And, he thought with wry honesty, looking at himself in the mirror, you do it because of what you’d look like if you didn’t.
His elder brother Lars was still strong as an ox at forty—machinery or no, farming took a lot of hard-sweat work—but he had a belly on him like a fifty-gallon keg, and hams like a boar hog. That was the way the Christiansen men went once they were past thirty, if they let themselves, the hard muscle turning marbled with fat like a stall-fed bullock, the chest sagging down to the stomach and staying there, bull neck and jowls…
Thin wasn’t an option with his genes and bones.
Plus it was a good way to get the tensions and fatigue-poisons of the office out of his system. That sort of work tricked the body into pumping fight-or-flight hormones into your bloodstream, without giving you a chance to purge them and sweat them out.
The big brightly lit room had a strong odor of sweat; nothing rank, because Grayson’s Gym and Health Club was respectable if not fancy, but pretty strong. One reason he came here, besides the modest monthly fee, was that it wasn’t tarted up with superefficient air scrubbers, acres of polished metal, or, God forbid, hanging plants and an on-site coffee bar. He had nothing much against gay people, but being hit on by guys got old fairly quickly even if it was polite, and a disconcerting proportion of the men who worked out at the fancier establishments were gay. The usual selection here was more eclectic, and included the members of an Okinawan-style karate club who time-shared part of the premises; Tom filled in as a substitute teacher occasionally for Sensi Hidoshi , in return for free sparring to keep his edge sharp.
The weight room was fairly busy, despite it being a Sunday afternoon—downtown Sacramento went fairly comatose on weekends, but the spillover from the weekend karate session just finished kept it full of grunts and whuffles and sharp exhalations, and there were a few people like him in after working irregular hours. He’d been subliminally conscious of a woman in one corner hanging head-down with her feet hooked through a set of padded bars while she did sit-ups with her hands linked behind her head, twisting to touch left elbow to right knee and vice versa. She’d finished a set of fifty, then dropped to her hands, stayed that way for a moment, and lowered her feet slowly to the floor. That was impressive, if a little showy, and gave him a chance to look at the legs and butt, which were extremely nice even through a loose set of sweatpants, which she was wearing over a body stocking. As she came erect, he got a look at the rest of her, and blinked.
Va-voom, he thought. Thirty-six, twenty-five, thirty-six.
A nice face too, if in a rather sculpted way—not quite model- or actress-beautiful, a little too harsh—and unusual bright leaf-green eyes; her bronze-gold hair was drawn back in a bun, and she wore a headband as well as fingerless leather exercise gloves that had seen enough use to be a little ragged.
And in years, about twenty-six, maybe a bit older. Hard to tell, with that tan. Not exactly slender, not with those measurements, but long-limbed and moving very well.
Altogether too polished for this place, usually—that total-health sheen wasn’t uncommon in California, but usually in circles much higher than the secretaries, state government employees and dental hygienists who frequented Grayson’s.
“Hi,” she said, coming over to him. “You using this bench?”
“Just finished,” he said, thinking mock-mournfully, Ah, she only wanted me for my bench space.
He looked at her left hand anyway as he replied. It was encouragingly ringless, and the mark of his own wedding band had had years to fade. There was a ring on her thumb, a distinctive circle of braided gold and platinum.
“Thanks!” she said pleasantly.
She had an accent, though not the flat Californian one with the perky rising inflection on the end of sentences, which he’d always found rather grating. This was more like a very faint Southern tinge underlying General American, a pleasant softening; there was something else too, a lilt and roll he couldn’t place at all. Possibly European of some sort. At a guess, she was Bay Area, or possibly points a bit north. The long-fingered hand in his as they shook was pleasantly solid and strong; she looked like a human being, not a Dresden figurine. Petite women made him nervous, which was a handicap even when it wasn’t mutual. His wife had been a cheerleader when he met her; football was where he got the slight kink in his nose, although the wedding had been long after high school.
“I’m Adrienne Rolfe,” she went on, holding out a hand. “Just got into town to do some lobbying.”
Oh-ho! he thought. The game commences, Watson!
Her eyes narrowed.
Damn! My poker face isn’t quite as good as I thought.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m one of those Rolfes—and I did hear about that embarrassing little episode in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, I was investigating it myself—for the family.”
He nodded noncommittally. Although it was hard to be entirely detached…
“Tom Christiansen,” he replied. “Department of Fish and Game. Warden.” That was reflex; in the state capital you established your tribe. She probably knew already.
“Ah!” she said, her eyes widening in an interest that looked sincere. That was unusual. “I love the outdoors. I fish and hunt myself, whenever I get the time.”
Better and better, he thought.
To a lot of people here in California, hunting anything but the wild tofu-lope was equivalent to sacrificing babies to Satan. It was amazing how little contact with real nature a lot of people who thought of themselves as environmentalists had; if there was one thing that was completely natural, it was killing your food.
“Me too,” he said. “Though not so much recently.”
She nodded and went on: “I don’t know anyone here. Would you mind spotting for me, if you have the time?”
“Sure,” he said, grinning; she matched the expression. “What weight?”
“One-sixty,” she said. “Three sets of twelve reps; just a maintenance program while I’m away from home.”
He blinked as they rearranged the weights, the cast-iron disks of his program clanking as they unclipped them from the bar and dropped them onto the appropriate pegs and replaced them with hers. One-sixty was awfully heavy; it must be a good twenty over her own body weight, maybe more. She didn’t look like a bodybuilder, though she wasn’t skinny, and the definition on the long straplike muscles of her arms and shoulders was excellent.
More likely dance training, maybe acrobatics, or just a fitness freak like me, he thought.
They both looked like human beings, not anatomical diagrams; the “ripped” look required special diets and programs to get rid of the normal thin coating of subcutaneous fat; it was also violently bad for you, not to mention the hormones those idiots stuffed into themselves. Not to also mention that when a woman drove her body-fat content down that far her breasts disappeared, which with Ms. Rolfe was obviously not the case.