Barrow walked in the direction of his gym, the Steel Plate, and five minutes later he was there. It was a twenty-four-hour establishment in an alley that also housed a loud workshop where they made sloppy paint jobs on old and stolen bikes. It was not a very popular gym, but the equipment was expertly maintained, and the small but dedicated crowd of members that worked out in there were all serious bodybuilders. At any given point, there would not be more than ten guys working out in there, which suited Barrow just fine because he was free to plan his circuits whichever way he chose without getting in anyone’s way, while at the same time always having a spotter at hand if he needed to do really heavy lifting.
He pushed the doors open and walked inside and was greeted by blessed coolness. That was another great thing about the gym: the air-conditioning never failed. In fact, Barrow had gone to some of the pricier gyms downtown where all the rich people went and had found them lacking when compared to the Steel Plate. They usually had more treadmills, swimming pools, and yoga classes than they knew what to do with, but pathetically little variety in free weights and such. Barrow had chosen to live in this area in the first place mainly because this gym was nearby. After all, he spent more time in there than in his own apartment.
“Hey,” Barrow greeted the trainer and owner, Edgar.
“What’s up, Barrow?” the man answered. He was a couple years older than Barrow and much more built up. “Didn’t see you this morning. You switching it up?”
Barrow shrugged. “Sort of. Got a new job, night shift, so I’ll probably be coming afternoons now. Maybe early mornings.”
“Glad to hear it,” Edgar answered, picking up a discarded dumbbell and walking over to the rack to set it in its proper place. “About time you found something.”
Barrow nodded and walked across the big room where all the equipment was. The gym felt wide and spacious, not only because there was plenty of room to move around between one station and the next, but also because the ceiling was set so high. There was plenty of natural light coming from the windows, and since the place had originally been a warehouse, it still retained that atmosphere of openness. Sound echoed off the walls easily, and the clangs and sharp bangs of metal weights hitting one another filled the otherwise quiet atmosphere, punctuated now and then by a loud grunt from whomever was doing the lifting.
He reached the end of the room and opened the little door that led to the lockers and showers. He nodded at a couple of regulars he passed along the way and opened the door to his locker to take out his towel and stash his food. He was just shutting it when he noticed a new guy coming in. He was middle-aged, blond, and nicely muscled. Barrow couldn’t help checking him out as he himself was heading back into the workout room. The new guy ignored him, more interested in checking out the layout of the place from the looks of it, as if he were thinking of joining the gym. No point in staring at the guy too long now, though. If he stayed while Barrow was exercising, there would be plenty of opportunities to check him out again.
Barrow headed straight for the lighter dumbbells and grabbed a couple of eight-pounders. The metal was cold, the handles rough and textured in Barrow’s toughened grip. He grinned slightly, absentmindedly, and began pumping.
He spent nearly fifteen minutes doing warm-up circuits of nonstop curls and extensions. He was hitting his arms today, and he made sure he got the slow-twitch muscle fibers nice and tired while keeping an easy rhythm of breathing in and out. As he was doing some wrist twists to limber up his hands for the heavier weights, he spotted the blond guy coming out of the locker area and sitting down at the rowing machine. The man put on a pair of earphones and started going at it, not really looking anywhere in particular. Barrow could see him clearly on the reflection of the mirror-paneled wall he was facing, and he found himself looking closely. The man was attractive. And it had been a while since Barrow had been with anyone.
Barrow got started on some full-motion biceps curls at the cable station, doing first one arm and then the other with increasingly heavier weights. As soon as his biceps got tired, he switched over to triceps extensions. Then he rested for a little bit and repeated the process. Today he wasn’t going to do a very high-weight, low-rep session. He was actually trying to trim some fat now that he had gained about ten pounds from his last load cycle, and he would be focusing on stamina more than strength, doing lower weights for more time.
