Jack was clearly in his sixties but looked good. He liked to cook and ate well, although simply. He still had his car but hardly every drove it. He walked everywhere, including to the gym. He took a daily pill for high cholesterol, which was still high, despite the diet and exercise. He often skipped the blood pressure medicine he was supposed to take because it made him pee too much.
He liked to get to the gym no later than 1 PM, but truthfully, the gym was crowded at any time of the day. They sold too many memberships. There was a gym in his apartment building but he didn’t like it: it was clean, but small, and not enough equipment, and, though there were often too many people at the gym he did use, three times a week, there weren’t enough people at the apartment gym. At the crowded gym he was always sure to find at least a couple of fit young men worth looking at.
He arrived well before 1. In the locker room two men were loudly discussing politics, shouting from one part of the room to the other.
Jack’s favorite locker was taken. Frowning, he opened the locker next to it and began to undress.
One of the loud talkers came around the end of the row and sat on the carpeted bench in front of an open locker filled with his belonging. Still shouting a few final opinions to his debate partner he began to remove items from the locker and lay them out on the bench or stuff them into an already full backpack. He looked at Jack as he sat down.
Jack looked at him, too, an older black man, perhaps a little younger than Jack but in very good shape. Naked but for a towel around his waist, his upper body was muscular, and thick, his skin very dark brown, a shaved chest. His face not unhandsome. He wouldn’t stop talking.
Jack made affirming sounds as the guy repeated one of the political observations he had just made, trying to recruit Jack in the conspiracy. Jack, wanting to get away, busied himself with getting his shorts on as quickly as he could.
The black man’s monologue turned to complaints about the gym: the cubicle door in the bathroom that didn’t completely close, the fact that they had an obnoxiously noisy and ineffective hand air dryer but no paper towels.
This talk was more interesting to Jack. He added his own complaint, the sticky springs on the scale which meant the weights might stop anywhere within a range of about seven or eight pounds both above or below your actual weight. He’d told the management months ago, and regularly reminded them, and the scale still hadn’t been fixed.
The man answered with his own, long-standing complaint. The locker doors slam with a sharp bang every time you close them unless you carefully held the knob and eased it closed.
“Why can’t they take just a little piece of felt. Just one circle of felt stuck in the corner of each locker. But no, they don’t want to spend the money.”
Jack grunted, finished tying his shoe, closed his locker gently, and nodded to the man, still stuffing his backpack.
The beeping smoke alarm in the hallway signaled a low battery that they hadn’t changed in a week.
He liked to start with the bench press. If he waited until the end of his workout his arms would already be tired and he worried about not being able to lift the weight off his chest and maneuver it back on to the rack. Once he had had to call for help and been mortified. But the two bench press stations were occupied: two guys looking at their phones. One of the free weight benches was available so he started there.
He lowered the bench flat and spread his towel across the end to claim it, then went looking for the thirty pound weights. He’d been in gyms previously where weights were abandoned all over the gym, here at least people returned their weights to the rack, but still with no care to put them in their proper order. So instead of simply glancing to see if the weight he needed was in the slot where it should be, every workout began with walking back and forth along the entire rack of weights scanning every weight. Didn’t people care about the time they wasted?
He found the thirties, finally, carried them back to his bench, and did curls, fifteen reps to a set. The guys on the bench presses were still on their phones. The music was too loud today. It had been unusually hot outside, so they had the air conditioning blasting, too cold, and a moldy smell.
He put back the thirties, no use in trying to find the correct spot, which would only be filled with the wrong weights anyway, and picked up a set of twenty-fives. Some woman was awkwardly turned around the wrong way on one of the machines working the wrong muscles. He shook his head.
He sat on the bench, laid back, and hoisted the weights above him for chest expansions. But two Asian guys were standing next to a friend on the bench beside him, encouraging him, but not giving Jack room to stretch his arms out to the sides, so he worked his triceps first. Finally, they moved.
Then he needed fifty-pound weights. But a guy at the end of the row was using them and looked like he would be there awhile. While do people take so long at the gym? What’s with the sitting and the scrolling on the phone? Jack liked to get in, move quickly, do his thing and be done.
Feeling strong today he found the fifty-five pound weights and used those, lying on his back, lifting the weights together above his head. He could feel the extra weight and strained to complete his full number of reps.
