What I did for her: sat like a midnight-oil composer churning out monthly training sessions with each week brand new, a symphony in four, weeks two and four my favorites, riding out the squat, my first gym love-fuck; bench; deadlifts Sam the Israeli Olympian taught me at Energy Gym that summer we escaped to the townhouse in the Danforth; clean and press from John and which Garth perfected in our early days; illustrated proper form and how to eat like a builder; slabbed mass onto her scrawny disproportionate form; took her to Strictly’s.
What she did: revamped her spiky hair color from faded yellow to bright red; giggled her way past the guard at the gatehouse and knocked on my condo door; charmed Garth with cheesecake; propositioned him and then me; brought the Soaps into Strictly; swiped my erstwhile training partner; wiped the sweat off his forehead with the flat of her hand as my one-hundred-and-fifteen pound bar descended on the incline bench press; brought him bottled water; sent him sexy emails; chaperoned him around town in her BMW.
She sends me emails. She loves her biceps and bought a webcam to show off for her Australian cyber-lover. Every three hours she eats low glycemic food. She overdoses on protein. Lately she’s taken to giggling when she trains, which I bring home to Garth. “There’s something odd about her giggle,” I say. “It makes me uneasy.” Which makes Garth laugh and I love that, making him laugh. Laughing and music make me hot and we don’t listen to music all that much. Sometimes he calls me over to his computer. There’s a Garth Brooks song he likes and also ‟No Woman, No Cry,” a song he says most don’t get, but he does, and I believe him. One day he’ll email a tango to me that will just send me. I’ll stand beside him as he sits at his computer and my heart and cunt will wing out of my body, landing on him and smothering him with kisses deep and otherwise. I wish for laughter and music in my life.“She’s gay,” he says.
“What are you saying?” I can’t hold back a smile, not that I want the woman, shit, but I’ve got him for this moment and we’re back at Nina Street, home on our stolen mattress and I’m reaching up under him, “I belong to you,” I say.
“Gay? Is not.”
“Let’s ask Talon.”
“That’s not going to work. You’ll coach him.”
“We’ll pick you up after one of your training sessions.” And that`s how Garth meets Sharon.
“So?” I say, buckling myself into the silver Stratus.
“Gay,” Garth says.
“Talon?”
“Way gay,” he says from the back.
I sit in the front seat when the three of us are in the car. As soon as I exit, Talon’s out of the back in a flash and into the front passenger seat. Before he gets in, Garth slides the passenger seat toward the back and shifts it back full tilt so the son is in line with the father who positions his seat to afford his massive height and girth. Every once in a while, Garth decides to clean up his diet. He’s going to become a bodybuilder, he says. I get eight hours sleep. I eat every two-and-a-half hours. Once I refused a trip to Geneva with Abie, I was either bulking up or getting ready for a show that never happened. Abie smirked when I refused, since he knew I’d refuse anyhow and he was on his way to visit Petra in Germany. He slept on the pull-out in the living room, he said, Petra’s Italian husband and blond twin sons occupying the bedroom.
After a week on his clean diet, Garth asks me if I see a difference. “Not that you’d look or notice anyway,” he adds. Half an inch on a body that has to lose a hundred pounds is like removing a bucket of pebbles from a mile-long beach. “I’m clearing the beach, turning it into one of those sparkling sand places like Florida or Tahiti, it’s supposed to look like paradise in Tahiti.” And you point to the midday sun and your pail of pebbles. My new silver Sirrus is my guideline: when he sits behind the steering wheel, where on his chest does his mountain of a belly begin its ascent, and at its peak, how close to the steering wheel? Every month I pay three hundred and twenty-five dollars for the Sirrus which we bought from a sales lot that had taken over a scrap of Scarborough farm land. “We accept bad or no credit,” the billboard advertised. Garth says this is how I can build up my credit. “But I have no credit, except Abie’s mess,” I say. “If you would only listen,” he says, and I say, “I am. I’m listening.” I want to be legitimate even though I don’t pay taxes. Every day I’m afraid until the mail arrives or when the phone rings. People depend on me.
Sharon brings homemade cheesecake and gives it to Garth. He smiles at her as he accepts it and cuts himself a massive slice. Smiles. Comments on how delicious the cake. Says she is always welcome if she brings this cake with her and forgets to mention his diet.
The proposition: she worries about me, my happiness is everything to her, she says, which was why she accepted Garth’s offer for cheesecake at The Keg. “He says you’re a naysayer, a nitpicker, you’re like a top dizzy from over-analyzing,” she writes in a late night email. “He inquired about the seven-year itch, told me how he’d once gotten drunk and had mind-blowing sex.” She’s going to get him drunk and find out when and where and get back to me.It was with me, you skinny shit. In the Comfort Inn on Finch Avenue West.
She sends a one a.m. email suggesting a threesome, not to worry, she says, she’s not going to touch me, Garth having told her I’m the most homophobic person he’s ever met. Think about it, she says, then tells me I have no sense of adventure, that Garth says I’m no fun anymore and she believes him. It’s just a suggestion, mind you, but maybe it’s just what he might be needing. She gets that feeling anyway.
I push back the desk chair, walk over to the living room and stand in front of the television—a Springer show with fat arms waving and loud voices. “Sharon wants to fuck you and she wants me to watch,” I say. He doesn’t say anything and I wonder whether he’s turned on, whether his porn sites turned him on, the strippers in the bars he bounced in, why he told me to take off my panties that time we walked into a strip joint in Mississauga, I was wearing a spaghetti strap sparking dress—‟wear something that shows off your muscles,” he’d said, and I thought I’d buy a dress and surprise him so I bought a dress studded with stars. Jealousy is a python coiling inside me, top to bottom, once, then reversing, and tightening. I want to know if I detest him as I do, why the python? When he trains her, I drive by Strictly. I watch for body language when they finish training and walk to her car. I flaunt my two-hundred-and-seventy-five pound squats and two-hundred-and-twenty-five deads. Builders come by and chat with me. I smirk when Sharon’s right knee inverts as she settles into a squat.
I’m lying under the vertical leg press with three plates aside when Garth walks in. “Garth,” I say, after I rack the weight and put the safeties in place—when the gym first opened a guy bashed his skull in so now there’s a sign, ‟put your safeties in place.” I was once fucking an American, some writer, and just as he was about ram his indigo prick up my cunt I said, ‟oh, you gotta wear a safe,” and he just looked at me. “What?” “A safe,” I said. “You know.” And then he laughed. “Oh! You mean a rubber!” When he went back to the States, he told all his friends about the difference between Canadians and Americans, used it as some kind of anecdote, which made me pissing mad because it was private, I told him. I’ve changed since then. I tell all my anecdotes and every one else’s.
I rack up the safeties. “Garth!”
He’s walking out, doesn’t turn round.
“Garth!” Louder this time.
“What do you want?” he says, his face darkening.
“I just want to talk to you.”
“You’ve embarrassed me in my own gym.”
The python shifts.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m working so hard and Caroline—” and then the damn breaks.
“I’ll see you at home,” he says and walks out.
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