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‘Probably for the best. Okay, I’m ready. I’ll meet you in the bistro.’
‘I won’t be long; I just need to speak to a couple of the staff about closing up. Order whatever you want from the kitchen – it’s on the house – then we can go grab a beer.’
After checking my list of clients for personal training sessions tomorrow and making sure the class schedule has no last-minute changes, I speak to my night team and head into the bistro.
The café bistro is a large, open space with modern, glass tables. We have a small menu offering proteins, veggies, and healthy carbs. We also have a salad and smoothie bar. I eat here often. It’s one of the perks of owning the gym.
The bistro is a relatively new addition to the site. Drew helped me out with it by having his firm deal with the legals around the construction work.
As I walk past the busy tables – some people eating meals, some having smoothies, some just drinking coffee and chatting – I can’t help but think it’s a far cry from where I started out.
The first gym I ever worked out in was an old warehouse on the edge of New York Bay: the Staten Island side, where I grew up. I was seventeen. I’ve always been a tall, broad guy, but back then, I was just a kid who liked to play the guitar in my high school band. The difference between me and the rest of the guys in high school was that I had knocked up my childhood sweetheart, Alice. And I was ready to marry her.
The kicker was, Alice loved me but her parents didn’t. They thought I was a waster. Well, I knocked up their daughter when she was sixteen – of course they thought I was a waster. By comparison to Alice’s private education and her family’s weekend home in the Hamptons, I had nothing. I came from nothing. My mother worked in a bar and my father was ajack-of-all-trades, master of none, as the saying goes.
But I’d have been damned if I didn’t try to prove everyone wrong. I was willing to do everything and anything I could to convince Alice’s parents to let me marry her. She was the mother of my child, and the girl I was crazy in love with.
So, while I finished high school, I started working as a mechanic to earn some cash, and I joined the gym. I wanted to work like a man. Prove that I could provide for my family like a man. And I wanted to build muscle, to startlookinglike a man.
That first gym I went to was owned by a guy we all knew as Crazy Joe. I’ll never forget him. He really was crazy. He served in Vietnam and, by his own admission, smoked too many joints and took too much LSD in the seventies. He was covered in tats. Ready to beat men to a pulp ‘for exercise.’ He was drunk on whisky most of the time. But he’s where it all started for me.
His sanity aside, Crazy Joe was all right. He’d have these moments of tenderness and enlightenment. Who knows, maybe that was just the LSD talking, but he sort of took me under his wing. He got me into boxing every day. I ran with him on the streets, and we lifted weights together. Hell, Crazy Joe gave me my first tattoo. Though my arms and chest are covered in ink now, I still have that first tat on my bicep.
What I didn’t realize then was that I would never be good enough for Alice’s parents. No matter how much gym time I put in. Whether or not I still went to school while working as a mechanic. Despite the fact I went to their house every night to see Alice and Cady, not out of a sense of obligation but because I was desperate to see my girls. None of it mattered to them.
They still saw me as nothing but a weight on their daughter, pulling her down. Of course I didn’t want to be a weight, but I did want to be an anchor. For her. For our family.
My fight to prove myself and to win Alice started when I was seventeen. It has never ended.
‘How’s the steak?’ I ask, taking a seat on a stool next to Drew.
‘It was great. I swear it gets better every time,’ he says, winking at Angie, my best chef and an old family friend.
‘Such a charmer,’ she says, shaking her head and waving a hand.
‘Has everything been okay tonight, Angie?’ I ask.
‘Busy, but you know me, I like to keep busy. I bumped into your Cady this morning. She was heading to the library. She’s a looker these days, isn’t she?’
‘God, tell me about it. I’m thinking about locking her in her bedroom and putting a chastity belt on her until she’s forty.’
Angie throws her head back as she laughs, her blonde-gray ponytail swaying. ‘Well, her ma was a looker at that age. Not that I have to tell you as much.’
My mind drifts to Alice; her soft smile, her gentle touch, the sweet scent of strawberries that always seems to surround her.
‘No, you don’t have to tell me that,’ I say, fighting to keep my lips straight, rather than scowling. The woman knows how to kick a man. But she’s always been a good friend to my mother and there have been times when she’s helped keep me on the straight and narrow. Hell, sometimes her brutal honesty can be endearing. ‘On that note… Drew? Beer?’
He wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin and slides his plate across the counter. ‘Thanks, Angie. Don’t tell my mother but you’ve always made the best food of all the moms.’
‘Get out of here.’ She beams, more with pride than embarrassment, I think.
The summer night air is warm as we head a few blocks west, toward Central Park. We take up two stools at an intentionally rustic bar. I guess you could call it a haunt of ours, although we come here less now than we used to. I’m busy, with the gym being at full capacity these days. Drew has been working crazy hours for as long as I can remember, and now he has Becky too. But it’s Friday and we’re going to have a couple of beers before Drew picks up Becky from the swanky restaurant where she works as a patisserie chef.
Damn, after the news I received today, a few beers will be more than welcome.
A young waitress makes eye contact. ‘What can I get you, gents?’ From the length of the minidress she’s wearing, together with her slim hips and flat stomach, I’d guess she’s in her early to mid-twenties. Her hair is perfectly styled. The gloss finish shines beneath the bar lights, showing the multiple colors that have been woven through it. It tells me she can afford a decent stylist. But the small hoop that pierces the inside of her ear tells me she’s kind of edgy. I’m going to guess she’s a student. An art student, maybe. Working a bar for some extra cash.
She plants her hands on the wood-top counter. Despite the crowd, she takes time to bend forward toward us, intentionally displaying two pert breasts beneath the low neckline of her dress. She’s obvious but she is attractive.
