Several women are utilizing aerosol cans, spraying away God-knows-what.
By tacit agreement, we duck out the back way, leaving our boys all alone at the table. But never mind—several women eye them happily, freshly concocted desserts.
Outside, the world is quiet and cool and calm. The raucous beat from the jukebox is softened by distance, and already by time. The sound evokes the sweet sadness of other people’s parties, when you pass by in the evening. The guests are dressed in pastel clothing; you hear the melodic tinkling of glasses filled with ice cubes.
“Oh well.” Julie’s voice is resigned. “The best part is over anyway. We could have gotten laid if we wanted to. Now you don’t have to think about herpes.”
Perhaps this departure is too selfish. My hand clutches the juju, which glows with its old familiar heat.
“Besides, they didn’t look very athletic.”
“I’m sorry,” I say as we emerge from the remote part of Decatur. It takes much less time to come back than it did to go in. “I guess I’m just not much of a party girl. You would have had a much better time without me.”
“It isn’t my specialty either.”
“Well, then you’re a better fake.”
We both laugh at this as we order café au lait to go from the Café du Monde, then head away from Jackson Square to the place where the car is parked. Even though it is well after midnight, the Quarter feels like an enchanted, timeless zone in which nothing ever closes, the night is never over, people never go home.
“These people know how to party.”
I shrug. “What does that mean anyway, to party? It always sounds like so much fun, but all it ever turns out to be is people getting together and drinking a lot.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“For instance, we could say that tonight, we partied.”
“We did.” Julie points to the street we turn on.
And yet the other people are the ones, always, who seem to have fun.
“What’s the most fun you’ve ever had?”
We pass the happy drunks on Bourbon Street, badly dressed, overweight, and having the time of their lives.
“When I ran my first marathon.”
“There you are!” I sound triumphant even if the feeling isn’t there. “Special people, special ideas of what a good time is.”
“Right.”
We turn down the street toward Saint Louis Cemetery and all the old eerie feelings come back: cloudy night, distant chanting, whiffs of peculiar and pungent scents.
“Do you think those people are still there?”
“Pet, it’s none of your business!”
But as she opens the car, I can’t resist first looking, then moving through the old black trees and dangling moss. Before the thought is conscious or intentional, my feet are standing at the outer edge of the circle.
The same white-garbed worshippers chant and light candles and smoke dubious herbs. In whatever kind of altered state, they remain seemingly oblivious to my presence.
Yet this is the important part: the power of the circle is mine. They generate a clumsy, strong energy, and that energy becomes me.
“Pet!”
A couple of people look vaguely in the direction of Julie’s voice, but I remain invisible.
It’s like sucking the life right out of their veins.
“Pet!”
No danger, no evil. Only a clean muscular pull.
“Pet, this is it!”
And no damage has been done. That’s the beauty, feeling it for the first time, accruing genuine power.
When the car starts up, I trip back through the gravestones, seeing in the corners of my eyes the ectoplasmic shapes that hover and embrace.
Chapter Forty-Two
I arrive at Roy’s Gym an hour earlier than usual. My stomach feels like a cement mixer, one that has been turned off and the hardened ball of concrete just sits there in the middle.
Inside the gym, no sign of Barnett. The usual grisly collection of males are pumping up, sweating it out, flexing and crunching, burning and ripping.
My muscles automatically feel warm, and so does the juju around my neck.
The huge room is chock-full of row upon row of weight plates, aligned with military precision. They reek of that mysterious lubricating oil that men love to spray on anything metal.
“Hey there!” Roy calls by as I pass his office.
“How are you?”
“Got another personal.” His face is handsome and kindly, with classic macho-man dark looks: mustache, massive but trim body in cute red short shorts, deep tan—yet his skin is entirely, excepting subdued afro and mustache—hairless. He shaves every day from top to bottom. “Six-seventy on the bench.”
“That’s great, Roy! Listen, did that guy I called you about yesterday ever show up?”
Roy squints, as if to recollect. “No,” he says. “I don’t believe he did.” His voice is sad, but that’s normal. Sometimes the other lifters tell stories about Roy, about the time he worked out for forty-eight hours without stopping, or about how he used to drink six gallons of milk a day, a pint between each set. Right now, though, he seems like a regular guy. Only sadder.
“Oh. Well, thanks.”
“Deadlift?” he asks hopefully. He likes to spot me on deadlift because my spirit rises up strong and inspires him.
“Chest.”
His face reveals his loss of interest. Women are dismal on the bench. And besides, the telephone is ringing.
I’m disappointed that he won’t coach me today—it’s always an iffy business, depending on his mood and attitude and how crowded the gym is. This is Friday, the busiest day, and perhaps Roy doesn’t enjoy the other guys seeing him help a girl, though my strength is special.
Because I am a girl, my strength remains largely invisible. Of all the men who have seen me lift—though the empty times are my preference—only Roy understands.
And Barnett.
Weaving my way between machines and bodies, I find “my” corner, as usual, unoccupied. After the bag is placed on the bench, the strict ritual begins. Ritual.
First you pose in front of the mirror, feeling the heavy beat of the rock music, waking up your muscles, the banging and clanging of the other athletes. Your chest and arms pump up rosy in the glow of near-exertion. Chest: you regard your torso in the black-on-white suspender leotard and imagine your perfect physique. A ghostly image of perfection hovers before you, the model and inspiration.
You look hard enough, or quick enough, and it’s there.
After the posing and the visualization, I lay out the book and pen to keep track of reps and sets and time. Also, it is useful to comment on the degree of soreness, which is special today from the other day’s thousand pounds.
A thousand pounds!
The rock radio insists: “You don’t have to live like a re-fu-gee-ee-ee.”
After duly inscribing all necessary data, I utilize the “Joe Weider Instinctive Principle,” which is simply Weider-jargon for doing what you want to do. Which is flat bench first—the literal feeling of “a weight off your chest.” Then some incline dumbbells. Then incline flyes. Then flat flyes, pullovers, triceps extension prone, and perhaps a few sets of wrist curls.
The whole pattern strings out in the air before me, a mystical pathway to whatever. It could be drugs, it could be poetry, but here and now it is the body, pure and simple.
The Body becomes all and then there is no Other.
Because the truly great thing about lifting is that you cannot think while you are doing it. Stuff in the mind interferes with the power load to the muscle, primal and direct.