Treadmill Read Free Page B

Dead Souls , and Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit . His favorite novel was Stendahl’s The Red and the Black , which he had also re-read many times over the years. Once, he had been focused and ambitious like Julien Sorel, the protagonist of The Red and the Black . Now that his life had come to nothing, he finally understood what it meant to fail. He felt that he had reached the heart of some truth, that it was safer to live in someone else’s imagination, rather than his own life. Cooper had no bookcases in his apartment and his books were stacked against a wall, like brickwork. The stacks were all alphabetized from the top down, reaching his eye level in a series of high columns buttressed against the wall.
    Once a week, he ventured outside the orbit of his routine to appear at the unemployment office and obtain his unemployment check. He could count on at least another six months of payments. It was the only thought that ever entered his mind about the future.
    ****
    The Bethesda Health Club wasn’t exactly state of the art. It had a weight room with a variety of machines, a small basketball court, and a half-dozen squash courts. At ten in the morning when Cooper began his workout, most of the members in the weight room were women in their mid-forties with iPods, puffing hard to keep up, burning fat.
    Sometimes, the women would look Cooper’s way, but he would barely acknowledge them. Three seemed regulars. There was the stocky Filipino woman named Anni Corazon, with ripcord muscles. She seemed more interested in maintaining her body rather than losing weight. Her level of concentration was awesome as she would do countless reps with weights reaching loads that appeared difficult for someone of her stature to lift. Her schedule was erratic, at times arriving mid-morning and leaving later than others, but other times coming in at 8:00 AM, and leaving before lunch.
    Despite their skimpy outfits, women wearing sports bras and tights that reached up to the concavity of their buttocks, they did not engage Cooper’s interest. The atmosphere was narcissistic. Sweaty participants eyed themselves in the mirrored walls, especially the chubbier members, who hoped their unwanted lumps would disappear when they rolled off their tights.
    One of the regulars was a middle-aged black man with a bald head, and large well-defined muscles that showed off years of pumping iron. He was always at the end of his sets when Cooper arrived, sweating profusely through his gray sleeveless jersey, which had Melnechuck stitched across the back . On one of his arms was tattooed the man’s name in black.
    There was something frightening and ferocious in Melnechuck’s demeanor. Confronted with those shark-like eyes and an expressionless yet ravaged face, it struck Cooper that this was not the kind of man one wanted to piss off. Melnechuck didn’t pay much attention to Cooper, as he was always concentrating on his own routine.
    Only one of the women didn’t have an iPod. She was an attractive blonde, with her hair up in a ponytail, which bounced while she worked the step machine. At times, when Cooper caught her looking his way, he felt obliged out of politeness to acknowledge her, giving her a thin smile, hoping it would keep her at a distance. Out of everyone there, the blonde seemed the most observant, and although intent on her exercises, Cooper felt her periodically inspecting him as he crossed her field of vision. She, too, appeared on a daily basis, did her sets with the same religious fervor as the others, and disappeared in early afternoon. It was not as if Cooper deliberately kept track of these coming and goings, but anything that diverged from the usual intruded on his consciousness. Like furniture being rearranged.
    Occasionally, the Filipino woman would head for the exit at about the same time Cooper would leave to walk back to his apartment. The parking lot for members was located next to the club, and the woman would come out of the