Using the lat machine, the woman beside him grunted every time she pulled down her weights: a sharp exhalation of breath distracting Jack from his own exercise. Usually, it’s the big guys that do the grunting, showing off. She was wearing headphones and probably wasn’t even aware of the noise she was making.
The woman sitting on the leg extension machine was not only on her phone but actually having a facetime conversation with someone, laughing, and completely oblivious to Jack’s stare.
Somebody else had replaced one of the guys on the bench presses. This guy would sit on the bench, do something on his phone, then stand, add an additional weight to the rack, then sit back on the bench and pull out his phone again, still without ever actually lifting the weight.
The guy on the other bench finally finished but before Jack could get over another guy, standing closer to the bench but not having waited as long as Jack had, swooped in.
Jack did the leg lifts and planks and Russian twists for his core on the mat beside two women sitting and chatting about some reality show nonsense.
There was no mirror available, so he had to do his squats without checking his form.
He finally gave up on the bench press, starting to feel spent anyway, and moved to the treadmill. Just as he began, a heavy guy got on to the machine next to him wearing what looked like a plastic trash bag. Jack watched from the side of his eye. The guy set the treadmill at a very fast pace, ran very hard for a minute or so, stomping on the runner, then slamming the stop button and standing on the machine breathing heavy. Then he would do it again. Again, and again, and again. Stomping. Breathing. Sweat running down his face. His plastic bag shirt crinkling and shiny. Grunting now along with the stomping.
A momentary tightness seized Jack’s chest. It passed. He continued his fast walk, easier on the knees and just as good for cardio. The television monitor in front of him was playing some inane game show. The one to the left a news channel. He couldn’t read the chyron. To the right a car race, which could not be less interesting except at one point the picture switched to an announcer interviewing one of the drivers standing on the track who had a very nice mustache and a beautiful smile.
Jack’s chest started to feel like it was going to seize again. He stopped the machine a minute before his usual time. He stood on the machine, relaxing, not out of breath but sweating. He always felt a little dizzy when the machine stopped, as though he were still moving. He stepped down, feeling his head clear. The guy beside him somehow managed while continuing to run and stomp, to suddenly sneeze loudly, flapping his lips, spraying sweat and snot onto the treadmill screen.
On the stairs up to the second-floor locker room he had to follow a woman with a giant rear end that stretched her tights thin and he still couldn’t believe that they allowed women to dress like that.
He undressed feeling not just spent but a little out of sorts. Though he didn’t usually, he decided to sit in the sauna for a few minutes before going home. The sauna was at the back of the locker room, beyond the showers, beside a janitor’s closet, small, and dark. It was very hot. He was the only one using it.
A janitor found him and was able to pull him out and call 911. No one knew how long he’d been in there. He regained consciousness before the paramedics arrived. They had him laid out on the carpeted bench in the locker room and wouldn’t let him sit up. Four or five guys hovered around staring down at him, including the guy with the plastic bag sweatshirt.
Jack’s chest was killing him. It hurt to breathe.
When the paramedics arrived, he felt he was going to be OK. They moved with confidence and efficiency. They still wouldn’t let him sit up. They looked handsome in their uniforms, one especially. Jack had nothing on but a towel. They asked him questions. Yes, cholesterol. Yes, blood pressure. He didn’t tell them that he hadn’t taken his blood pressure medicine that day. Then they put an oxygen mask over his mouth so he couldn’t talk at all. The talked to each other and tried to get the other people to give them room.
And then, on a gurney, fortunately covered by a blanket, they wheeled him out of the locker room, past the broken scale, down the hall with the beeping smoke alarm, into the workout room. The gurney wouldn’t fit in the elevator, so they maneuvered him down the stairs. Every person in the gym stopped to stare. Every person tried to catch his eyes: concern, fear, a story to tell later. “What is it?” “A heart attack?” “Is he OK?” “That was that guy doing squats in the corner.” “I saw him on the treadmill.” “He’s here all the time.” “They found him passed out in the sauna.”
Judging. Judging.
The paramedics loaded him into the back of the ambulance. Jack hoped it would be the handsome one that rode with him in the back, but no, it was the ugly one.