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121 15 So what was I supposed to do now that I had crossed a serious boundary in my life I’d never expected to cross? I went to the gym. I didn’t need to stop at home first because I always kept an extra set of workout clothes in a small gym bag in the car just in case. Michigan Muscle was heaven or hell depending on your perspective. Veterans loved it, newbies were overwhelmed and sometimes panicked. It was just so damned big. Over the years it had expanded to over half a million square feet in a weird boxy mix of brick, steel, glass, and concrete. It had no real style, either inside or outside, but it reeked of money spent on the latest equipment, luxurious locker rooms, and an extravagantly severe black and chrome pro shop with matching restaurant. It was surrounded by parking lots like a mall, indifferently landscaped , and inside, the club revealed itself in stages on many different levels because the site was so sloped and uneven. Pools led to racquetball courts which led to locker rooms which led to offices which led to walkways which led to yoga and Pilates studios which led to cardio rooms which led to stationary biking rooms, all of it seeming to radiate out from the several enormous areas with free weights and up-to-date weight machines. You were always walking up or down or circling back somewhere , and Michigan Muscle could feel like an Escher drawing. Even the profusion of signs didn’t help because the additions had been so haphazard. Add to that the relentless neon lights, the wilderness of mirrors and glass doors, and you had quite a bizarre package. Many people started there and quit, opting for smaller local health clubs where they didn’t feel so exposed, so much on stage, or so lost. Some even went to private studios. These tended to be people who had begun working out at their doctor’s urging after a heart attack or some kind of accident, and initially thought the supermarket abundance of 122 the club was just right, but eventually found that fine-tuning their needs led them elsewhere, away from the hordes that filled the place most mornings and evenings. I liked it because I could run on the indoor track, swim, bike, do whatever felt right for that day. I wandered down to the locker room I liked best (there were three each for men and women), trying to decide what exactly to do, when I passed Lucky Bitterman leaving that locker room on the way to—I think—one of the free weights areas. He glared poisonously at me but kept going. Was he following me and pretending not to? Had he somehow gotten inside and changed quickly, or had he arrived in workout clothes? In the locker room, whose walls had recently been painted lime green to cheer people up, according to the management, I felt my heart beating faster. There were three rows of wooden-doored lockers backto -back, and lockers along the back and sides of the room forming a U. Facing all of that was a lounge area with widescreen TV, coatracks, counters for towels, and two doors leading to the showers and the adjoining sauna, steam room, and whirlpool beyond. It was a companionable enough place when lots of people were there chatting and changing, but eerie in its own way when almost empty. Noises seemed magnified, so you could be easily startled by a sneaker falling onto a bench, or somebody’s belt rattling as he hung his pants inside a locker—and you couldn’t be certain where the sound was coming from. Even the silence was ominous. Full-length mirrors studded the locker rooms, and sometimes someone you saw in a reflection was much farther away than he looked—or much closer. Thefts happened now and then, but to my knowledge nobody had ever been mugged in any of the locker rooms at the club. Still, it wouldn’t be hard to do. And of course there was the dead body I’d discovered in the sauna years ago, so even worse was possible. Would Lucky double back and sneak up on me from behind one of the ranks of gleaming wooden lockers? There weren’t many people around anywhere in the gym today. I had decided on weights, because I had this terrible paranoid image of Lucky trying to...

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