Fall (5 page)

I walked in one day and there was no one in the gym except a young guy with his back to me. He was wearing a tight black tank-top and he was sitting at the machine I wanted.

His muscles were small but defined. He had his hair in a short ponytail.

I couldn’t decide whether to ask him how long he was going to be on the machine. He was strong for someone small. The stronger guys were, the more I felt inclined to watch or be near them even though I knew they could get annoyed. There was a guy in that gym who could bench-press 305 pounds, and I noticed that everyone wanted to talk to him.

I found another exercise and waited for the guy with the ponytail to finish. I noticed that he shaved his legs. They were shiny and tanned. Then, when he stood up and walked around, I noticed that he was a girl.

She looked over and the sun through the window lit the gold of a thin necklace. I’d never seen a girl with muscles like that. When she wasn’t exercising and her muscles weren’t flexed, she looked feminine. I stared at her.

The day before I had been stronger. Now that there was a girl around I was all the more conscious of how weak I was. I took long rests between sets so I wouldn’t get tired. The girl moved all over the gym as confidently as my brother had. I stared at her whenever she was exercising. She had a beautiful face. On every exercise she was twice as strong as I was. I watched her technique and thought that if she caught me staring I could say that I was trying to learn from her. I thought about going back home.

“Trade pozzies?” she said.

I had no idea.

“Sorry?” I said.

“Trade pozzies with you?” She was gesturing at the bench I had been resting on.

“Sorry. Sure.”

She added weight to what I had been lifting. I didn’t know whether to watch her, try to spot her, or leave her in peace. She didn’t really have breasts, but the cut of her tank-top drew my eyes toward the front of her. If I stood nearby she might catch me staring. She finished her set and reduced the weight for me. I still hadn’t
rested long enough but I went anyway. As soon as I finished, she added weight again, hurriedly, as though I was spoiling her rhythm. When she finished I wanted to delay.

“What was that word?” I said.

“What?”

“That word you said before. Pozzies?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Place.”

“I’m from Canada.”

“Position. It’s short for position. You going again?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

She did her set. I moved closer to the bench but I didn’t spot her.

“Pozzie,” she said when she finished. She was reflecting on it.

“I’m Canadian,” I said again.

“Right,” she said.

“It’s quiet in here,” I said.

“Yep,” she said. She lay down and did another set and I felt like I should drift away.

I went at the same time the next day and she was there again. She was sweating and out of breath, wearing a white T-shirt that made her look more girlish—and younger. I realized she probably wasn’t much older than I was.

I wanted to work on my shoulders. I went over to the upright bench and deliberately put a heavy weight on the bar. My brother had said that I was strong on the military press.

I also caught her eye. I wanted to say hi.

“G’day,” she said. I was always surprised when Aussies really said that.

We were the only ones in the gym again. I waited till she started her next set so she wouldn’t notice how few reps I was doing. But it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and I felt more confident. I put more weight on and watched her out of the corner of my eye. I thought about the muscles under her shirt that I had seen the day before.

“Would you mind spotting me?” I said. I had walked a little closer to her and waited till she finished her set.

Would she feel proud to be spotting me or would I seem laughable needing help from a girl? I put more weight on the bar. She stood above and behind me. I stared straight ahead, pressed the bar up high. I put the face of a guy named Shaughnessy in my mind—a guy who was a senior that year at St. Ebury. I saw his mocking smile. I pressed the bar again, and pressed it again, and I watched his smile diminish. Ten repetitions, and more weight than I had ever lifted.

“That’s the way,” she said.

Later she said that her name was Meg. I got her to spot me one more time. She asked me what I was doing in Sydney if I was from Canada. When she stood close to me I realized that she wasn’t as broad as she had seemed the day before. If I had seen her on the street I would have thought she was just a pretty girl in a baggy shirt.

Meg told me she was eighteen, but she winked when she said it. Anyone who worked out on their own at the gym had to be eighteen or older. I told her I was eighteen, too. I asked her how long she had been working out and she said, “I don’t know.” I waited for her to calculate the time but she never did. She seemed really tough, which is why her smile sometimes surprised me.

