Ring Game (2 page)

Hyatt put the van in drive and pulled out onto Lake Street. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything, how it’s gonna work and what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna love it. It’s
perfect.”

In close contests … psychological factors can be decisive.

—Arnold Schwarzenegger

J
OE CROW GRIPPED THE
bar, felt the worn knurling press into his palms. He closed his eyes and envisioned the barbell floating up from its rack, hovering effortlessly under his control. He imagined his arm bones as titanium shafts, his tendons as steel cables, his pectoral muscles as powerful turbines. He slowly counted, visualizing the weight descending, lightly touching his chest, floating up again. He counted three reps in his mind.

Two hundred fifty-five pounds. He’d be lucky to press it once.

To the bodybuilders and powerlifters at Bigg Bodies, benching two fifty-five would be part of their warm-up routine, but to Crow it was a lot of iron, seventy pounds more than he’d been able to handle a couple months back when he’d started working out at Bigg’s. Twenty pounds more than he’d pressed last Friday. A big jump, but he was feeling good. Feeling strong.

He had a rule.
Always play your strong hands.

What he should really do, he should ask someone to spot him, lend a hand if he got stuck with the bar pressing down on his ribcage. That would be the smart thing. Unfortunately, his choice of spotters was limited to two: Beaut Miller, who was taking time out from his duties as assistant manager of Bigg Bodies to build up his already overdeveloped chest, and the aromatic Flowrean Peeche.

Of all the human oddities that frequented Bigg Bodies, Crow found Flowrean Peeche to be the most bizarre by several orders of magnitude. She was working the pec deck at the other side of the chest room, twenty feet away but well within smelling distance. A frightening symphony of grunts, growls, and snarls erupted from her throat as she squeezed out a last few reps. For a five-foot-three-inch female, she was astonishingly powerful.

Flowrean had been wearing the same unwashed heather gray sweats ever since Crow had started working out at Bigg Bodies two months ago. She did her workouts barefooted and barehanded. Twisted shanks of thick hair explored the space surrounding her head, framing her imperturbable features in an explosion of black tendrils. Around her neck, six dead goldfish in various stages of decomposition were strung onto a braided steel wire.

Despite her over-the-top body odor and her dead-fish necklace, Flowrean radiated a kind of regal beauty. When not contorted with momentary physical effort, her olive-gold skin, deep brown eyes, and full, dark lips gave her the look of a placid, self-satisfied icon. Her bearing was that of a queen in exile, her aroma that of a hydrophobic bag lady.

Crow caught her eyes in the mirrored wall. For a fraction of a second he found himself held by them, then her lids closed. She rotated her head and opened her eyes onto another scene.

Flowrean seemed to live inside an invisible but palpable bubble. She spoke to others in the gym only when she could not avoid it, and when she did speak, she was both abrupt and succinct. Crow suspected that Flowrean Peeche saw other human beings as phantasms—less real and important than the dead goldfish around her neck.

The only other potential spotter in the chest room, Beaut Miller, was pumping up his chest on the cables. In a pinch, Crow decided, he’d take the nose-wrenching Flowrean over the dangerous wit of Beaut, whose favorite gag was to come up behind a guy doing pull-ups and yank his shorts down to his ankles. None of the regulars did pull-ups when Beaut was in the vicinity.

Ah well, thought Crow, having no spotter might inspire him to perform better. Once the bar touched his chest, he’d have no choice but to shove it back up. He planted his feet firmly, centered his back on the bench, and lifted. The barbell came up off the rack, and his muscles went into overload, desperately trying to prevent the weight from dropping onto his face. The bar wavered, loose plates clanking. Crow kept his elbows locked, trying to reassure his panicked muscles.

“That looks heavy, guy.” Beaut Miller’s hoarse voice came from behind.

Crow felt his concentration split. He thought, I should just rerack it.

“You want a spot there, guy? You don’t want to drop it on your face.”

Through gritted teeth, Crow muttered, “No thanks.” He lowered the bar toward his chest, blocking Beaut’s presence from his mind, stopping the bar just before it touched his T-shirt.

Now up, he commanded, squeezing his chest, forcing his arms to straighten. Miraculously, the bar began to ascend. He allowed himself to think of Beaut watching him control the weight, pushing it slowly skyward.

