The Gym

The Gym

Tom Neely

Copyright 2015 Thomas W. Neely, Jr.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Summerlea Publishing

PO Box 1398

Northampton, MA 01061

http://www.summerlea-publishing.com

Manuscript Editor: Ted Gilley

Book Design: Zane Lumelsky

Cover Design: Margo Neely

Distributed by Smashwords

ISBN 978-1-942150-09-1

First Edition

For Elaine, Matt, and Bree.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. THE TAKEDOWN

Chapter 2. THE REAWAKENING

Chapter 3. THE CRUCIBLE

Chapter 4. THE BOIL-OVER

Chapter 5. THE HARVEST

Chapter 6. END TIMES

About the Author

Discover Other Books by Tom Neely

Sample from The Giveaway Look

Chapter 1. THE TAKEDOWN

Where’s Red? Vi asked.

Not sure. The cops say he rear-ended somebody. He says it wasn’t his fault, Joby said.

Do they test for steroids?

Not sure in Rhode Island. Maybe some of them do. Look, Violet, do you want me to handle your appointment? The gym runs itself this time of day, Joby said.

Sure. I took off work and I’m dressed to sweat, she said. If you’re sure you don’t mind?

I don’t at all, but what’s that you’re doing? he asked. Violet was down, performing a strenuous push-up routine.

Dive-bombers. Get the circulation racing, said Violet.

Chaturanga?

Yes, but with an ass hike, she said.

Joby straightened up from checking a recumbent bike’s foot strap.

Chaturanga or whatever, he said. Want some advice?

From you, anything.

The up-to-date thinking is that people should avoid that. Wears on your rotator cuff.

Is that new?

Not in some circles, but it is good advice, Joby said.

Did you learn that at Providence College? she asked.

PC and other places, he said.

As the workout sped by, Violet played with how to word a nervy question. Running out of time, she asked it aloud.

Can you tell me what happened, to cause you you guys to move here?

If I do, is it too much to ask you not to repeat it? he asked.

She reached for a clean towel.

Don’t we already have kind of a doctor-patient, priest-confessor thing with our possible business relationship?

It’s a stretch, but I’ll risk it. Where I fouled up was in having sex with a freshman. Less than half my age. She limped into the office and asked me to check out one of her quads. You might think I was the one feeling her up, but this girl put her hand on my junk. She was tall and mature and I didn’t think about age. Just ethics. Against the rules, cheating on my wife, right? Another thing was birth control. We could have bought a morning-after pill. I never considered it. I almost never even had dated a student. She came in once more, all smiles, but I begged off. Nothing else happened until she reported me for knocking her up. I could have put up a stronger defense, maybe. But I felt sorry for her. When the baby was born too soon for it to be mine, another girl said she and her boyfriend had cooked up the scheme for reasons of their own. By then I had been suspended and found the job managing the gym. Thelma and I kind of like the town, save for her commute. Pay’s almost as good but no benefits.

What time’s your wife due home?

With traffic, seven thirty or eight.

Let me buy you a drink at Fonseca’s. I have a little ethical problem or two myself you could advise me on, Violet said.

I’ll walk over at a quarter to.

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Before meeting Joby Jacoby, Thelma Soares didn’t have a yen for athletics in any form unless you counted several taxing years of ballet. Almost by chance she played excellent tennis. When people learned of her lisboeta background, though, they would try to reference Portuguese soccer teams or a star player they had read about. A similar gap between prospect and fact arose when she owned up about her family: they were only relative newcomers. The much earlier nineteenth-century arrivals had defined the American sense of Portuguese immigration.

Trinity College’s tradition of Protestant flair had slowly faded into a more tender treatment of less-pedigreed schoolmates. When Joby and Thelma hooked up as juniors, they belonged to small campus subgroups, hers female math majors and his varsity athletes. Joby had scored well on his math SAT, but the way Thelma and her clique of pocket-protector nerds talked went over his head. It made their level of math sound more philosophical than arithmetical. It was there as much as anywhere that the couple took separate-but-equal as a way to have room for differing interests, and until recently it had worked with their careers. Joby’s first gig coaching track was near Schenectady where Thelma eventually found work at Knolls Atomic Power Lab.

A semester later Joby landed a dream job—without a dream salary—in Springfield. Saf-T-Hammer’s 2001 buyout of Smith & Wesson led to an opportunity for Thelma; she jumped on the Bay State gig.