The blond man changed to the shoulder station in the meantime. The man sat down, reached up with both hands, and grabbed a horizontal bar that bent downward at both ends at about twenty degrees. He then pulled the bar slowly, with controlled motion, all the way down until it touched the back of his neck and then returned it to its original position without letting the weight drag him up. He had good form, and Barrow was mesmerized by the graceful yet powerful play of the man’s muscles, clearly defined against his skin. He did not realize he had been staring at the man through the mirror until the guy looked up, frowning, and met Barrow’s eyes.
Barrow looked away quickly, finished his set, and adjusted the weight level for the next set. He grabbed his towel off a nearby bench and dried his neck, chancing a look at the man to see if he was still looking in his direction. The man had gone back to what he was doing, though, ignoring Barrow completely. Not a good sign, and Barrow could not suppress the slight spike of disappointment he felt at the realization. The guy had dismissed Barrow’s attention, just like that.
The gym had no music playing overhead, and normally it was one of the things that Barrow liked about the place. He hated having to listen to disposable ancient music or, even worse, contemporary bands that scarcely knew what they were doing. Right now, however, he would have welcomed a bit of noise to distract himself from the sight of the blond man. Besides the two of them, there were only two other guys working out today, so it was impossible not to run into each other every now and then. Barrow knew he should say something, think of some way to start a conversation and see if the guy was interested in doing something afterward or if he was just another straight guy like nearly all the bodybuilders in this gym. It was hard to tell. Barrow was not good at guessing, but something told him this time that guy and he might play for the same team. Maybe it was the obviously coordinated workout outfit that the blond man was wearing, or maybe it was the perfect haircut he had. Whatever it was, the guy was hot, and Barrow became more and more interested. The blond man wasn’t really his type, as Barrow liked younger men best, but Barrow had been alone for way too long to get picky about things like that.
If only he were good at starting conversations. As he stacked two twenty-pound disks on either side of a barbell to do some standing curls, Barrow thought about how he could approach him. He couldn’t just walk up to him and say something witty; he had no idea how. The guy was wearing headphones, too, which made it even more difficult to say something casually. Barrow grabbed the barbell, set his feet, and started pumping iron a bit more angrily than necessary. It was always like this. He’d get all worked up, but he had zero idea of how to pick a guy up. The times he’d had hookups, it had been because someone had come up to him. That was easy in a bar, where everybody was trying to get laid. Here, though, the lights weren’t dim, there was no cigarette smoke in the air, and Barrow did not even have a glass of whiskey to get rid of the nerves.
He fought with himself for the entire five minutes it took to finish the standing curls.
Damn it!
Barrow set the barbell on its cradle loudly, making the entire bench sway under the weight. He had to remind himself that it was all in his mind, that he was getting all frustrated over nothing until he actually went ahead and did something. He walked all the way over to the sink in the locker area, had a long drink from the tap, and splashed some water on his face. He was flushed from the exercise, the veins on his arms and neck standing out more sharply against his skin. He looked into his own eyes for a couple of seconds, focusing, gathering his courage. Then he dried up with his towel and squared his shoulders. To hell with it. He would just go and say hi.
Two other guys Barrow knew came in from the street, and they called out greetings to him when he was halfway to the abs section, where the blond man was doing some sit-ups. His buddies asked him something, but Barrow ignored them. He did not deviate from his path but walked all the way to where the man was exercising. Barrow hesitated for a second, standing practically next to him, making the man give him a quick, annoyed look. Then the guy continued with his sit-ups, going faster and bending each time he came up to touch one of his elbows to the knee on the opposite side.
Barrow opened his mouth, then closed it. He felt himself blushing with embarrassment at the obvious delay, but he gritted his teeth and sat down on the mat next to the man. He pretended to do a couple of quick sit-ups himself before stopping. This was stupid.
Just say it.
“Um, hi,” Barrow said.
The man did not react. Maybe he hadn’t heard? He did have earphones on.
Barrow cleared his throat and tried again.
“Hey. Haven’t seen you around before. First time here?”
This time the man glanced in his direction, gestured for Barrow to wait, and proceeded to do a final five sit-ups. Then he took one of his earphones out.
