liked. I told myself to ease up. Politically correct he wasnât, but Mel would pay Jack to do this, Jack would have another client who would call him when he got in a jam, and Jackâs business would prosper.
So there I was, in Marvel Gym, in glorious leopard print Spandex, making sure guests swiped their green plastic cards as they came in so their presence would be recorded on the computer. I handed out small towels to the guests whoâd forgotten theirs, I checked the supply of bath-sized towels in the locker rooms, and I sold the expensive âhealthâ drinks displayed in the cooler behind the counter. Those tasks were constants, but every day there was some specific problem to solve. In the first hour I worked today, I unstuck the weight-setting peg on a leg-extension device. Then I discreetly sprayed cleaner on a weightlifting bench after a particularly sweaty guest had used it, and got the vacuum out to suck up clods of dirt tracked in by a guest whoâd been running in the mud yesterday.
Mostly, I grew angrier by the second at Byron, the twenty-four-year-old man who shared my shift. I watched Byron loaf his way through his workout, making himself friendly with every female in the place except me. Me, he tried to dodge.
Byron was sculpted. You could tell he thought of himself that way; sculpted as a Greek statue, sensuous, masculine. That is, if Byron knew any of those words. Byron was a waste of space, in my opinion. In my two weeks at Marvel, I couldnât count the times I had hoped he was the thief. Unless people would pay the high membership fee just to gaze upon Byron, he was a poor employee: pleasant to those people he liked, people he felt could help him, and rude to the guests who couldnât do anything for him, guests who expected him to actually work. And heâd fondle anything that stood still. Why Linda Doan had hired Byron was a mystery to me.
âI need to go put some more towels in the womenâs locker room,â I told him. âThen Iâm going to start my own workout.â
âCool,â said Byron. Mr. Articulate. He began doing another set of ab crunches.
I took the pile of towels into the tiled locker room. Someone was taking a shower when I walked in, which was surprising because it was a little early for the rush we got about ten, ten-thirty. The water cut off as I reached the shelves where I stacked the towels. I was walking lightly because I always do.
I caught a guest red-handed. She was going through my purse, which Iâd left temptingly propped against an extra pair of shoes by my locker. It took me a minute to mentally leaf through the pictures Iâd tried to commit to memory, and finally I came up with her name: Mandy Easley.
Mandy became aware of me after Iâd watched her get a twenty out of my wallet and flip open the credit card compartment. Mandy was only in her twenties, but she looked like a hag when her eyes met mine. Her dark brown hair was still wet from the shower, her narrow face was bare of makeup, and her towel was wound around her modestly, but she still didnât look innocent. She looked guilty as hell.
âOh! Ah, Lily, right? I was just getting some change for the Tampax machine,â she said, in a jittery voice. âI hope you donât mind. I didnât have the right change, and your purse was just sitting here.â
âMachine takes twenties now?â
âAh, Iâ¦â The twenty fluttered from her fingers as she stared down at the purse, exactly as if it had just materialized in her hands. âOh, that fell out! Iâm sorry, let me just put it back inâ¦â and she fumbled for the bill. She was one big twitch.
âMs. Easley,â I said, and by my voice she knew I wasnât going to smooth it over.
âOh, shit,â she said, and covered her face with her hands as if she was overwhelmed with shame. âLily, honestly, I never did anything like this
John R. Little and Mark Allan Gunnells
Sean Thomas Fisher, Esmeralda Morin