A chance seating arrangement at a forum for a New England industrial development led to an offer Thelma could not refuse: Textron, in Providence. Joby followed her to what would be his last chance as college assistant coach. Her combined stock options, hiring incentives, and performance bonuses swelled their nest egg up to a million and a quarter. Thelma agreed (in due season) that bygones could be bygones as to the freshman’s pregnancy trap. The relationship seemed on firm emotional as well as fiscal ground. Their therapist had seen some couples emerge stronger after a betrayal that was not especially ill-motivated, as he put it.

At the same time, in both the Wall Street Journal and the Providence Journal, Thelma had read that couples where women earned more than men faced a higher risk of separation and divorce. It was not stated as cause and effect, exactly, but Thelma avoided issues wherein a negative aspect attached itself to women’s progress. Landing in America, Mrs. Soares had found work months ahead of her husband. Thelma’s parents had welcomed it as a positive.

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Violet Smyser had learned that there was nothing foolproof in having truck with the opposite sex. She was direct and preferred not to flirt if she could get around it. Pushing fifty, she had not yet dealt with being unseen in the way older women complained about. In fact, she felt more sleek and more youthful than she had a decade earlier. But she feared that the women whom men of her age group liked were passive and subtle more than free and untamed. In her longest relationship, she brought up the subject of how much runway she had left for having children. She was thirty-eight. Her partner admitted that he had resigned himself to being childless. But when he left Thelma for a woman in her twenties, he changed his mind and now wanted a large family…

A little bird told Violet to up her economic game. She took a UMass executive MBA, at the time a lightweight career ladder assist. The banking job she now held filled her need for financial and emotional self-reliance.

Arriving early at the bar, she nursed a medium-weight Cabernet Franc. The barmaid, after urging a cheese plate on her, appeared in front of Joby even before he sat down. Violet had to be pleased that he was indeed a striking son of a bitch. Such a reality could help or hurt the outcome of her cocktail hour effort.

Thanks for asking me.

Just in time he omitted out.

Though my reason may not be kosher, I’m glad you came, Violet said.

Is it about business?

I guess, Violet said. It’s about disclosing some information that may conflict with my position.

What position is that? Joby asked.

We’ll get to that in due time, she said.

Damn it, Violet scolded herself. Try more delicacy. Still, someone had to crack the bedroom door eventually.

My job is to smooth the progress of money lending that will benefit my bank, not incur unwise risk and not compromise clients who have put trust in us. That’s how I see it, she went on.

Joby drank some wine before speaking.

By bending the rules, is there any wiggle room where you can ultimately benefit the client and the bank? he asked.

There can be. Here’s an example: we had a supersafe client who could not get a low rate from my committee. Why? Because of his easy-going manner. I tipped my competitor who had no borrowers and was drowning in money to lend. At our expense I helped the client.

Is that like your and my thing that you talked about? Joby asked.

If everything tonight stays off the record, every single thing, I can help you and the bank and not hurt the client, Violet said.

Am I worthy of this consideration? He smiled.

I could give you a report later.

Want to grab dinner? He realized she had invited him here.

Frankly, I’ve got leftovers better than anything on the menu, she said.

Well, I don’t need my own plate, he said.

She called for the check and leaned toward him.

OK. Your owners, the three partners, have fallen way behind and don’t have a plan.

Christ! How the hell long has this gone on?

There was slippage before you were hired; we hoped you could cure it.

I could help, but they said there’s no money. I’ve done the free stuff and it did help membership. White-collar families from the town joined but no luck with Ascot.

She checked her watch. Still plenty of time for din-din and a quickie.

Follow me home, and chew on this: you prep the right details before you speak to me and the bank with a plan to buy out Chet and Bob and the fat guy. I’ll help compile it. They escape from underwater plus a little kicker. Perhaps. And the bank has management for more growth and more borrowing. Vamanos.

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Working late allowed Thelma to drive home and decompress in the thin traffic. She would have protested if the Ocean State were to offer an interstate spur to her town. Traffic was a small price for the sense of distance between her water’s-edge cottage and the urban underbrush of Providence. Her mind drifted to raising a family in a real town, admittedly distant from a job at her skill level. If students were allowed to commute, St. George’s, Moses Brown, and Portsmouth Priory were in reach. She damned herself for shedding the disdain she had felt for Ivy Leaguers and prawn-pink preppies who oozed out of hibernation in the summer. That is, she disdained them until she thought of her own kids to come. Instant sell-out, she thought. Now recast as a parent working to give her children the best education possible, Thelma smothered her old egalitarian sympathies.

Tiger mom, my ass! Meet Portagee mother power!

Even after she and Joby committed as a couple, and before a trial split-up at graduation, she had almost never attened his matches. A star in the hundred or the two forty, Joby ascribed his victories to a sense of when to get out of the blocks: he didn’t wait for the pistol-shot—he ran when it sensed it was time. Offensive linemen in football profited from this instinct at times.