“What?” he demanded.
“I… I was wondering if you were new,” Barrow said.
There was an awkward pause. The man raised an eyebrow briefly. “Yeah. So?”
He gathered his feet and stood up, forcing Barrow to do the same.
“I’m Barrow.” He extended a hand, which the man ignored.
“Pete.”
“Do you live around here?”
“No.”
“Oh. Hey, um, I saw you working your shoulders earlier. You did a set of lat pull-downs with a grip I had not seen before. Would you mind showing me sometime?”
Pete gave him an earnest look as understanding dawned suddenly on his face. Barrow was standing a bit too close, after all. And he was trying to smile in what he hoped was a confident way. But as soon as Pete realized what was really going on, he rolled his eyes with a short derisive huff.
“You got to be kidding me,” he answered.
Then Pete turned around without another word and headed for the free weights. He plugged his earphone back in place and didn’t look back.
Barrow stood there for maybe five seconds, praying nobody else had seen that exchange but knowing sound carried in this gym and all the other guys would have heard everything. He bunched his hands into fists, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, and finished what was left of his workout in silence. He had not planned on doing heavy weights today, but he went back to the bench and loaded up the barbell to 80 percent of his one-rep max for bench presses. He hadn’t even warmed up properly for that exercise, but he didn’t care. He lay down and grabbed the metal bar like he was trying to choke it.
He managed three reps the first time and channeled the sudden upwelling of anger into each of them. Then he rested for one minute and tried again. He managed another three. He gave himself a three-minute pause and surprised himself by doing three reps again, although his arms were shaking a little bit in the last one, and he belatedly thought that he should have probably gotten one of the guys to act as a spotter. He pushed the bar all the way up, though. When he set it down, exhausted, he felt a little better but still angry. He wasn’t even sure what he was angry at.
He walked over to the pull-up bar, jumped up, and grabbed it easily with both hands. He started doing chin-ups fast but with proper form, making sure to stretch his muscles and limber them up, letting some of the tension from the exercise drain away as he controlled his entire weight with his hands. He did three sets, and by the last one, he was sweating again. He was breathing hard, too, but not all of that was due to the exercise.
He hit the showers then, stripping down and stashing his gym gear in a carry bag. He was glad nobody else was there. He enjoyed the cold water splashing on his body once more, but he did not feel calm and relaxed as he normally did after his workout. He still felt angry, coiled up like a spring.
He was so concentrated on what he was feeling, or trying not to feel, that he did not notice Pete had come into the locker area until Barrow turned off the water and was toweling himself dry.
He came out of the showers, the short towel wrapped around his waist, and saw that Pete was undressing and obviously done working out as well.
Their eyes met. For a crazy instant Barrow thought he was in a porno, about to engage in some hot action with a guy that had staged the entire thing from before so nobody would suspect he really was attracted to Barrow.
The thought, however, was short-lived. Pete pointedly turned around so his back would be to Barrow and undressed and put on different clothes so fast that Barrow was scarcely slipping on clean underwear when the guy was walking out the door, fully dressed. Barrow took his time, his face growing hot with more embarrassment and anger. What had he been thinking? It had been a stupid idea, and he was even more stupid for having carried it out. He tugged on the rest of his clothing, donning a spare set he always kept in his locker. He grabbed his uneaten sandwich, slammed the locker door shut, and walked out hoping to avoid any further awkwardness.
No such luck. The guy, Pete, was still at reception. He was demanding something from Edgar, and as Barrow watched, Edgar reached into his desk, grabbed a crumpled bill, and angrily tossed it at Pete’s face. Pete snatched the bill before it hit the ground and stalked off, but not before yelling at Edgar loudly enough for everybody in the gym to hear.
“Fuck you and your faggot customers!”
Then he stalked off, opening the door wide and letting a gust of hot air inside.
The gym was very quiet after that. Barrow was still standing practically in the middle of the room, wishing he were anywhere else in the world but there, with every single one of the guys he knew and respected boring holes into his back with their eyes.