The reality was considerably worse. Hall, for instance, was a moderately large man, probably a welterweight in his youth, now covered with flab like a duck waiting to be roasted. To make matters worse, every time he had a session with Flip, Hall wore yet another of his matching sets of sweats; today’s were electric blue, with gold stripes up the arms and legs. Why he so wanted to look like a New Jersey mobster Flip would never understand.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Hall,” he called breezily, as he came up the walk.
“A beautiful afternoon, Flip,” Hall told him, beaming all over his fat face. “A pity to be indoors.”
“Oh, but it’s time to work.”
“I know, I know.”
Hall closed the door, his smile turning sad, then immediately happy again. “One of these days, Flip,” he said, “you and I must go riding. Great exercise. In the great outdoors.”
They were walking toward, then up, the broad central staircase. Flip said, “Riding? Riding what, Mr. Hall?”
“Horses, of course!” Hall beamed like a man who’d just ridden a horse all the way from Monument Valley.
“Really?” Surprised (he didn’t like the clients to surprise him), Flip said, “I didn’t know you rode horses, Mr. Hall.”
“I’m learning,” Hall said. As they reached the second floor and moved down the wide corridor, he gestured vaguely off to the right. “Got a couple sweet-dispositioned mares in a stable over there,” he said. “Fixed up one of the barns for them.”
Flip stood aside to let Hall precede him into the gym, as somewhere a cuckoo said, “Cuckoo,” thrice. “That one’s late,” Flip said, and followed Hall through the doorway.
The petulance that was never gone from Hall’s face for long came storming back. “Something else I can’t get fixed,” he said, as Flip put on the table his bag, filled with towels, liniments, small weights. “You’d think people would want to fix things. Even sent it over with one of the guards, in mufti, claim it was his clock, but they knew. Recognized it, knew it was mine.” He made a disgusted sweeping gesture. “So it runs slow, that’s all. Runs slow.”
“But we don’t, Mr. Hall,” Flip reminded him, and waved at the side-by-side treadmills. “Shall we start with a little jog?”
“I suppose we must,” Hall said, with the self-pitying sigh Flip knew all too well.
“Be right with you,” Flip said, and stripped down to his running shorts and tee.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, Flip,” Hall said, hanging back as Flip moved toward the treadmill.
“Ask me about what? No stalling now, Mr. Hall.”
“Oh, no, certainly not.” Hall approached, but did not get on, the machine. “I was taking riding lessons,” he said. “But that fellow isn’t—He won’t do it any more. I wondered, by any chance, do you know anybody who teaches riding?”
“Gee, I don’t, Mr. Hall,” Flip said. “Most of my friends are human.”
Hall made a little laugh, more a whinny, as though he were becoming a horse himself. “Just a thought,” he said.
“Come on, Mr. Hall, step up here. Let’s go for our jog.”
So they did, bouncing along side by side among all the equipment. Hall’s gym was as complete as most professional spas, with the treadmill and Nautilus machines and barbells and anything your little jock’s heart could desire. The machines were all several years old, though, and when Flip had first seen them they hadn’t shown the slightest indication of any actual use. They were simply another of Hall’s endless collections, and why all of a sudden he’d decided to use the health equipment, Flip neither knew nor cared. It was a job, that’s all. The equipment was good, and he doubted it was ever used except when he was on the premises.
Hall could never do more than ten minutes on the treadmill, even with the dial set at barely more than a brisk walking pace. During that time, Flip observed himself in the mirror and, to a lesser extent, observed the client.
None of the clients wanted a mirror, but Flip insisted on it. “You have to watch yourself,” he’d tell them. “You have to see the progress you’re making. You have to figure out where you need more work.”
All of which was true, but Flip had other reasons as well, which he saw no reason to mention. For one thing, it was punishment to make the slobs view their own hopeless efforts, punishment they richly deserved. And for another, it gave Flip the opportunity to watch himself.
Flip Morriscone would rather watch himself than anyone else on the planet, man or woman, and that was because he was in the absolute peak of physical condition; rockhard abs, rockhard butt, legs like a centaur’s, neck like a plinth. On the treadmill, on the machines, anywhere, what he was really doing was not training the slobs. What he was really doing was watching himself, and getting paid for it. (In his dreams, he often walked beside himself, holding hands.)
After the jog, with Hall gasping and weaving, Flip gave a period on the leglift machine, so Hall would have a little opportunity to sit. While he groaned over the strain of lifting those weights, just from the knees down, his face streaming, sweats already living up to their name, Hall said, “Flip, this is horribly hard work, but do you know, I look forward to it?”
“Well, sure you do, Mr. Hall. It makes you feel better.”
“It makes me feel much worse, Flip.” Hall emitted another groan, then managed a ghastly smile as he said, “Do you know what does make me feel better, Flip?”
“What’s that, Mr. Hall?”
“You being here.”
“That’s what I’m talking about, Mr. Hall.”
“No, not this torture, Flip. You being here. You.”
Good God, Flip thought, is he throwing a pass at me? That did happen from time to time (why not, with such perfection as his?), and it was repulsive in the extreme, and usually ended with Flip saying farewell to that client, walking out on the “you must have misunderstood” malarkey. Was another client about to self-destruct?
“I don’t follow you, Mr. Hall,” Flip said, watching Hall’s eyes like a panther watching a deer.
“I’ve learned over the years, Flip,” Hall said, “that friendship is a sometime thing. People I thought were—Well, doesn’t matter. I know we’ve become good friends over the last few months, Flip, and I just want you to know I value that. I’m glad we’re pals.”
“Pals,” pronounced as though just learned from a foreign language. Flip smiled large in relief; it wasn’t a pass after all. “Of course we’re pals, Mr. Hall,” he told the client.
11
ANNE MARIE DIDN’T LIKE it when Andy brooded, because it happened so seldom that it had to mean something serious had gone wrong. He’d been his usual cheery optimistic self when he’d left for Pennsylvania with John and the others, but in the three days since, his mood had considerably darkened. Not unhappy, exactly, or angry. Mostly he seemed to be stymied, to have walked into a wall somehow, unable to move, and therefore unable to catch up with his regular buoyant self.
Generally speaking, Anne Marie left Andy to be Andy, with no interference from her. He was like a smooth-running but intricate machine whose workings were completely unknowable, and therefore not to be messed with. For instance, she knew how to drive a car and considered herself a good driver, but there were some special high-performance vehicles she wouldn’t dare try to take control of, and that’s what Andy was to her: too complex and abrupt to steer.