Authors: Mark Nykanen
I’m dripping wet by the time I’m through.
“You see how hard I’ve worked?”
Jolly Roger looks worried. You can almost see the cartoon bubble above his head: you expect
me
to do
that?
“You’re going to work even harder. You know why?”
They stare at me blankly, then Diamond Girl pops up, “Why’s that, Arnold?” in a bad German accent.
I assume she means Schwarzenegger. I’d lie if I didn’t say I’m flattered, though I have none of his bulk, don’t want it either. I have lean hard muscles, and every one of them “pops” when it’s worked. I also have veins that look like they’re going to rip right through my skin.
“The answer, Diamond Girl, is that you’re going to work out like this because your life depends on it.”
I’m almost sure she’s going to make another crack, she has that smile on her face again. I race to anticipate her words, humoring myself again, this time with the thought that perhaps she’ll suggest I make an exercise infomercial. I even toy with titles:
Finding Your Perfect Body: Health or Homicide with Ashley Stassler
. Maybe something more to the point:
Get Lean or Die!
(though for accuracy’s sake I suppose that should be
Get Lean
and
Die!
). But instead she reaches up, clasping her hands together high above her head, stretching as she shifts her hips from side to side, and says, “Cool. When do we start?”
We
don’t start. June starts. At gunpoint I back them all up against the kitty box. I bring her out and lock the cage.
“Put these on.”
I toss her generic gray sweats, and she throws them on over her pink thong. She even looks grateful. She shouldn’t be. I want her warm. I don’t want her throwing a muscle.
“Now get on there and pedal.”
“Yeah, pedal for your life,
Mother!
”
Diamond Girl doesn’t exactly constitute a cheer section. But June does pedal hard. Too hard too fast, and I have to slow her down. She’s a classic overachiever, I can see that already. She’ll be buff in no time at all.
After she breaks a sweat, I tell her to get off the bike and take off her top. She’s beyond protesting. I point to the bench. When she lies back her breasts flatten like a couple of eggs sunny side up.
She’s weak. She doesn’t look weak, but she is. She can barely bench press the lightest weight four times. She’s straining, not faking at all.
“Try these,” I snap.
I hand her two five-pound dumbbells and stand over her, guiding the weights straight up from her sides. She completes nine repetitions. That’s acceptable.
By the time her chest workout is done, she glistens with sweat. When she was lifting I saw some definition in her triceps, anterior delts, and pecs. She should have started pumping iron years ago. She’d be totally buff by now. I hand her the sweatshirt, and she says thanks. It’s the first civil word she’s had for me.
Roger—no surprise here—is another story. He’s trying, but he’s not much stronger than his wife, and lacks her determination. I have to point the gun right into his face to remind him that I’m not kidding. Then I do get some honest effort, but I can see it will take lots and lots of work with Jolly Roger. I’d hoped to pull this off within a couple of weeks of that intern getting here. I could use her help with the molds, but at this rate it’ll be iffy. I’m not above carving the extra pounds off him with a scalpel. Fat cuts away as easily as confetti; but it’s messy, and often exhausts their terror before I can get a proper impression. Still, it
is
an option, and if he doesn’t come around quickly, I’ll point this out to him. I could, I suppose, always get started by casting June and the kids; but then Roger would realize that having muscles equals murder, an equation that would unquestionably prompt reluctance with the workout routine. That’s why it’s essential to bring them all along at roughly the same rate. Believe me, I’ve learned.
• • •
Sonny-boy is so scared I can’t get him out of the cage. His knuckles are white from gripping June’s leg, and he’s crying. This kid’s a real weeper. For several seconds I think his mother will smack him loose in disgust. She’s come close before, but she suffers his death grip with saintly reserve, and I decide I can’t accomplish a thing by shooting him. It would be hell on their morale, and this is team building time. I give him a pass. As long as he stays the same, he’ll be fine. I thought the exercise would do him some good, but if he wants to whine and cry, he can do it on his own time. Attitude is everything, buddy boy, but I can see you haven’t learned that yet.