I don’t play golf or tennis, even shoot hoops, Joby would say. I start ahead of the pack. Even in the four hundred relay I could help. But if it was organized or complicated, I was as common as dirt.

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I have this rib-eye to share. Slaw. Mic’d potato and sour cream. Want to look around? Violet asked.

This is a great view. Where do you sleep? In the back?

Shall we? Violet asked.

What about dinner? Joby asked, feeling her fingers on his back.

It’ll keep.

They came to with the bedspread on the floor and Joby dashing off to take a quick shower.

That was about as good as it gets for me, he said, dressing except for shoes.

Your body is perfect, Violet said.

Down, girl. The least I can do managing a fitness center is stay in shape. Speaking of which, everybody envies you, I can tell you.

Still nude, she returned to the kitchen to serve dinner.

That’s nice to hear. You know, you’re the first genuine hardbody I’ve been with. I could get used to it, she said.

Excuse me for hanging crepe, but my wife is still suspicious from my ‘hot mess mistake,’ as she calls it. How she feels is just a fact, that’s all.

I hear you. At least when we’re seen together it’s now a business thing—if you’re at least considering buying in.

Do you have my cell? It’s the best news since we moved here.

One thing before I forget. Turn right when you leave. It circles around so you look like you’ve come from another part of town.

Will do. Thanks, ma cherie amour.

On the drive home, Joby fielded a number of reckless thoughts, some at odds with others, stemming from the events of the last hours. Sex with Violet, too soon over for Joby’s taste, had reached its goal for his partner even without an afterglow. Joby strongly wished to know all about a sexual comrade-in-arms, one reason his wife was such a rewarding collaborator in bed. As to his breach of trust, at this point it was more of a brain twister than a burden on his conscience. No doubt that would change, but the priority now was to resume normal life and reserve moral pain for later.

Things had happened so fast in the bedroom that he had not had time to take in how attractive her skin and breasts and graceful movement made her. Dark eyes had a way of locking him in. Yet, the dream of business she involved was in its way just as compelling as making love. Two fixations pressed for his attention.

To me, Lukowski’s in denial, but the young owners just seem green, Violet said. I mean, he may not be the lead person to talk to. Our leverage is age. At the point he’s at you become more prudent about nest eggs for later in life. I can show him on a chart how few months to foreclosure. It’s hooey and I won’t do it. But in case.

Would you renegotiate the terms? Joby asked.

No chance, Vance. Once they agree to negotiate the sale, there are two items. One. How much a buyer needs in order to discharge the mortgage—no problem. Two, can they get a carrot for the business aside from the property alone, the real estate. They must think their equipment has value—it’s not much—and that their name, their goodwill, the client base, and so forth count for something.

Cheap rates at Planet Fitness and Retro took a good many of our full members. Ten dollars a month and ten miles away? Maybe it’s not the same quality experience but you and I, for gym rats, are probably in a financial minority, Joby said. And we’re not a pick-up joint.

No shit, Sherlock, but even I can see how to jack up the stats, said Violet.

Listen, I’m all in. Let’s talk real soon. But I better scoot, Joby said.

Well, thanks, my beloved. Think tonight I’ll sleep soundly.

Both wanted more kissing at the last minute.

Beating Thelma home, Joby threw his clothes in the washer, then turned on the shower. It was important to check for lipstick.

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At forty-one, Thelma could have reflected more about giving up work if Social Security hadn’t kept pushing pension age limits further and further out. Another cause was the plague of articles about how seniors invent tools, write novels, trek around the world, and have great sex. In other words, retirement might be too costly anyhow. For now most of her liquid assets were in a Vanguard exchange-traded index fund. Its annual return had been closing in on the mid-teens, granted, but she wanted a killing, not a living. At Textron how could she ever reinvent herself to get into a venture-level outlay? And it was always risky because that’s where you could pick up millions in one deal. Thelma pulled into the driveway and took their chicken rotisserie dinner inside. Foremost on her mind was her frenemy Maxine’s call a minute earlier. Maxine’s hubby had seen Joby at Fonaseca’s having a drink and leaving with a hot cougar.

Sup, sweetie? Thelma asked. She was successfully holding back the soreness her heart would feel if Joby lied or made a confession—it’d hurt to hear either one. The washer on spin cycle cranked up her anxiety a notch.

Not much, his reflexive answer. Actually I do have something kind of major to discuss. G & T?

S’pose I’d better, she said.

Thelma set the table at a measured pace and let Joby serve her the drink. She didn’t wish to go first.

A member at the gym made me, us, the beginnings of a business proposition.

I’m all ears.

"She was from the bank that