Free Ironman by Chris Crutcher Page B

“You’re breaking it! I gotta swim!”
    â€œApologize.”
    â€œYou—”
    She increases the pressure on his wrist. “Apologize,” Shelly says again, almost matter-of-factly.
    Wyrack grimaces, but his pride and the gathering crowd render him stoic. “Okay,” he says without change of expression, “you’re not a bitch.”
    â€œI know that,” Shelly says. “Apologize.”
    â€œI’m sorry I called you a bitch.”
    â€œYou made my day,” she says. “Apologize to my friend.”
    Bo squirms. “No, hey, that’s all right. I—”
    â€œApologize,” Shelly says again.
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    Shelly says, “For what?”
    â€œWhatever I did, for chrissake!” Wyrack yells. “Get off my goddamn arm!”
    â€œNot acceptable.” Shelly stands down harder.
    â€œI’m sorry for threatening you, Brewster, and for taking a poke.”
    Shelly stands off Wyrack’s arm. “You didn’t have to apologize for taking a poke,” she says. “You never had a chance.”
    Â 
    â€œWill you marry me?” Bo asks as he and Shelly slowly cruise Clark Fork’s main drag.
    Shelly smiles, and in the thick accent of a Georgia debutante, says, “Now why would I want to go and do a thing like that, Beauregard? What have you to offer for my hand?”
    â€œYou name it,” Bo says. “I’m gonna need you by my side full time from now on. You’re going to have to get up hours before daylight to escort me to swimming workouts, follow me endlessly on runs and bike rides, taste my food…. God, where did you get those Bruce Lee moves?”
    â€œI’m going to be a Gladiator,” Shelly says, staring straight ahead. “I don’t have time to be your bodyguard.”
    â€œYou’re going to kill Christians?”
    OCTOBER 29
    Dear Larry,
    You have lots of interesting and far-out people on your show, Lar; ever have a Gladiator? There’s a television show called “American Gladiators” that I’ve been watching recently because I think it will help me land a girlfriend: Shelly from Mr. Nak’s anger management group, who has afake student ID card just like mine for use at the CFU athletic facility. I didn’t know this before, Lar, because she’s pretty quiet in group and she doesn’t dress to impress, but this girl is tougher than boiled owl. Now, a big-time talk-show personality such as yourself might question the efficacy of a human spear such as myself taking romantic interest in a young lady who could dismember me without breaking a sweat. She took out the CFU swimmer who’s been dogging me so quick I would need slow-motion instant replay to describe it to you.
    Anyway, whoever dreamed up “American Gladiators” hires these buffed-out men and women as full-time warriors to take on new contestants each week in highly physical games invented solely for this program. They have obstacle courses and bungee-bouncing madness and various other tests of strength and speed. The contestants are big and strong and in top shape, so the Gladiators have to be in bigger and stronger and topper shape, with names like Flame and Laser and Star and such, depending on whether one is a male or a female Gladiator. That’s what Shelly is pumping up to be. And she’s getting there, Lar. She’s getting there.
    So tell me what you think, Lar, of a guy whose masculinity quotient hovers just under triple digits, going out with a girl who can out-bench-press him by twentypounds and fears no man? Kind of a nineties thing to do, don’t you think?
    Our first outing will be this weekend, to a Halloween party. Great. She can go as Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I can go as his pet snake.
    By the way, I heard you take on that caller this morning who said all homosexuals should be turned to pillars of salt. I had a strange reaction; I hate pompous