There were more people in the gym over the next few days. Rugby types. Tans, freckles, square jaws, pale lips, big shoulders, short shorts showing off their legs. Meg was there and I expected to catch her admiring them. But she wasn’t like that. I waved at her and she nodded and smiled.

Christmas was approaching and the gym was going to be closed for a few days. I asked Meg what her plans were for Christmas.

“Family,” she said.

I asked her if she had a big family and she said, “Na.”

My parents hosted a lot of parties that Christmas. Sometimes I helped out. Usually I escaped. I piled food onto cocktail napkins and went up to my room. I tried to pile as much as I could onto each napkin so I wouldn’t have to come down too often for more.
I could usually avoid conversations by not looking anyone in the eye and moving with purpose toward the waiters with trays. Colleagues of my father’s would generally choose to talk to my brother for token family interest. They were drawn to him more naturally. They talked about football with him and what he thought about Rugby League.

I ate a lot over Christmas. So did my brother. “I should have made two turkeys,” my mother said. She said it two nights in a row, with the same level of surprise.

The gym was open the day after Boxing Day and I spent four hours there. I went in the morning, took a break for lunch, and came back in the afternoon.

Meg was there when I came back after lunch. I waved at her and walked closer. She looked down as I was walking toward her and then looked at me when I was next to her.

“Good Christmas?” I said.

“Yeah?” she said. I couldn’t tell whether she was sure or not. “You know?” she said. We looked into each other’s eyes for the first time like we really saw something. She looked away and rested her hand on a barbell. She was wearing new running shoes.

“Christmas presents?” I said.

She smiled and jogged on the spot. Then she looked a little embarrassed and suggested with her eyes that I get out of her way and let her do a set.

I felt bigger after Christmas, and stronger. I had food in my stomach after lunch and I felt like I could go for hours. As I put my hands on a bar that day I looked at them and had one of those moments when I realized I was growing. My hands looked stronger and wiser. I worked out hard and burned my lunch.

“Would you like to get a bite to eat?” I asked her before letting myself think about it.

“Yeah?” she said.

We went to an Oporto for Portuguese chicken. I tried buying her meal but she shouldered me out of the way and looked at me like
she was angry. We sat down outside and didn’t say anything. There was still the smell of burnt wood in the air from bush fires. I thought about saying “Hot, isn’t it?” but didn’t.

Three nights later I told my mother I was going out with a friend.

“Who?” she said.

“A guy I met at the gym.”

Double Bay was halfway between my house and Meg’s place in Kings Cross. We met at the beach after dinner in the dark.

We had worked out together a couple of times—I did her routine—and I wanted to ask her out. I had tried to imagine what she would want to do but all I could think of was going down to the water and looking at the harbour. I spotted her while she was bench-pressing and as soon as she had finished I said, “I’ve never been down to the water and looked at the harbour.” I was staring at her legs. “At night,” I added.

“You should do that,” she said.

The next day she told me after her workout that she had stolen a bottle of rum from a bottle shop. “It was sitting in a carton near the door.” I didn’t know how to react.

“Fancy meeting me tonight at the beach?” she said.

I felt sick and anxious for the rest of the day. I kept myself from thinking about my dreams of Meg. I felt guilty and disrespectful for having thought about her naked and told myself, to calm myself, that she was just a new friend I was meeting on the beach.

It was another hot night. I didn’t want to wear shorts. I wanted to dress up a little, but not too much. I hadn’t worn jeans in months because they weren’t allowed that year at St. Ebury and it had been too hot in Sydney. Our maid had ironed a pair and folded them neatly in a drawer at the end of my last holiday. They were crisp and thick and the buttons were hard to do up. I tucked a white shirt into them and I rolled up the sleeves to just above the elbow—a habit I’d developed according to the rules of St. Ebury’s Fridays. My mother said I looked nice.