Something icy cold slapped him on his bare thigh. Crow flinched, the barbell tilted to the left. He felt himself losing control, seeing it happen in slow motion. The five and ten-pound weights slid off the left end of the bar and hit the rubber floormat with a clang. That end of the barbell, suddenly fifteen pounds lighter, whipped up. All four weights on the right end slid off and slammed onto the rubber. The right end of the bar kicked up then, and the last pair of forty-fives crashed down to his left. Crow was left holding the empty bar, his arms shaking violently. He racked the bar and sat up. His leg was wet.

Beaut stood shaking his golden mane, holding a half-empty squeeze bottle. “Jeez, guy, I’m sorry as hell. Didn’t mean to splash ya.” He upended the bottle and jetted a few ounces of water into his mouth. “A guy oughta ask for a spot if he’s not sure he can handle it.” His pale blue eyes widened, as if a new thought had entered his mind. “A guy could get hurt.”

Neither bodybuilder nor powerlifter, Beaut was your basic gym rat—whatever part of his body he could see in the bathroom mirror bulged meatily, including his prognathous jaw. He made no effort to achieve a symmetrical physique, choosing to conceal his less-than-impressive legs beneath billowing leopard-skin-patterned Zubaz and relying on his jutting chest to divert attention from his spongy abdomen. Beaut wanted mass and, at six-three and upward of two hundred sixty pounds, he had it. With his double-wide shoulders, his twenty-inch biceps, his deep tan, and his curly bleached locks, Beaut cut an impressive figure at the local T.G.I. Friday’s.

Crow wondered how Beaut would respond to a ten-pound plate thrown at his head. Probably just let it bounce off his skull, then try to dismember the thrower. Maybe it would be worth it.

Flowrean, sitting at the pec deck, had paused in her workout to watch the two men facing one another. She caught Crow’s eye, then looked quickly away, her mop of black hair whipping across her face. Crow wished she wasn’t there, watching. Having an audience, especially a female audience, made him want to do something stupid. He called up another of his rules, forced himself to look at it:
Never act in anger.

Beaut held out the water bottle toward Crow. “You want some?”

Crow stood up and walked away.
Walk away from bad hands early.
He proceeded into the main room, a large open area that contained most of the back, shoulder, and arm equipment, and the cardio gear—four stationary bikes, a pair of Stairmasters, and a rowing machine. He remembered the first time he’d walked into Bigg Bodies and seen the long rows of weight-training equipment, the padded benches covered in cherry-red vinyl, rack after rack of neatly stacked iron plates, a two-tiered rack of dumbbells stretching out across a sea of pebble-gray carpeting. He had quickly realized that the size of the gym was exaggerated by the mirrored walls, but somehow that knowledge had not taken away from the majesty of it. He still liked to imagine himself in an endless room, an illusion shattered only when he encountered a reflection of himself.

Behind the counter near the entrance sat Arling Biggie, better known as Bigg, reading a magazine, wearing his usual red, white, and blue silk warm-ups. He looked up from his reading, caught Crow’s eye, smiled, and winked. From his perch behind the counter, Bigg had a view into every corner of his mirrored establishment. Crow was sure he had seen Beaut’s little trick with the water bottle.

Crow stepped onto one of the Stairmasters and began climbing, determined to think about something peaceful, like fishing, which was what he planned to do as soon as he finished his workout. Drive up to Whiting Lake to his old man’s cabin. Throw a line in the water. It was a three-hour drive, but he’d be there by four o’clock, plenty of time to land a monster. Throw out a buzz bait, reel it in. Throw it out, reel it in. If the buzz bait didn’t work he could maybe try a spoon, or even one of those weird lures his father made out of spark plugs or strips of auto body. Load up his line with a twisted scrap of Dodge minivan, throw it out, reel it in.

According to the computer readout on the Stairmaster, Crow had climbed seventeen floors when Arling Biggie leaned a meaty forearm on the handrail and looked up at Crow. “Beaut give you a hard time there, Crow?”

Crow let the fishing thing go and pulled himself back to the here and now. “You saw that?”

“I thought you guys were going to go at it.”

Crow nodded. “So did I.”

“Probably a good thing you didn’t.”

“Maybe. How come you keep him around? He must cost you business.”

Bigg looked like a short, aging version of the Incredible Hulk with a shaven scalp and thick sideburns that began in front of his ears and followed the line of his jaw to the tips of his Fu Manchu mustache. The look, Crow believed, was designed to make people want to laugh—then think better of it. Bigg’s round, unblinking blue eyes, a little white showing all the way around the iris, had a reptilian quality that belied his clownish whiskers.

