He was my trainer

My wife got me ten sessions for my fortieth. I'd said something in the truck one time about my back, October maybe, and she kept it. She's like that. You mention a thing once and it shows up in November with a bow on it.

The gym's the one off Monroe Road next to the tire place. It's not a nice gym. Rubber floor, one of those clocks with the big red numbers. It's clean, though, I'll give them that.

Marcus had the 5:40. That's not a slot anybody asks for. The new guys get it.

First morning he handed me a piece of PVC pipe and had me sit down onto a box over and over for twenty minutes, and I remember standing out in the lot afterward thinking, okay, so that's sixty-five dollars.

He was good, though. I want that said. By March I could pull three fifteen off the trap bar, which I know is nothing to a lot of people, but I hadn't gotten off the floor without making a noise in about four years.

I'm in the truck most of the day. Roofs. I write hail, mostly, and some wind. April we had that cell come through Mint Hill and I went nine days without one off, up ladders till it got too dark to photograph anything, and I still made the 5:40 every time.

He'd put his hand flat between my shoulder blades on the last two reps and say stay tall. That's a coaching thing. He does it with the lady who has the six-thirty. I've watched him do it with her.

Nine months of that. Tuesdays and Thursdays, then the Saturday one at seven because he wouldn't do 5:40 on a weekend, which I respected.

After a while we started getting coffee after the Saturday. There's a Bojangles in the same lot so it wasn't even a decision, it was just what was there. Twenty minutes. Half an hour some weeks. If it was cold we'd sit in his truck with it running.

I know his girlfriend's name was Kayla and then at some point it wasn't Kayla anymore and he didn't say much about that. His dad's over in Gastonia with the kidney thing. He's three classes short of a PT degree and every August he says he's going back in the spring. I've sat across from Doug for eight years and I couldn't tell you his wife's name.

In May they sent me down to Wilmington for twelve days after that storm came up the coast. It's good money. You live in a Hampton Inn and you eat whatever's by the register and you do nine or ten inspections a day and your knees are done by Wednesday.

Second night down there I was lying on top of the covers counting how many days till I was back. Then I quit counting. He texted me twice that week about my hamstring and I had both of them answered inside a minute. I've got emails from Doug sitting four days.

At some point I went into my phone and changed how he's saved. He's in there as Mark T. There's no Mark T. I couldn't tell you what week I did it, but I did it.

Then in June Nicole asked what time I'd gotten back on the Saturday and I said quarter to eight. It was closer to nine. It came out of me smooth. No gap in it at all. We were eleven years in June. That's the part I'd —

Look, nothing happened. I need that on the record. Nothing was ever going to happen. He's thirty-one, he's got a girlfriend or he doesn't now but he did, and he has never one time said or done anything you could put your finger on. If you asked me to write any of this up I couldn't. There's nothing to write.

August, Nicole came by on the Saturday with the kids because we had her sister's thing at ten and it was easier to just meet me there. I come out the side door and she's standing by the window with Walt hanging off her arm, and Marcus is out there crouched down in front of Emmy asking her about her tooth.

He knew which tooth. He knew her teacher's name. Mrs. Hardin. I must have told him, there's no other way he'd have it, but I don't remember telling him and I've gone back over it.

In the car Nicole said he seemed nice. That's all she said. She wasn't doing anything with it. Then she asked how long he'd been training me and I said I don't know, since November sometime. I know exactly. It was the eighth.

I got on my phone that night and looked at other gyms. Sitting on the edge of the tub with the water running.

There's a place off Providence, thirty-nine a month, and my company does some corporate deal with them so it's basically nothing. Two hundred a week is two hundred a week. Emmy's got the orthodontist starting in the spring and we'd already had the conversation twice about the credit card.

So that's what I told Nicole. The money. And it's true. Every number in it is true. It's just not the whole — she said okay, she said she'd wondered about it. Then she said tell Marcus thank you, because I'd been sleeping better since I started.

I said I would. I didn't.

I didn't tell him anything, is the thing. The app lets you book two weeks out and I just didn't book. I mean I opened it. I opened it a few times. Then it was Tuesday and I wasn't there, and then it was Thursday.

He texted that Thursday. Hey man everything ok. I said sorry, work's been insane, which in August is not true and he'd know it wasn't true, hail season's over by then and anybody in this town knows that.

Then about ten days after that he sent one more. It said door's open whenever. That was the eleventh. I've still got it, I didn't delete it or anything, it's just sitting there under a name that isn't his.

The new place is big. Two floors, or two and a half, there's a track thing upstairs. They run the fans all day so it never smells like anything. Nobody in there knows me. I put the plates on and do the sets and then I go home. It's completely fine.

I count for myself now. I lose it around seven most sets and then I just guess the rest.

His programs are still in the app on my phone. The phone does that thing where it asks you about stuff you haven't opened in a while. I keep hitting keep.

They're saying there's another system coming up out of Georgia Wednesday. If it's got any size on it I'll be out in Matthews by Thursday with the ladder on the rack and I'll be out there till dark every day for a couple weeks.