Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (22 page)

Standing there alone, Jonathan felt like some kind of tourist as he waited for Grant. His crappy t-shirt and cargo shorts made him stand out. Everyone he could see seemed to be in some dress code he hadn’t been told about. Synthetic fibers, tank tops, and various off shoots of spandex were all around him. He was unforgivably aware that he was the only person here who wasn’t already in shape. He’d at least expected to see some overweight people on the cardio equipment, but it wasn’t the case.

At first he thought it might be a Friday morning phenomenon and the out of shape people didn’t show up until after working hours; then he thought about who sent him here. Grant had probably chosen this place because it catered to people who were already athletes.

He grew anxious quickly, unsure what to do with himself. Grant was going on forty minutes late.

He had to remind himself that Grant wasn’t aware of the urgency to get started. How could he be? It wasn’t as if he had explained to the guy that he had a bout with a seven foot tall monster scheduled three months out and needed to make sure he was ready. Jonathan didn’t even know if three months would be enough time to matter. How much ‘mass’ could he gain in that amount of time anyway? Eventually, feeling silly, Jonathan tried to start without him.

Almost immediately he realized he had no idea even how to begin. The gym was so full of options and he didn’t know if there was, in fact, a right or wrong place to start. There were muscle machines. Should he start with those? Most of the big guys in the gym didn’t seem to be using them. They all seemed lined up with the spare benches and dumbbells, but even that was daunting.

Do I just pick up a weight and start pumping? Just go until I can’t lift it anymore
?

Looking around, he couldn’t tell. Some guys seemed to do a certain number of repetitions, others had people around them to help as they pushed until they couldn’t lift the weights anymore. This wasn’t nearly as straight forward as he had hoped. Finally, frustrated with the thought of such a monumentally small thing getting in his way, he decided he would try the machines.

It was hard to push the atmosphere away. He felt like amateur hour in the presence of hardened professionals. As he walked over to the machine area, he stopped politely to let two girls pass in front of him. They looked to be about 18, a blonde and a brunette decked out in expensive gym attire and makeup. Once they passed, he overheard the brunette talking to her friend.

“Ugg, as if I’m getting a membership here. Place claims it’s exclusive. That guy looks like a homeless person buying a membership so he can use the showers.”

Jonathan felt his face redden as he turned around to watch them walk away. The blonde was nodding her agreement. He was stunned; he thought this kind of rudeness only existed in movies. Making it worse, he noticed the muscled trainer watching him just then. The guy was scowling at him from behind his cubicle desk. Jonathan couldn’t tell if it was that he agreed with the girls or because he thought they were out of line.

He snapped out of it. Turning back to the machines and leaving the man’s line of sight.

Being embarrassed is hardly relevant. Screw them all and go do something.

He was pumping the leg press machine an arbitrary number of times, trying to get an idea of what to set the weight at when he overheard the trainer answering the phone from behind a set of cubicle walls.

“This is Lincoln,” the voice said. “Yeah, like the car or the president.”

Jonathan eavesdropped again, he hadn’t thought to bring headphones as he’d assumed he’d be taking instruction from Grant, but seeing as how the guy was now an hour late, he only had his troubled thoughts to keep him company. He’d been unprepared for the culture shift in the gym, so he figured that understanding how the place worked might be wise. Lincoln was clearly an indoctrinated member of the place, so he might be worth paying attention to.

“No mam, the parking garage is not open on the weekends, but there is plenty of street parking,” Lincoln said, followed shortly by a “you’re welcome.”

Jonathan heard the sound of the phone hanging up.

Then again, maybe it won’t be that insightful.

He continued to pump the leg press until his legs felt like they were going numb. He had to assume that meant he’d exercised them and moved to the next machine. It was some type of shoulder exercise where he flapped his arms like a chicken. The doubt in his mind kept building. He couldn’t tell if he was wasting his time on the wrong things; the possibility was a perpetual discouragement. He didn’t have time to be wasting, he didn’t have time to figure this out; he needed to know what to do so he could stop focusing on if it was the right thing and focus on damn well getting it done.

“Hey, Lincoln,” a voice Jonathan recognized as his account representative whispered into the cubicle, “come check this out.”

Jonathan stopped flapping his arms and watched as the account representative pointed to the two teenage girls from earlier, setting up a bench press a little ways off.

“Those two over there,” said the account rep, “they came in on free day-passes, wouldn’t even listen when I tried to sell them a membership.”

“Okay,” Lincoln said, waiting for the story to get interesting. Jonathan was waiting as well, but more he wondered how the girls had gotten free day-passes while he had to buy a membership.

“So get this, they wanted to make sure this wasn’t the type of gym where they would be ‘getting hit on’ all the time,” said the rep incredulously, using his fingers to make air quotes when indicating he was reciting the girls’ exact words. “Apparently, they’ve had ‘a lot of problems’ with that in the past.”

Jonathan took another look at the girls. He didn’t see it. They were in decent shape but hardly distracting. Perhaps, being snubbed by them earlier was coloring his opinion of them.

Nope,
he decided
.

This ‘
problem’
definitely existed in their absurdly inflated self-images. Jonathan frowned as Lincoln stepped to the front of his cubicle. He could see the trainer was frowning as well as he watched the girls setting up the bench press.

