Mural
Ten
“WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?”
Man, that came out of the blue. I left Fundamentals class and caught up with Melody to tell her the good news about my scholarship and racquetball, and before I could get a word out she explodes at me. She really doesn’t swear that much, so her language took me by surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“I waited in the study lounge till midnight! We were going to work on our Fundies presentations together. You never showed up and then you waltz in here this morning and give a Broadway production while my stupid paper looks like a dog ate my homework and then threw it up. Where were you?”
“Shit! I completely forgot we were going to meet up. I’m sorry. I had so much going on yesterday I was a total wreck. Melody, please forgive me.”
“Where were you?” It finally dawned on me that there was only one question on her mind. I cringed a little.
“I was with Lissa. I spent the night over at her house.”
“You what? You blew me off to go sleep with her?”
“Melody, it’s not like that. At least not all like that. I was really messed up yesterday and Lissa helped me get through it. I had to talk it all out with someone.”
“And then have sex. Is she your girlfriend or me?” Did I have a girlfriend? I know I told Lissa that one of my favorite things at school was my girlfriend, but she quickly—and correctly—interpreted that as sex. I’d never really considered the implications of actually having a girlfriend. Yeah, I’d dated some, but I never thought about it in those terms before.
“Lissa is my… our… friend. She’s also my coach. If you’d just let me explain.” Melody held up her palm in front of my face. I cringed for a second thinking she was going to slap me. Then she pulled some gangsta rap thing on me out of the blue.
“Talk to the hand, asshole. I’m not listening.” Then she stormed off and I didn’t see her again the rest of the day.
Shit! Just when I thought I might have a handle on my life. I hate this fucking school. I should just kill myself. Why do I have all this drama? I’m an artist, not an actor, Jim.
I went back to my dorm room and cut Art Orientation. I stripped, crawled in bed, and pulled the covers over my head, determined not to come out until they closed the dorms for the summer.
Of course, I didn’t silence my cell phone and it started chiming once every ten minutes with messages until I finally gave in and got up to see who was texting me. I hoped it was Melody. I really didn’t mean to hurt her and it never even occurred to me that my being with Lissa would upset her. We were both with her all weekend. Is that what it was like to have a girlfriend—always wondering if you were going to upset her over something stupid? I scanned through the messages but her name didn’t pop up. There were messages from both Sandra and Amy, from John Gilbert at the gym, wanting to set up time with me this afternoon, and from Dean Peterson asking me to stop and see him after my painting class on Friday. I was about to open Sandra’s message when a new message came in from Lissa. I looked and it said simply, “Have you picked up a Daytimer yet?”
That really brought me up short. I’d blown off the athletic director and trainer at the club yesterday and that reflected badly on Lissa. She’d gone to bat for me to help with my depression and I owed it to her not to embarrass her again. It was 2:30. Technically I should still be in class, but I’d already missed two thirds of it, so I decided to head first to Staples and then to the gym. I texted John and asked if he could meet at 4:00. I was on my way downstairs with my bag slung over my shoulder when the message chimed again and his response was simply, “Yes. CU then.”
While I was walking I texted Lissa and told her I was on my way to Staples now. She sent back a smiley face. I finally popped Amy’s message open. “WTF?” was all it said. Jolly. Not only was I in shit with Melody, but with Amy and Sandra, too. The three musketeers. By then, I was at Staples, so I didn’t bother to open Sandra’s message.
I spent half an hour picking out a planner. I had no idea how many different kinds of these books they had. I didn’t know anybody still used paper calendars. Everybody I knew kept their schedules on their cell phones. But I loved what I was seeing. Let’s face it. I do think visually. I kept thinking of what Lissa said about me needing something that was big enough to see ahead and not just what was due now. There were daily and hourly journals, journals that had places for expenses, travel arrangements, and receipts, auto journals, weekly journals, monthly journals. They even had bigger planners that you could post on your wall and use erasable markers on. That was kind of cool, but I thought I needed something I could carry with me if I was going to make it work.
I finally settled on a teacher’s planner. It had a column for each of the five days of the school week and a sixth column split between Saturday and Sunday. The days weren’t divided with rigid times, but were just “Morning, Afternoon, Evening.” It was also nice because it was an anytime calendar. You wrote the dates in at the top of the page so I didn’t feel like I was paying for a year and only getting nine months. For good measure, I bought a really nice mechanical pencil that had a large enough and soft enough lead that in a pinch I could use it to sketch with if I couldn’t think of anything else to put in my planner.
