“Warui na,” he thanked me, grateful, I knew, for the comfort this simple interaction afforded him.
“Iya,” I replied. It’s nothing. I stood over him and helped him get the bar in the air. I noted that he was moving a hundred and fifty-five kilos. He managed two repetitions, with some assistance from me on the second. He would still be fully adrenalized from his recent altercation, and I made a mental note of the limits of his strength at this exercise.
I helped him guide the bar back onto the uprights, then whistled quietly through my teeth in slightly theatrical deference to his power. I moved to the foot of the bench as he sat up and told him that if he needed another spot, he should just ask me. He nodded his head in gruff thanks and I began to turn away.
I paused as though considering whether to add something, then turned back to him. “That guy should have checked to see if you were done with this station,” I said in Japanese. “Some people have no manners. You taught him a lesson.”
He nodded again, pleased at my astute assessment of the important social service he had provided in pulverizing some harmless idiot, and I knew that he would be comfortable calling on me, his new friend, from time to time when he needed a spot.
Like tonight, I hoped. I moved quickly down Gaienhigashi-dori, easing past pedestrians on the crowded sidewalk, ignoring the cacophony of traffic and sound trucks and touts, using the chrome and glass around me to gauge whether there was anyone to my rear trying to keep up. I turned right just before the Roi Roppongi Building, then right again onto the club’s street, where I paused behind a thicket of parked bicycles, my back to the incongruous pink exterior of a Starbucks coffee shop, waiting to see who might be trailing in my wake. A few groups of young partygoers drifted by, caught up in the urgent business of entertaining themselves and failing to notice the man standing quietly in the shadows. No one set off my radar. After a few minutes, I made my way to the club.
The facility occupied the ground floor of a gray commercial building hemmed in by rusting fire escapes and choked with high-tension wires that clung to the structure’s façade like rotting vegetation. Across from it was a parking lot crowded by Mercedeses with darkened windows and high-performance tires, the status symbols of the country’s elite and of its criminals, each aping the other, comfortably sharing the pleasures of the night in Roppongi’s tawdry demimonde. The street itself was illuminated only by the indifferent glow of a single arched lamplight, its base festooned with flyers advertising the area’s innumerable sexual services, in the shadows of its own luminescence looking like the elongated neck of some antediluvian bird shedding diseased and curling feathers.
The shades were drawn behind the club’s plate-glass windows, but I spotted the yakuza’s anodized aluminum Harley-Davidson V-Rod parked in front, surrounded by commuter bicycles like a shark amidst pilot fish. Just past the windows was the entrance to the building. I tried the door, but it was locked.
I backed up a few steps to the club windows and tapped on the glass. A moment later the lights went off inside. Nice, I thought. He had cut the lights so he could peek through the shades without being seen from outside. I waited, knowing he was watching me and checking the street.
The lights went back on, and a moment later the yakuza appeared in the entranceway to the building. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a black cutaway A-shirt, along with the obligatory weightlifting gloves. Obviously in the middle of a workout.
He opened the door, his eyes searching the street for danger, failing to spot it right there in front of him.
“Shimatterun da yo,” he told me. Club’s closed.
“I know,” I said in Japanese, my hands up, palms forward in a placating gesture. “I was hoping someone might be here. I was going to come by earlier but got held up. You think I could squeeze in a quick one? Just while you’re here, no longer than that.”
He hesitated, then shrugged and turned to go back inside. I followed him in.
“How much longer have you got to go?” I asked, dropping my gear bag and changing out of my unobtrusive khakis, blue oxford-cloth shirt, and navy blazer. I had already slipped on the gloves, as I always did before coming to the club, but the yakuza hadn’t noticed this detail. “So I can time my workout.”
He walked over to the squat station. “Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour,” he said, getting into position under the weight.
Squats. What he usually did when he was finished bench pressing. Shit.
I slipped into shorts and a sweatshirt, then warmed up with some push-ups and other calisthenics while he did his sets of squats. The warm-up might actually be useful, I realized, depending on the extent of his struggles. A small advantage, but I don’t give anything away for free.
When he was through, I asked, “Already done benching?”
“Aa.” Yeah.
“How much you put up tonight?”
He shrugged, but I detected a slight puffing of his chest that told me his vanity had been kindled.
“Not so much. Hundred and forty kilos. Could have done more, but with that much weight, it’s better to have someone spot you.”
Perfect. “Hey, I’ll spot you.”
“Nah, I’m already done.”
“C’mon, do another set. It inspires me. What are you putting up, twice your body weight?” My underestimate was deliberate.
“More.”
“Shit, more than twice your body weight? That’s what I’m talking about, I’m not even close to that. Do me a favor, do one more set, it’ll motivate me. I’ll spot you, fair enough?”
He hesitated, then shrugged and started walking over to the bench-press station.
The bar was already set up with the hundred and forty kilos he’d been using earlier. “Think you can handle a hundred and sixty?” I asked, my tone doubtful.
He looked at me, and I could tell from his eyes that his ego had engaged. “I can handle it.”
“Okay, this I’ve got to see,” I said, pulling two ten-kilo plates off the weight tree and sliding them onto the ends of the bar. I stood behind the bench and gripped the bar about shoulder-width with both hands. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
He sat at the foot of the bench, his shoulders hunched forward, and rotated his neck from side to side. He swung his arms back and forth and I heard a series of short, forceful exhalations. Then he lay back and took hold of the bar.
“Give me a lift on three,” he said.
I nodded.
There were several additional sharp exhalations. Then: “One… two… three!”
I helped him get the bar into the air and steady it over his chest. He was staring at the bar as though enraged by it, his chin sunk into his neck in preparation for the effort.
Then he let it drop, controlling its descent but allowing enough momentum to ensure a good bounce off his massive chest. Two thirds of the way up, the bar almost stopped, suspended between the drag of gravity and the power of his steroid-fueled muscles, but it continued its shaky ascent until his elbows were straightened. His arms were trembling from the effort. There was no way he had another one in him.
“One more, one more,” I urged. “C’mon, you can do it.”
There was a pause, and I prepared to try some fresh exhortations. But he was only mentally preparing for the effort. He took three quick breaths, then dropped the bar to his chest. It rose a few centimeters from the impact, then a few more from the northward shove that followed, but a second later it stopped and began to move inexorably downward.
“Tetsudatte kure,” he grunted. Help. But calmly, expecting my immediate assistance.
The bar continued downward and settled against his chest. “Oi, tanomu,” he said again, more sharply this time.