Ordinary World

First Chapter of Second Tango

Chapter One " Ordinary World

“Morning, Drew.”

“Morning, Carlo.”

“I was going over the sign-up list for the triathlon next weekend and your name is not on it.”

“That’s because I’m not running. I’m too old for that s**t.”

“That’s crap and you know it. You’re in better shape than some of the people who have already signed up.”

Drew smiled at Carlo thinking, “You know that’s right. I may not be Rocky, but I am in great shape for a guy my age.” But he said, “Carlo, just because working out in your sophisticated, highclass, physical conditioning establishment every weekday I retired a year ago has put me in the best shape I’ve been in since basic training, does not mean I am about to submit my tired old a*s to that kind of punishment.”

“It’s your loss. Suit yourself. Most of your friends are in it. You could at least come cheer for the rest of us.”

“I will do that. I’ll even wave one of those stupid flags advertising the gym that you carry to these things.”

“Thanks, man.”

Drew Barnett cheerfully returned greetings from half a dozen of his friends as he wandered past the fitness center’s exercise machines on his way to the locker room. They considered him “the oldest guy in the room,” although he would rather they thought of him as “the smartest guy in the room,” and while the former was certainly true, he hoped and mostly believed the latter was true. Still, even at his most arrogant, it would be no one’s business but his own. Three college degrees bought him the right to think of himself as intelligent, but they did not buy him the right to be arrogant. He came by that naturally.

He needed to keep that superiority mindset in check. It had done him lots of harm in previous “lifetimes.” As he opened the locker, the same locker he used every time he came here, five times a week since he retired, he reflected on the people more or less diligently exercising this weekday morning. Drew was the only one that was officially “retired” and not more or less permanently “between jobs,” except of course for the center’s employees who did have jobs, part-time, but still paying. Paying weekly, but even being paid weakly weekly was better than not at all, which is what some of his exercise companions faced.

After Drew snapped the lock on the locker with the satisfying firmness of metal on metal, he noticed Ray, one of the more outgoing regulars, sitting on the bench, hunched over, with his head in his hands.

“Hey, Ray, wuzzup?”

“Oh, hey, Drew. I gotta quit the gym. I got no money. If my wife didn’t work, we’d starve. I got two kids to feed, and I ain’t doin’ no good hanging out here.”

Drew sat beside Ray. “What kind of work are you looking for?” Drew wondered what work this barely educated, monstrous black man could be qualified for except scaring small children at a haunted house.

“Anything. I worked at the recycle center sortin’ trash for a while, but my supervisor thought I was workin’ too slow and they fired me. Construction dried up and there’s nothing goin’ in them big construction dumpsters to sort out nohow. I think he wanted a reason to let me go and I didn’t do nothing wrong. He didn’t like me from the day I started.”

“Is there anything else you can do?”

“I worked fo’ a company that did security fo’ concerts and stuff, but they stopped calling me a couple of months ago. Said they had enough guys.”

“Anything else?”

“Ain’t too many people want to hire an Afghan war vet with PTSD.”

“There has to be something. What about the big cattle ranches south of here? Lord knows you’re strong and you’re comfortable outdoors. Surely your combat experience would be helpful.”

“If you ain’t in one of their families, they got no use for ya. I shoveled cow s**t at a dairy farm for a couple of months, but got fired from that ’cause the rancher’s daughter said I made eyes at her.”

“I guess you being black and her being white didn’t have much to do with it.”

“Yeah, somethin’ like that.”

“Look, Ray, I don’t know how much help I can give you, but I can pay your membership this month.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“You need a place off the streets. I can ask around and see if anyone I know is hiring.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“What are friends for? Besides, I never thanked you for the help you gave me on the machines. I would have killed myself if you hadn’t shown me the right way to use them.”

Ray smiled. “Yeah, you looked kinda silly strugglin’ with them machines. Thank you. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Next time you see an old man struggling on a machine, you help him like you helped me.”

“Deal.” Ray extended his giant hand and Drew shook it.

As Drew worked out on the elliptical trainer, one of the women wandered over to him. She looked up at him over the machine’s handle bar. “Hey, Drew, Carlo tells me you paid Ray’s membership this month.”

“Yeah, ain’t no big thing.”

“Drew, people is gonna take advantage of you. If they think you’re a soft touch they’ll be asking for stuff all the time. Besides, I never thanked you for paying my membership a couple of months ago.”