I was definitely ready. I headed for the gym.
The alarm on my phone went off at 4:00 p.m. and I was standing outside John Gilbert’s office. It wasn’t really his office. All the trainers kind of shared one big room with desks in it, but as far as I could tell they used whatever desk was free when they had a break from training. John led me into the office and several other trainers glanced up at me curiously. We sat on opposite sides of an empty desk and John got out his schedule.
“Coach wants us to work three times a week. Two times in specified strength training exercises, mostly with weights or the machines, and once in Pilates. I watched you play and you’ve got incredible reach and flexibility, but you won’t believe how much Pilates will extend you. You’ve got two hours of court time scheduled on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so we get Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday unless you’d prefer Sunday.”
“Two hours of court time? I usually only play for an hour.”
“Lissa extended the court time to two hours, but she might be intending half of it to be her training.”
“Is she doing weights and Pilates, too?”
“Yeah. She always does. I can get you in at the same time if you can be here at 6:00 in the morning.”
“She trains at 6:00 a.m.?”
“And she’s a wild woman in the morning. She works out before she has coffee and you do not want to cross her.”
“I’m not even human until after lunch. Do you have any afternoon slots?”
“I do. What’s your schedule?” I laid out my new planner and pencil, then pulled out my cell phone.
“I’ve got classes from nine till noon and one-thirty to three-thirty on Tuesday and Thursday.”
“I see. So you’re free from noon till one?” He grinned at me. Right. Like I was even going to get here and back in an hour. “How about setting things up at four? Can you get here that fast from class?”
“It’s not far, but I don’t get to eat much on those days. I just grab a sandwich in the cafeteria to choke down between classes.”
“It’s okay to grab a sandwich or some fruit and yoghurt before you work out, as long as it’s not too heavy. You shouldn’t work out on empty, though. We need to figure a way for you to get nutrition during the day. I’ll talk to your coach about it. For now, let’s set up 4:00 for training Tuesday and Thursday.”
“Is this going to be two hours, too?” I was scribbling in my new planner, transferring my class schedule for the next week into the planner.
“No. The workout will only be an hour, but you’ll probably want to cool down and then hit the showers before you leave, so allow time for that. Can you be here Saturday morning at nine?”
“I’m on call for this stupid mural project from noon until midnight on Saturday and noon until nine Sunday this weekend. Next weekend spring break starts.”
“We’ve got a great Pilates trainer who can take you at nine for forty-five minutes if you can make it.”
“I’ll do it.”
“You’re a lot more cooperative today than you were yesterday.” I looked at John. Time to mend a bridge or whatever the expression is.
“I was kind of an asshole yesterday, John. I hope you’ll pardon me and that we can work together.”
“What kind was that?” He looked at me and grinned. He leaned across the desk toward me. “You know, I’ve only been out of college for three years. I thought I was going to get a teaching job as a high school coach. I ended up here as a personal trainer. Shit happens. I’d have been just as pissed off as you were. I’m glad you got through it so fast.”
“Thanks. Do we have time for a workout today?”
“I’d like to show you the routine. Here.” He reached below the desk and pulled out a white polo shirt and blue warmups. “We’ve been informed that you are now a member of our team. You’re welcome to wear the blue and white.”
I got changed and then joined John in the weight room. The machine he put me on was a mass of cables and weights on a glider. He handed me what looked like a handle on a rope and showed me some twisting exercises that caused the weights to rise when I pulled on the rope. It wasn’t a lot of weight, but ten reps on each side and I was done with that. Little did I know that after ten reps on each of six different machines, he would run me through all of them again. In fact, I did three sets before he told me to stretch out and cool down.
Weight training works your muscles differently than actually playing. I could tell that I was going to be sore tomorrow. In the locker room, I took a long sauna and soaked in the hot tub before showering. All the time I was in the tub, I kept thinking of Lissa naked beside me. All we were doing at the time was talking like any two guys in the locker room, chugging down water. What magic switch did she flip that turned her from a fellow athlete relaxing her muscles into an irresistible sex object? She was so far beyond me I couldn’t even imagine understanding her.
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