“Watch this,” said Lincoln, walking toward the girls.

The membership rep looked around nervously, as if he’d just set into motion something his managers might get upset about. When he saw no one was paying attention, he became more interested in what was about to play out in front of him.

Lincoln approached the girls fairly inconspicuously at first, just getting close enough that he might make them uncomfortable. He seemed to be going about his business, a gym employee re-shelving weights and resetting equipment; then, suddenly, his facial expression changed as he picked up a forty-five pound plate.

The scowl he’d had on since Jonathan had first seen him became an overacting impression of a sleaze ball. He turned to the girls, wearing this face, and performed a slow motion bicep curl with one arm, making a great effort to maintain eye contact with the blonde who was spotting her friend under the bar. When she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t staring at her, he looked from his bicep, back to the girl, then back to his bicep and let out a long slow breath.

“Ahhh, yeah,” said the trainer, without breaking character.

Jonathan and the Account rep watched wide eyed. It was difficult not to laugh and blow the act from afar. Jonathan couldn’t believe the trainer was keeping a straight face. Once the girl purposely stopped making eye contact, he re-racked the weight and walked up beside the spotter.

“Hi,” Lincoln said, doing what Jonathan thought was an impression of a surfer.

The blonde smiled awkwardly.

“So, like, mind if I assist your friend here?” he said.

Placing his hands in a spotting position under the bar, he nudged the blonde out of the way with his hip.

“Oh, excuse me,” he said. “I forget how built I am sometimes.”

The brunette girl on the bench was now in the awkward position of having to look up at him from between his legs.

“Holy crap,” the account rep whispered, turning away to keep from laughing.

To finish off this masterpiece, Lincoln took the weight off the brunette entirely, picking up the bar and gesturing towards his biceps again with his eyes.

“Check it out,” he said while he flexed, “pretty sweet right?”

The girls stopped smiling, clearly getting uncomfortable. They walked away hurriedly the moment the brunette was out from under the weights. Lincoln’s eyes followed them as they left, still pumping the weight up and down.

“Hey, where ya going?” he said.

The second the girls were out of sight, Lincoln dropped the act and looked back at the account rep. Jonathan could see now that the trainer had almost lost it. The account rep’s face was red with embarrassment for the girls, but couldn’t hide that it had been worth it.

“Dude, like, was it something I said?” he joked to the account rep in his surfer impression.

When Jonathan realized he was laughing it jolted him. He hadn’t laughed, not a genuine laugh like that, since he’d woken up on the kitchen floor. It was so over the top that he’d actually forgotten to focus on his problems for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, he’d ruined the moment by noticing it.

When Grant finally made an appearance, Jonathan was, at first, grateful he’d shown up.

This didn’t last long, as he soon realized that he wasn’t going to be of any help. There was a stink of competitiveness that Jonathan didn’t understand undermining everything the man told him to do. He seemed far more interested in showing off his own muscle than teaching Jonathan anything.

He had Jonathan begin on a workout that he referred to as his
maintenance routine
, but he repeatedly started Jonathan at a weight level that would result in almost immediate failure. Grant seemed to revel in the failures, like it proved something. He hardly made an effort to hide it.

Jonathan didn’t know where it came from. He had never once slighted Grant to his knowledge. They’d hardly spoken at all. The guy was more confused about what Jonathan was trying to accomplish than Jonathan himself. The idea that Jonathan was honestly there just to learn how to body build was somehow an insult to the man’s intelligence. Out of necessity, Jonathan tried to ignore it, yet he couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable around him. He kept sensing that Grant felt like he was playing at something. Jonathan realized, of course, that he was sort of pretending, but not in a way that should make Grant question him.

Maybe he thinks Paige put me up to this
.

He hoped the man’s attitude would change. He tried to find some common ground, but it became apparent the common ground was nonexistent. The more time they spent together the more he didn’t like the guy, the more he thought of him as an overly competitive idiot.

After an hour, Jonathan called it a failed endeavor. He’d wasted a day and a considerable amount of money on the whole idea and now had little to show for it other than an abused ego and a severe dislike for Paige’s boyfriend. If boyfriend was even the right word, after today he hoped acquaintance was a better description.

He resolved to come more prepared next time. He’d seen men’s magazines at the grocery store. He could go online or find a book at the library, study up on modern muscle building techniques. He winced at the idea that he was losing time to research, even if it was necessary. He needed to do something, anything, to make some kind of progress. Whatever he did he had to keep moving forward, a setback like Grant being a jackass wasn’t going to get in the way.

As he left the gym he ‘thanked’ Grant for his time. The guy was standing on the sidewalk outside of the gym, talking on his cell phone.

“No problem, Tibbs,” Grant said, taking his ear from the phone. “Let me know if you want to do it again sometime.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan said, starting to walk away. “I’ll call.”

“Remember,” Grant said. “You see that blond guy again, you let me know.”

Jonathan nodded and started to turn away again, waving without looking back.

As he walked away he was initially perplexed. There was something about the way Grant had said “you let me know” that was intentionally, yet subtly, irksome. What was that guy’s problem? Admittedly, Paige was probably still uncomfortable knowing that the ‘blond guy’ hadn’t been apprehended, so he understood the bravado in front of her, but what was his interest in bringing it up when she wasn’t even there to hear him boast?