The summer sun has only started considering its rise on Monday morning when I pull into the parking lot of Gene’s Gym on the edge of town. It’s as far from the Soho Equinox as I can possibly get. The tin-roofed, cinder block box is musty and dank, the air conditioning a mere suggestion. The stereo system is crackly and plays only dad rock, and the water from the fountains has a distinct metallic taste.
I love it.
I stride across the floor beneath flickering fluorescent lights, taking in the usuals on a Monday morning. There’s Carla and Dale, a middle-aged couple who spot each other through a full-body workout three times a week. There’s a small group of meatheads who talk supplements between sets, unabashedly posing in front of the banks of mirrors. There’s a trio of women who always do a little more talking than lifting, but they’re quiet about it, so nobody minds. But the bulk of the crowd at this rural gym is a crew of silver-haired retirees who have been working out together for decades.
And the mayor of them all is Norm.
I drop my gym bag beside an open weight bench. “Need a spot?” I ask him.
Norm kicks a pair of fifty-pound dumbbells onto his shoulders. “Son, this is my warm-up set,” he growls. “Mind your business.”
He tips back onto the bench and presses the weights into the air as if they’re made of marshmallows. A retired Marine turned retired high school football coach, Norm is in his seventies and in better shape than I’ve ever been in.
Despite Norm’s grumbling, I step behind him when he progresses to the eighties, my hands hovering just below the man’s elbows, ready to give him an extra rep or two. As far as I can tell, Norm’s been doing the same workout for the last forty years, and everyone who comes to Gene’s is familiar with his patterns and works around him. I like Norm because he commands a quiet respect. People always greet him, and he always gives the same stern nod in reply. They defer to him when he reaches for a set of weights or heads for a machine. He never offers training advice, never critiques another gym patron, just does his workout and minds his own business.
I recognize a kindred spirit in him, but Norm sees me as a project.
The old man hits failure on his chest press, drops the weights onto the rubber floor, and sits up.
“New girl at the desk,” he says between heavy breaths. “Looks tough, like she could put up with your moody ass.”
Norm is always trying to set me up with women: former students, great-nieces, any woman who happens to stumble into the gym at the same time as us. He usually makes a one-sentence pitch that I shut down, and he moves on. But still, he tries.
“I’m good, Norm,” I tell him. It’s what I always tell him, but he’s still convinced that the root of my problems is that I’m lonely.
I’ve tried explaining to him that the root of my problems involves complex financial systems and the loopholes that allow for massive fraud, but he usually just rolls his eyes and tells me to ask out the next pretty woman I see.
Which of course sends my mind careening back to Carson. Ihaven’t even been living in her house for a week, and already I know that taking the room was a mistake. I’ve been avoiding her ever since our blessedly interrupted conversation at the breakfast table, when everything went from stilted nerves to what felt like playful banter, when I nearly offered to help her with her…problem.
I just want to get fucked.
I ditch my warm-up and head straight for the fifties. The thing I like best about a hard workout is that if you push yourself enough, your brain is too busy to torment you. Lifting my max weight usually silences whatever troubles or anxieties are rushing through my mind—and lately those have been plentiful. It’s why I work out so much these days.
But today, even fifty-pound biceps curls aren’t enough. My muscles scream as I lift the weights, but those words in her voice replay over and over again.
It’s been a full week of those words in that voice looping through my head.
Carson, in the prime of her life, desperate to be treated with the care and passion she deserves.
I’ve always been a problem-solver. I was good at math and science in school, loved helping my dad fix things around the house, tinkering with electronics, and organizing shit. I tell myself that’s why I want to help Carson. Because she’s struggling, and I can fix things.
It’s a lie.
“Take it easy before you snap your biceps,” Norm barks, and I drop the weights, staring at my own red, sweaty face in the mirror. I run my hand over my buzzed head, still a little unused to the short cut, even though it’s been more than two years since I visited the barber and had him take all my thick, dark hair off.
Thank god Grace interrupted us that morning last week. Because as hard as it’s been to avoid Carson, to live in her house with her words bouncing around in my head like a pinball, itwould have been even worse to drag her into my personal disaster.
My life didn’t used to be like this. For a while, I had everything figured out. I graduated from Princeton and did my MBA at Harvard, where I was mentored by beloved business professor Ludwig Davies. From there, I landed an internship with Holt Capital, working under legendary investment banker Anders Holt. I worked like a Trojan, putting in eighty hours a week and soaking up every scrap of knowledge I could. Six months later, Anders recommended me for my dream job at ACR Bank. For the next five years, I climbed the ladder, building a multimillion-dollar investment portfolio. It was the perfect job for me—computers and numbers, but no interaction with clients. I had a condo on the Lower East Side and the car I’d always dreamed of. I worked too much to have relationships, but I never had trouble finding companionship when I wanted it. I fucked around like the world would always be at my feet.
And then I noticed the missing $250,000.
I personally maintained accounts for only a few clients: my brother, who had NHL money; my dad, with his modest retirement fund; and Ludwig Davies, my old business school mentor.
I remember thinking there’d been a simple clerical error in Juneau Davies’s account. When Ludwig had started to succumb to Alzheimer’s a year prior, Juneau had taken over the account. She’d trusted me with the money that would take care of Ludwig during his long decline and take care of her when he was gone. I’d been managing that account personally, and I’d taken care with every trade I’d made. That was why I’d invested a significant portion of it with Anders Holt—I’d worked under him at Holt Capital. I knew how good he was. I knew that investment would help Juneau care for Ludwig.
It had never occurred to me that Anders would do anything illegal.
That was my first mistake.