“Carmen, I was happy to do it. The look on your face when I handed Carlo the money was worth every penny.” God, I wish I was twenty years younger and single.

“Drew, you’re too nice. You can’t keep paying gym dues just ’cause it makes you feel good.”

“Yes, I can. If I didn’t have it to give, I wouldn’t.”

“That ain’t the reason I came over.”

“Oh?”

“See that new guy over there?”

“Yeah.”

“He don’t take no advice from Ray or Carlo. Says he only takes advice from white guys and you’re the only white guy here, so…”

“I’ll talk to him.” Your mission, should you decide to accept it…

Drew wandered to the new guy and gently pulled him to a corner of the gym where they could talk without being overheard. Carmen and Ray smiled at each other. They had seen Drew do this before. A couple of months ago two of the regulars were having a fight over a woman, and he took all three of them into the corner one at a time and broke up the fight. When the talk was over, she had lost both of them. All anyone knew about whatever Drew said was that it was a secret between him and whomever he was talking to and not to ask questions if you wanted to stay Drew’s friend. Drew and the new guy picked up a pair of squash rackets and went into the squash court. They hit the ball around for a while, but neither seemed really interested in playing squash.

Drew came out of the squash court first. He smiled at Carmen and went back to the elliptical trainer. The new guy came out and stood next to Ray while Ray spotted Heidi, another of the “temporarily out of work” gym regulars lifting weights. When she was finished, the new guy said, “Ray, would you spot me while I do some bench presses?”

Ray beamed. “Sure!”

Drew watched Ray, Heidi, and the new guy, whose name he still did not know, work together for the rest of his exercise time. When he left, all three were soaked with sweat from the intensity of their workouts and still hard at it.

After showering, Drew ambled to the food court at the other end of the mall that housed the fitness center. Drew remembered when this mall was built. He and his family had shopped here many times, and he was saddened to see how far it had fallen. He had heard that the mall management had raised the rent in the deepest nadir of the last real estate downturn. Many of the stores capitulated, folded up their tents in the night and moved to cheaper locations. The arrogance and stupidity of the mall management galled him. Half the stores closed. A for-profit vocational school had moved into the space a major department store had once occupied. The space the fitness center occupied had originally been an upscale women’s clothing store. The exclusive department store anchor at one end had been replaced by a discount odd-lots store. Most of the merchants who had booths in the mall’s center aisle were long gone. The pharmacy across from the food court had opened its own building half a mile away leaving a big empty room.

Drew smiled to see that Anthony was at his station, his apron covered with flour as usual. Anthony looked up from the pizza shell he was working on to acknowledge Drew. “Afternoon, Drew. How was your workout this morning?”

“The same usual boring s**t, different day. I mean how exciting can an elliptical trainer be? Watching a good-looking a*s on the machine in front of me just makes it worse. I only do it because my doctor yells at me if I don’t.”

Anthony tilted his head. “Your doctor would yell at you if she knew what you eat for lunch every day you come here.”

“I’m sixty-six. I am not an infant. I can eat what I want.” And f**k anyone who tells me otherwise.

“And I’ll bet you don’t tell your wife what you eat either,” Anthony teased.

“She thinks I eat next door at the salad lady.” Of course, I’d rather eat her.

“And I won’t tell her about the ice cream you have for dessert, neither.”

“You’re a true friend.”

“Here, I have it ready for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Enjoy, my friend.”

Every book and every article and every piece of health advice that Drew had ever read had recommended against eating the type of lunch he was eating, but he didn’t care. Lunch was the only part of his day that was not positively and excruciatingly boring. The word “stultifying” was the best word he could find to describe his condition since retirement. He understood why men his age had affairs with women half their age, but that was not his manner or his self-image. He could not in good conscience deny that it was tempting.

A friend had once recommended model railroading, but somehow that seemed to miss the point. Photography had never interested him, and the thought of volunteering in the kind of community theater he had managed for the latter part of his career turned his blood cold. If he did, he would be dealing with facility and arts center managers like he had been for the majority of his career. The idea of sitting across a board table from a younger version of himself was seriously repulsive.

Traveling the world was out of the question unless he wanted a divorce so he could travel solo. He shuddered at the thought. As much as he might have wished otherwise, becoming the global wanderer was out of the question.