Besides, I’m itching to put Diamond Girl through her paces. She springs out of the cage, throws on her sweats, and jumps right on the stationary bike. She makes a show of nestling her butt down on the racer seat until even I have to admit that it’s a rather unseemly display, considering the crowd. But on the other hand I find her cheekiness appealing. Where did she learn to behave like this? I’m certain it’s not from her mother. Much as June irritates me, she’s not sleazy. More like a cheerleader grown bitter, who’s learned that life, no matter how much you smile and stick out your chest, just won’t let you score a whole bunch of points. The young man she married so many years ago has turned out to be a lazy slug, a provider of marginal means and little more, and her daughter is someone she probably hasn’t understood since birth. Out of the womb and out of your life has been the arc of Diamond Girl’s development. A fool could have seen it from the get-go, though perhaps not a mother with sweet plans for her baby girl, birthday parties and frilly dresses, team cheers, and maybe even a homecoming crown. Certainly not this sluttish mix of Gidget and gangsta rap groupie.
“I’m sweating like a pig. Can I take this off?”
Diamond Girl startles me from my thoughts.
“Sure,” I say without considering her request. Just that quickly she whips off her sweat top
and
her T-shirt, so now she’s wearing only that bra that fastens in front.
Her whole chest moves as she pedals. Not like June whose breasts jiggle. Diamond Girl’s aren’t loose enough to jiggle. Everything is too firm, everything moves together.
She must see me staring.
“This too?”
And just that quickly she unfastens the front and drops her bra to the side.
“Put it back on,” Jolly Roger growls.
“Why, Daddy?” she says, mock innocent. “You like them. You’ve been staring at them every chance you get since I was twelve.”
June shoots her killer look at Roger, who’s shaking his head. She mutters, “You’re disgusting,” and turns away from him and Diamond Girl.
Daughter dearest takes her hands off the bar and sits up straight, still pedaling hard, making a real show of herself. I am not unaffected. I dreamed of her again last night. No Baby Peaches this time, nothing so elliptical. I saw her hanging by her legs from a jungle gym, with a short pleated skirt having fallen down over her face. I was staring at her white underpants. She didn’t move to cover up, and I spied a curly black hair poking out from the elastic band, and the shape of her vulva, even the slight crease in the middle.
She runs her hand over her chest. “I’m hot now. Can I get off?”
I nod. I’m as hard as the bones in this basement. So hard it must be apparent. It is. She’s looking right at it. She pulls off her sweatpants and panties, and bends over the bench where the barbell rests on the weight stand.
“Don’t!” cries June, with none of the harshness I’ve heard before. She’s pleading.
But Diamond Girl is having none of it. She’s settling her knees into the earth, legs apart, looking back over her shoulder. I’m facing those buns that have tantalized me for weeks now.
I approach her quickly. This is no time for thought, no time for careful consideration.
“I want you on your back.”
She lies on the bench, opening her legs and smiling in what I judge to be itchy anticipation.
When I lean over her, she’s forced to take it in both hands.
For a moment I think she may spit at me, but then she lowers the barbell and pushes it back up.
“I want fifteen reps.”
“Fuck you,” she whispers.
Art is everything.
L
AUREN’S ARM FELT AS IF
it had been yanked out of her shoulder socket. Bad Bad Leroy Brown had wrenched it during his early morning encounter with a female golden retriever in the Angeles National Forest. Granted, the animal was in heat and its harebrained owner had no business whatsoever walking it in public. Granted, a Doberman with a particularly satanic leer had already attempted the coupling that Leroy so zealously sought to complete. Granted, it’s part of any creature’s nature to want to reproduce. But Lord, her arm hurt. She barely,
barely
, managed to pull him off that animal. Scary, too, what with all the growling and gnashing of teeth, and that was the retriever’s owner!
She hung the leash on the door, and told Leroy to sit. As soon as he obeyed, his floppy gray scrotum with its two huge balls settled on the floor like an army blanket over a couple of rambunctious recruits.
“We’re going to have to do something about you,” she said as she scooped out four cups of kibble, which he devoured only after she stepped back and snapped, “Okay.”
At least he had some manners, which was more than she could say for Ashley Stassler. What’s with him anyway?
