Keiko listened and nodded but could not see in this machine anything like the glamour of the Harley or the spidery elegance of the Vincent. This one seemed to be nothing but trouble. Murray told her about the innovative plunger suspension, which wore out too quickly, and the brakes not strong enough to allow a sidecar. She could feel a frown form on her brow, too tired to take a scholarly interest in such a catalogue of failures. She was glad when he stopped talking and threw the cover back over the bike again.
“Right. No more skiving,” he said. “What do you weigh?”
“Ah, fifty kilos,” said Keiko. “I don’t know in stones.”
“That’s okay. Metric’s best,” Murray said. “Do you mind?” He walked towards her and put a hand around her upper arm, warm thin fingers reaching right around it. “Flex,” he said. Keiko tensed the muscle with all her strength, one foot lifting slightly off the floor in its weightless trainer.
“Go on, flex your bicep,” he said sternly.
“I am flex-” she started.
Murray smiled. He squatted down in front of her, cupped one hand around her right calf, lifted the leg from the floor and laid the other hand flat against the front of her thigh.
“Point your toe,” he said, curving his palm around her thigh as it stiffened. Keiko wobbled and put one hand on his shoulder to steady herself. She stared down at the top of his head, at the glint of his eyes through his lashes.
“Flex your foot up?” he asked quietly, and she did, feeling his hand squeezing the small ball of her calf. She relaxed and Murray set her foot gently back down. She took her hand away from his shoulder and crossed her arms as he stood upright and looked down at her.
“It’s a miracle,” he said. “You have absolutely no muscles. How do you walk around?”
Keiko started laughing. “You’re very rude to me,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go home and eat my pie.”
“Multi-gym, leg press, incline bench, treadmill, cross-trainer,” said Murray-cursory, so different from his caressing descriptions of the motorcycles-then started to work at the fastenings on one of them. The contraption, which looked to Keiko like the mechanism of an elevator, had no obvious place in it for a human body to be added.
“Weight-lifting?” she asked. He smiled at her over his shoulder but said nothing, spun the loosened weights free, and stacked them in their place in the pile. Then he straightened and held up his hands to Keiko, showing her two absurdly tiny weights like doughnuts in his palms.
“No,” she shouted. “I am not as feeble as that.”
“Nothing feeble about it,” said Murray. “You have to start from where you are. This is where you are.”
He settled Keiko into the contours of the machine, nudging her feet into place and pushing her head gently back into the rest, then swung the bar over her, talking her through the exercise in minute detail. When she tried it, just as he said, shoulders down, stomach tight, her eyes opened wide with surprise at the resistance of the silly little weights. She felt the tendons on her neck and heard her ears crackle.
“Won’t this make me look like those orange ladies?” she asked, releasing the hold. “They’re very ugly.”
“How can you ask questions when you’re breathing in?” said Murray watching her arms.
She stopped and replaced the weight. “But will it?”
“No,” said Murray. “They increase the weight. You’re going to up the repetitions. You’ll look more like me than them. As long as you do what you’re told. Do you trust me?” She nodded. “Will you do what you’re told?” She nodded again.
“And if I eat the pies? Will it cancel out?”
“You can’t eat the pies,” said Murray. “You don’t want to, do you?”
“Malcolm wants so much to show me the pudding.”
“You don’t need to worry about Malcolm,” said Murray. “I’ll tell him to leave you alone.”
Keiko lay down and moved the weights again. “Have you always done this?” she asked him. “Have you always been…” She couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t make his eyebrow lift that way it did. “Only Malcolm and your father are so different.”
“Dad?” He was surprised, she could tell, but not shocked, not horrified. Perhaps Malcolm was right and it wasn’t Mr. Poole who had made Murray so sad after all.
“I saw his photograph,” Keiko reminded him. “And I just wondered if his health, you know, was what made you decide to be the way you are and why Malcolm didn’t… join you.”
“His health?” said Murray.
“I assumed it was a heart attack,” Keiko said.
“I think most people did,” said Murray, nodding.
“But it wasn’t?”
“Not so far as I know.”
She sat up and hooked her arms over the bar, slouching. “Is that the puzzle you talked about?” she asked him.
“Not exactly,” Murray said. She started to speak again, but he talked over her. “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand. And even if you did, you wouldn’t believe me. And even if you bel- Keiko, have you ever heard the expression ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you’?”
She blinked. That was more or less what she had decided. For almost a week she had refused to think of them. She had not said their names even to herself and had not used the phrase that scared her even when it was only inside her own head. But all the words came back to her now, as clear as ever. Dina, Tash, Nicole. The missing girls.
“I’ve heard that forewarned is forearmed too,” she said to Murray.
“You don’t need to be either. I won’t let anything happen to you. And to get back to your question-yes, I’ve always been ‘the way I am.’ I’ve never been ‘like Malcolm.’”
He watched over her through one complete set of exercises, moving her between machines, hardly looking at her, speaking a word or two at first and then less and then nothing, moving her feet and hands instead, pressing her into place.
And as she went through the movements in the lengthening silences, the clack of voices from the long day gradually left. She came back from the nest of words and paper around her head, back down into her body, the sound of her breaths, and the feel of her hot hair.
She blew upwards at a stray wisp, and Murray’s hand came into view. He swept the strand off her face with his fingertips and tucked it behind her ear. Then with one finger he continued to trace around her jaw, wiping the trails of sweat gathered under her chin. She stopped moving.
“You’re finished,” he said. “Well done.” He straddled her legs facing away from her and unbuckled her ankle straps. Keiko lay still, letting her blood stop pumping, looking up at the dark web of metal rafters above the lights and the odd shapes suspended there.
“What are those?” she said.
“What?” said Murray. She pointed, wincing a little as she stretched her arm. “Man, I forgot they were still up there,” he said. “Nobody much ever comes in here but me.”
Keiko screwed up her eyes, trying not to let the low-hanging lights dazzle her, and peered harder at the pale, delicate, structures, perfectly still, throwing a tracery of shadows onto the ceiling.
“But what are they?” she said. “Airplanes? Toys?”
“Birds,” said Murray. “Models.”
“Why put them up in the roof space?” Keiko said. “You can hardly see them.”
“I used to be quite into them for a bit,” said Murray. “I shoved them up there because they were taking up too much space. Couldn’t store them any other way. They’re kind of fragile.” He held out his hands to her. “Come on, keep moving or you’ll feel rough.”
Keiko took his hands and sat up slowly, feeling the blood surge into her head, then swung her feet to the floor. He handed her sweat suit top to her, and she took it and held it under her chin, hoping that the pale colour would take some of the flood of heat out of her face.