approached the girls fairly inconspicuously at first, just getting close enough that he might make them uncomfortable. He seemed to be going about his business, a gym employee re-shelving weights and resetting equipment; then, suddenly, his facial expression changed as he picked up a forty-five pound plate.
The scowl he’d had on since Jonathan had first seen him became an overacting impression of a sleaze ball. He turned to the girls, wearing this face, and performed a slow motion bicep curl with one arm, making a great effort to maintain eye contact with the blonde who was spotting her friend under the bar. When she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t staring at her, he looked from his bicep, back to the girl, then back to his bicep and let out a long slow breath.
“Ahhh, yeah,” said the trainer, without breaking character.
Jonathan and the Account rep watched wide eyed. It was difficult not to laugh and blow the act from afar. Jonathan couldn’t believe the trainer was keeping a straight face. Once the girl purposely stopped making eye contact, he re-racked the weight and walked up beside the spotter.
“Hi,” Lincoln said, doing what Jonathan thought was an impression of a surfer.
The blonde smiled awkwardly.
“So, like, mind if I assist your friend here?” he said.
Placing his hands in a spotting position under the bar, he nudged the blonde out of the way with his hip.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said. “I forget how built I am sometimes.”
The brunette girl on
the bench was now in the awkward position of having to look up at him from between his legs.
“Holy crap,” the account rep whispered, turning away to keep from laughing.
To finish off this masterpiece, Lincoln took the weight off the brunette entirely, picking up the bar and gesturing towards his biceps again with his eyes.
“Check it out,” he said while he flexed, “pretty sweet right?”
The girls stopped smiling, clearly getting uncomfortable. They walked away hurriedly the moment the brunette was out from under the weights. Lincoln’s eyes followed them as they left, still pumping the weight up and down.
“Hey, where ya going?” he said.
The second the girls were out of sight, Lincoln dropped the act and looked back at the account rep. Jonathan could see now that the trainer had almost lost it. The account rep’s face was red with embarrassment for the girls, but couldn’t hide that it had been worth it.
“Dude, like, was it something I said?” he joked to the account rep in his surfer impression.
When Jonathan realized he was laughing it jolted him. He hadn’t laughed, not a genuine laugh like that, since he’d woken up on the kitchen floor. It was so over the top that he’d actually forgotten to focus on his problems for a few minutes.
Unfortunately, he’d ruined the moment by noticing it.
When Grant finally made an appearance, Jonathan was, at first, grateful he’d shown up.
This didn’t last long, as he soon realized that he wasn’t going to be of any help. There was a stink of competitiveness that Jonathan didn’t understand undermining everything the man told him to do. He seemed far more interested in showing off his own muscle than teaching Jonathan anything.
He had Jonathan begin on a workout that he referred to as his maintenance routine, but he repeatedly started Jonathan at a weight level that would result in almost immediate failure. Grant seemed to revel in the failures, like it proved something. He hardly made an effort to hide it.
Jonathan didn’t know where it came from. He had never once slighted Grant to his knowledge. They’d hardly spoken at all. The guy was more confused about what Jonathan was trying to accomplish than Jonathan himself. The idea that Jonathan was honestly there just to learn how to body build was somehow an insult to the man’s intelligence. Out of necessity, Jonathan tried to ignore it, yet he couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable around him. He kept sensing that Grant felt like he was playing at something. Jonathan realized, of course, that he was sort of pretending, but not in a way that should make Grant question him.
Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero Page 15