Bigg considered Crow’s comment. He raised his short, thick eyebrows, pushed out his lower lip, and contracted his trapezius muscles. His thick neck disappeared, and his cantaloupe shoulders rose a full three inches. He held the pose for an instant, then relaxed. Crow took it for a shrug.

“Beaut’s not so bad, once you get used to him. It’s like with Flowrean: Once you get used to the smell, you kinda get to like it.”

“I can hold my breath around Flowrean. Beaut’s tougher to ignore.”

Bigg smiled and nodded. “I know what you mean. But when Beaut’s doing his workout, he’s on his own time. Just another member. Technically speaking, he hasn’t broken any of our rules.” He ticked off the three Bigg Bodies rules on his stumpy fingers. “One: Beaut racks his weights. Two: Beaut gives a spot if you ask him nice. Three: Beaut pays his dues on time.” He laughed. “Course, they come right out of his paycheck.” He gave Crow a flat smile. “Unlike some of our members, who pay no dues whatsofuckingever.”

“You should’ve thought about that when you bet those queens.”

“You’re the luckiest son-of-a-bitch I ever played cards with,” Bigg said.

Crow stopped climbing. The treads sank to the floor, bringing him down to Bigg’s level. “Is that what this is about?” he asked.

Bigg looked over his shoulder into the chest room. Crow followed his gaze, saw Beaut watching them, a white grin shimmering on his tanned face.

If that Joe Crow had started working out ten, fifteen years ago, Bigg thought, he might’ve been one hell of a powerlifter. He had the classic powerlifter’s build: small and compact, with muscular thighs, short arms, and naturally sloped shoulders. He’d never make it now, of course. Not at his age. A guy couldn’t expect to walk into a gym for the first time at thirtysomething and expect to compete, no matter how good his genes. Crow had pissed away his life when he could’ve been a champion. A real shame. Bigg had been a competitive powerlifter until 1979, when, a few days after squatting nine hundred twenty pounds in the Tri-State, he’d blown out his left knee. Playing golf, of all things. He’d gone on to a brief career on the pro wrestling circuit under the name “Studly Doo-Rite,” then spent a few years working as a personal trainer, occasionally collecting bills for a furniture rental company just for laughs. Eight years ago, at the age of forty, he’d bought Smithy’s Auto Body and turned it into Bigg Bodies, the Choice of Twin Cities Bodybuilders.

Bigg gave Crow a cuff on the shoulder and returned to his stool behind the counter. Crow continued his climb to nowhere on the Stairmaster again, that dreamy, blank look returning to his face. It was the same look he’d had when Bigg had bet those three queens, the same look he’d had when he’d shown Bigg his straight and won himself a lifetime membership to Bigg Bodies. In fact, it was pretty much the same look Crow
always
had. Bigg found such complacency to be enormously irritating.

Maybe he should tell Beaut to turn up the heat, drop a plate on Crow’s head or something. That might be interesting. He’d have to think about that. One thing for sure, he didn’t want to watch Crow working out for free every day for the rest of his life.

He picked up the magazine he had been reading, but nothing had changed. Bigg Bodies had failed, once again, to make the Mpls./St. Paul magazine list of “Best Twin Cities Workouts.” Not even a mention. In fact, no one who worked at the magazine had ever visited Bigg’s, much less worked out there. Never mind that Bigg had trained three of the last five Mr. Minnesotas. Never mind that he’d been training champions years before those pencilnecks at Bally’s had moved in on the market with their chromium “fitness centers” and spandex discotheques. He’d been to one once. A bunch of geeks standing in line waiting their turn to use the ten-pound dumbbells. No serious bodybuilder had ever worked out twice at a Bally’s.

Running a gym was a pain in the ass anyways. Up at five-thirty every morning, dealing with all these ’roided-out kids with their big talk and nothing egos, listening to a bunch of pinheads grunting and farting their way through their sets. It was undignified. Work his ass to the bone and then get screwed over by some pencilneck reporter who probably got a free membership to Bally’s for writing the article. Maybe he should close the joint, get into selling amino acids and protein supplements instead. Or buy a couple more stretches, build up his limo business. That was easy money, renting out those white Lincolns to wedding parties and such. Easier than running this damn gym.