When I saw Garth for the first time, he was wearing navy blue sweats, top and bottom, and his skin was copper, sepia, and burnt umber all in one. He had one of those flat top do’s you could balance a plate on. I thought what the fuck is a man like that doing in a place like this—although it was a builder’s gym and he sure as hell belonged there. I was forty-eight, full of muscle and heat, flaunting my quads, sixteen-inch biceps, and my high-shelf builder’s ass. It was one of those pure contact moments I’ll always remember. I never saw an aura before I met Garth. It was like an angel’s halo around his entire frame even though he was no angel. But then neither was I.
He was my lighthouse, standing there tall as night and strong as the sun. In that entire room at six p.m. building time at Strictly’s Gym when builders came awake and strutted their stuff, worked and groaned beneath the weight of the world, in that warehouse space filled with pumped body parts, the man who stood apart was the presence looking on in the corner.
“Are you a pro builder?” Garth asked, taking five strides towards me.
“No.
“How long have you been training?”
“A decade, hardcore.”
“How old are you?”
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to ask a woman her age? I’m ancient,” I said, as if I were trying on the word for the first time, something right off the rack, and there I was twirling around in it, amazed at its fit.
“Thirty-eight?”
“Told you—I’m ancient.” I was a cool builder chick wearing red and black striped spandex tights and I wanted this towering man. Funny thing was I was there checking out a new gym, preening my muscles and cheating on my regular training partner, Nick, an Italian kid studying opera at the University of Toronto. Nick wanted to be a famous pop singer able to scale the high notes. He was haunted by soaring vocals and would randomly shriek out an elusive note after a set of squats or a powerful deadlift. He had the body of a Clydesdale horse. Or so I thought until I spied Garth.
“I’m just about to go on the stair master,” I told Garth at the end of our first meeting. “Getting ready for a show.”
“Well, it was nice,” he said and walked away.
Months later, Garth confided he had stood for one hour in the snow and the cold, watching me through the gym’s glass wall. There’s a greenhouse in the centre of Sherbourne Street Park. It’s not the greatest part of town, but there’s an oasis in that hothouse. I think Garth was peering in and I was his oasis.
I didn't know about Tim Horton's until I met Garth. It was around alright, just like A & W was in Montreal when I tasted root beer for the first time with Abie. So one night after an intense leg workout, Garth poured himself into my leased silver Mazda and directed me (turn right, turn left here, get ready for a right) to Tim Horton's. I ordered two large cartons of milk because I couldn’t find anything else with protein. We were sitting at an orange table with attached swivel chairs and he leaned forward, his upper torso dwarfing the table.
“What?” I said.
“I have a dark side,” he said.
“So?”
“I’m just telling you. I thought you should know,” he said and bit into his butter tart.
I didn’t say anything about the butter tart.
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