“Bundy!” was the first thing Meg said when she came up to me on the beach. She was wearing a tank-top and shorts, as always,
but also lipstick. I didn’t really like the look of her lipstick. She was holding a bottle in front of her. “Bundaberg,” she said, with less of a smile, pointing at the label of the rum. She realized I didn’t know what Bundy was.

“Did you bring Coke?” she said.

I didn’t know I was supposed to. She had expected me to bring Coke and glasses.

There were sailboats moored near the beach and the water was mostly flat. Every now and then a set of waves from a distant ferry would come in and the boats would roll. Their masts made a dull ring and the waves washed ashore with a
sssh!
like they were telling the quiet to be quiet. Meg was mad and silent about the Coke for a long time. I said I could go buy some but she said, “Stuff it, you couldn’t buy glasses.” She took a swig from the bottle. She handed it to me and we sat down on the sand in a part of the beach where no one was likely to see us.

“I’m only seventeen,” she said.

I was going to tell her that I was only sixteen, but I didn’t. I drank some rum from the bottle and coughed. I expected her to laugh but she looked out at the water like she was thinking of something else.

We sat a couple of feet apart. She passed me the bottle again and I braced myself for the burn. I passed it back and she screwed it into the sand between us. She hummed and mumbled a piece of a song that I didn’t know and then she got up and stood near the edge of the water. I noticed for the first time that she hadn’t been wearing shoes. In Canada you can’t go out without shoes.

I didn’t know whether I should stand and join her or not. I was too nervous to realize for a while that I was finally down at the water at night looking out at the harbour with a friend.

She walked back toward me, looking at me with a narrow grin. She leaned forward and took the bottle from the sand. She took a dramatic swig with the stars behind her head, and her tank-top revealed half an inch of her belly. She pushed the bottle to me again.

“So?” she said.

“So?”

She sat down next to me, closer. “I can’t drink vodka,” she said. “Sick as. Couple of years ago?” She forced the bottle on me again. I had never had rum before.

“You’re quiet,” she said.

“So are you.”

She tried to do a headstand because she said she couldn’t feel the rum. She fell and then I tried. I balanced myself and my face felt flushed with rum and blood. While I was upside down she yanked my shirt up out of my jeans and laughed when I fell over.

“It looks better that way,” she said.

I drank more rum and felt dizzy. I had only been drunk once before, at one of my parents’ parties, and I think I was only pretending to be drunk because I only had a glass of wine.

“I threw up on wine once,” I told her. I don’t know why I lied.

“I like wine,” she said. “White wine. Nice and cold.”

I had some more rum and tried another headstand. So did she.

“I feel my upper body getting stronger,” I said after collapsing. “I feel like my arms are stronger than my legs.”

“Gotta balance it out,” she said and drummed her palms on her thighs.

“I don’t know whether you read much, Meg, but I’ve been reading about the Greek god Hephaestus.” I pointed upward. “He was lame. The other gods laughed at him because he walked in a funny manner. But he was strong in his arms and worked a mighty forge.”

Meg burst out laughing. She was upside down and her laughter made her fall over. She sat up and chuckled.

“Bit of a dag, aren’t you?” she said.

I didn’t know what a dag was.

She looked at me nicely then. “What’s wrong with your eye?” she said.

“Nothing.”

She kept looking at me. “I bet I can do more push-ups than you can,” she said.

“I bet you can.”

“I bet I could do push-ups with you on my back.”

I didn’t say anything for a second. I felt a little sick. Then I said, “I’d crush you.”

“You reckon you could do them with me on your back?”

“Maybe. Most likely,” I said.

“Most likely,” she said, and before I knew it she had rolled me over and was lying facedown on my back. “Go on, then,” she half whispered in my ear and I shivered. I pushed up and she wrapped her arms around my belly for support. She started laughing quietly and I could feel her shaking behind me. I did six push-ups and she said, “That all?”

I was feeling weak with nerves. I’d never been drunk. I’d never been touched by a girl.

“My turn,” she said. “Come on.” She wanted me to lie on her back.

I didn’t want her to feel me.