Chapter 10D

Her eyes and her words left me speechless. I cleared my throat and concealed my state of shock, nodding firmly to signal my acceptance of what she had said. I shuffled nervously. She waited, staring at me almost apprehensively. She seemed at once both resolute and vulnerable.

She said softly, "I hope... I didn't blow your fuses."

I said with a brittle smile, "They're not fuses. They're circuit breakers. They reset after a few minutes."

She smiled sweetly. "Have I... burst all your bubbles, hon? I can't even tell. You hide your feelings so well. Too well."

"I'm not as good at expressing those feelings as you are," I said guiltily. "But, no, I... I won't keep them hidden." I swallowed hard. "I can't answer right now. But I will."

She walked across the living room toward me. She whispered, "You don't have to say anything."

I said haltingly, "Yes, I do, but... But my circuit breakers need time."

"Okay, hon. Okay. C'mon. Let's get to sleep."

With another fit of yawning, we shut the lights and groaned our way into bed, lying uncovered and facing each other in the dim wash of early daylight that filtered through the curtained window.

We lay on our sides, facing each other in the dark. I closed my eyes. From the window behind me, the city stirred faintly. It was an unfamiliar sound, one I'd never heard when falling asleep in Memphis -- a vague, distant but lurking and steady noise, a hint of the unexpected, an undefined coming and going, a hushed sound of events moving in all directions.

I shifted, making my shoulder more comfortable. Opening my eyes, I saw her watching me.

She asked, "Are you falling asleep?"

"I'm thinking."

"Don't think, hon. Sleep." She touched my shoulder, squeezed it softly. "It'll be all right, Steven. It will."

I closed my eyes. I was far too exhausted to question a looming future I couldn't see or define. I trusted her. I felt I had no choice. I had not yet been in New York for a full day, and things were already moving faster than I could comprehend them. All I could do at the moment was to sleep like a rock.

Saturday afternoon shortly before one o'clock, I awoke to my first weekend in New York, and my first hangover. And Martha's musical, teasing voice, and her gentle hands rubbing my back and shoulders.

"Up," she said, "the day's half gone."

There was little time for serious meditation over her words of a few hours earlier. Martha roused me with scrambled eggs and two cups of a strong, mint tea that made my mouth and nose tingle, and some celery juice. We showered and dressed hastily, then scurried outside into the blinding sunlight before I knew what happened.

"Hurry!" Martha implored as she dragged me by the arm toward Second Avenue. "I called Fiore while you were sleeping like a slug and he said he's leaving the health club by three!"

I yelped, "Are you sure he can work with somebody who can't talk or walk?"

"Snap out of it," she told me as we turned a corner and headed downtown. "If you're that tired and if you have a couple of bucks, we can take a taxi."

"Good," I resolved aloud. I stepped into the street as I'd seen others do and raised my hand for a taxi.

"Slacker," she said.

The meteoric taxi ride helped wake me during the short trip to Lexington and 47th. Martha lent me her health club pass and told me how to find Fiore on the sixth floor of the hotel. "This is only an evaluation," she told me. "It's free. After that, and because Fiore's a friend of mine and wants my body, he's agreed to see you for twenty bucks a session. Take my word for it, hon, it's a bargain. But don't bother if you're not going to work with him."

Martha shopped while I was in Fiore's hands. I was surprised at his height; who'd guess that a paid trainer would be even shorter than I! He had phenomenal strength and agility. During the first ten minutes he learned my every strength and weakness with a few quick glances over my torso and limbs.

"Off with your clothes!" he snapped curtly, and he handed me a pair of blue shorts. "Dress!" Before I finished changing he was chirping, "On the massage table!" Rushed and confused, I fell down trying to remove my shoes.

Fiore laughed merrily. "Haha! Say, you're allowed to sit on a chair while you take off your shoes."

"Everybody's in such a hurry," I muttered.

"Of course! Iss New York! If you don' hurry in New York, you die!", a remark he laughed about until I had the shorts on and was climbing onto the table. For the next several minutes he threw me around like a bag of dried peas.

"You hev a nice frame, Steven. Nice! But weak back and hips. What kind of work you do, hah?" I told him about my newspaper route and the delivery bike. "No, No!" he warned. "No good, the way you move! When we finish here, we go to the bicycle to show you how to move. The way you move now, iss no good!" For an hour he demonstrated how to manage and build up my weaker body parts. By that time I was so breathless that I merely grunted at his questions and stumbled through his instructions. "Bad coordination! I have exercises for that! Here, here, no! No pushups like that! Here, THIS iss a pushup! Only halfway, you see? Never all the way! There! You see? Kapeesh?"

"What kind of food your Italian mother makes for you?" he asked later as I struggled into my clothes with no air in my lungs and no strength in my limbs. "Bread? Huh? Pasta?" I told him, yes, a lot of bread and breaded foods, pasta, salads with oil and vinegar, cakes and pies, pancakes, cereals. "Aha!" he screamed, "And then you have pimples, Ha? Listen to me: No white bread! No white flour! Never! Get vinegar and oil in the health food store! If anyone makes a salad with Crisco, shoot them! If they give you a pancake, break their legs! No sugar! Iss garbage, my friend! Garbage in your body, pimples on your face!"