She flipped open her laptop on the tiny table in the tiny kitchen of her tiny apartment to check her email. She’d already had the department secretary rummage through her snail mail up in Portland, but there had been no word back from Stassler. She hadn’t been badgering him, but she’d sent what? Three emails about Kerry’s internship since he’d accepted her.
The first had been a standard thank you. The second had included the compact that she and Kerry had put together outlining the girl’s goals for the two months she’d spend with him. And the third? Well, the third had been the one she’d sent two days ago. Lauren thought of it as her Mother Hen email, the one in which she’d tried to strike a familial and protective tone that she hoped he’d extend toward her finest student.
At the very least she’d expected a perfunctory reply. But … she clicked the email icon … nothing again today. No email at all, which in one sense and one sense only was good news because Chad, apparently, had given up his daily plea for a reconciliation.
Alas, no email also meant nothing from Ry, who was up at his home on the Oregon coast. Last night she’d emailed him a big “THANKS” for the bouquet of spring flowers he’d sent her, along with a note that said, “I miss you.”
Never had those three words sounded so good, and she could think of only three others that would have sounded even better.
Their email had warmed up in recent days as Ry started revealing his feelings for her, but the zinnias, daffodils, and tulips had still come as a most pleasant surprise. The splashes of pink, yellow, and white commanded her gaze from an end table in the modest living room.
She’d called last night and left a message on his machine thanking him, but she really did want to hear his voice. Or see a note from him pop up on the screen. He would be in touch, of that she had no doubt. Ashley Stassler, in contrast, clearly considered himself above matters as mundane as acknowledging mail.
Still, she decided to knock out another note letting him know that Kerry should be arriving later today. She knew this because Kerry had turned out to be a marvelous correspondent, and had kept her apprised throughout her journey, including details of her quick side trips to ride her mountain bike, of which there had been three
after
Sun Valley.
Lauren had an article she wanted to send her about Stassler that had just appeared in the online magazine
Sculpture Review
. If all went according to plan, Kerry would receive it as soon as she logged on in Moab.
The hump in the highway rattled Kerry’s teeth, and snapped her out of her mountain bike reverie. She braked sharply for the flagger and construction crew, offered her most winsome smile, a silently mouthed apology, and a wave. Then she sped off, taking the curves quickly in her old four-wheel-drive pickup, and imagining once more that she was on her bike in this gorgeous red rock country. What a totally awesome gig: Moab, mountain biking, and casting. Couldn’t get any better.
The sign said fourteen miles to Moab. Already she’d seen a ton of billboards for motels and restaurants and river-rafting expeditions. Lots of white water around here, though she didn’t expect she’d have much time for running rapids. Lots of rock climbing, too. Now
that
she might have to somehow slot into her schedule. She loved climbing, and had brought her shoes, harness, and chalk bag. Somehow she’d find the time. But the reason you’re here, she reminded herself, is to get this whole casting thing down, totally dialed, and that’s going to mean a lot of foundry time, studio time, time with Ashley Stassler! She could hardly believe it. He’d taken
her
on as an intern! Kerry Waters, third-year art student. A wannabe. But he must like her work. She’d sent him copies of her portfolio, and the papers she’d written about his series,
Family Planning
, the most amazing sculpture she’d ever seen. He could capture the human form as no one had since … since da Vinci. Since … Rodin. She had to find out how he did it. And then it hit her: just by working with him, she’d go down in art history.
Moab appeared first as a long line of motels and convenience stores. Kerry frowned. Not what she’d expected, not entirely anyway. An old mining town should look like an old mining town, not the heart of franchise America; but then with great relief she turned into Moab’s downtown, a wide, tree-lined street with a pleasing hodgepodge of old and new, plate glass and white clapboard, red brick and green trim. She studied the storefronts searching for an espresso stand, and quickly spotted Screaming Beanies.
As she pulled over, she smiled at all the bikes parked on the sidewalk: mountain bikes, road bikes, touring bikes with fat panniers, racing bikes with spokeless rims, bulky bikes towing baby trailers, bikes with toddlers’ seats. Yes! This was it. Bike heaven.