He wrote a list of several items I should buy. "Today!" he demanded. "There is a place two blocks down on Lexington. Start today! Come back Monday, ten o'clock!"

He gave my back a slap that sent me reeling. He had a good laugh while holding me up. "Haha, you'll be all right, my friend! In only a few days with me, you'll have the strength of -- well, at least you will be on your way! What's this?... smoke on your breath? Listen to me -- nicotine iss UGLY! You cannot have good skin if you smoke! And when you see Martha, tell her thank you for sending you to me, I give you a special price! How lucky to have such a beautiful woman on your side!"

As I glanced about on my way out of the health club, I saw that Martha's was not the only lovely body in New York. There were several dancers and models around, some of them bearing the most perfect figures I could imagine. Their accomplishments fired me on -- though, for the time being, I was too whipped to do anything more than limp out of the club, into the elevator, and out to the busy sidewalk. By the time Martha returned from shopping and found me outside the hotel, I had managed to learn to stand again.

"So," she asked, "What's the verdict?"

"Are you sure Steve Reeves started out this way? I can do it if I get plenty of rest between sessions."

"Not the way *we* fuck!" she laughed, drawing a startled look from two or three passersby.

I showed Martha the list of things Fiore told me to buy.

"Can you afford this?" Martha asked. "This is some list."

"What'll it cost me?"

"About twenty dollars, I guess."

"What I was going to spend on junk food, I'll spend for this."

Martha led me through my first trip in a health food store. We walked out with a bag of bottles and foods and pills I'd never heard of. Back in her apartment, she surveyed the goods. "I thought so," she said, "he gave you a lot of B6. I figured as much, everybody on your mom's side of the family seems to have signs of a deficiency. And, uh-oh, Brewer's yeast! Oh, my -- hon, you'll hate me for this, but I have to find some way to get a tablespoon of brewer's yeast down your throat three times a day."

Most of the teas and supplements were not seriously upsetting, but ingesting Brewer's Yeast was torture. By late afternoon I was filled with vitamins, minerals, teas, juices, the yeast, and herbs.

For a rest, she introduced me to Central Park, where we roamed over hills and through pine forests and followed a group of bird watchers until twilight.

On our way out of the park, we passed a hot dog stand. "Hey," she said, her eyes rolling, "Steven! You have to try a New York hot dog."

"No," I said firmly, mimicking Fiore. "Hot dogs iss pimples!"

"But you can't see Central Park without having a hot dog."

"No. No. And no."

"Wow, I see you took Fiore to heart. I'm proud of you."

The hectic session with Fiore and the walk through the Park did me in. For dinner Martha made "nekkid" hamburgers (ground sirloin baked slowly under a blanket of cheese and mushrooms), a salad dressed with the special vinegar and oils Fiore prescribed, plus another handful of pills. Martha informed me, "Gourmets never eat beef as-is. It's always ground, Steven." Dinner was prefaced with a spoonful of the dreaded yeast, which I managed to swallow in small amounts with the help of some dark, berry flavored tea.

After dinner I sat listlessly at the table, feeling I'd soon faint. "What's next?"

"To the bathroom. I'll show you how to wash your face."

"Wash my face? You think I don't know how to wash my face?"

"I'm gonna to show you how professionals do it." She gathered a can of scouring powder and a bottle of the new vegetable oil and led me to the bathroom.

I yelped with alarm, "I'm gonna wash my face with that?"

"No, silly. First we have to clean the sink. Watch and learn."

Again, it was a New York revelation. In her tiny bathroom Martha taught me how to prepare my face with a thin coat of vegetable oil before using special soap and steaming hot water.

I frowned at the sink of smoking water, and then at my oiled face in the mirror, with growing skepticism. "Now, who would go through all this just to wash their face?"

"People who don't accept the usual way of doing things," she said, adamant. "People who don't listen to fairy tales. Do it, Steven. Open up and try something different."

I followed the procedure reluctantly but exactly, counting aloud to make certain I splashed the nearly stinging hot water onto my face as she directed, twenty-five times. Afterwards, she made me look at myself in the mirror.

"Feel your skin," she prompted, her voice losing its stiffness. "Look at your face. Smooth, right? And the skin's tight? Look at your cheeks glow, hon. Your skin's acid balanced now, and the pores are clear. And those damn pimples were opened up and they're already disappearing."

I looked carefully, flabbergasted. She was right. I wouldn't have believed it without seeing it.

"Trust me?" she taunted. "Was I right? Is not the wicked witch really your friend in disguise?"

I surrendered. "Yes," I mumbled.

"Feel better about yourself?"

"Yes."

She hugged me. "I've got to get you out of the 'Memphis mode'. Stop letting those foamin' Romans tell you how to think. I want you to find out for yourself, try something new, trust yourself. All it takes is some work and a little nerve. Okay?"