Free On Unfaithful Wings by Bruce Blake Page A

Directly across from the bulletin board, a bald man sat behind a counter, his impossibly large muscles stretching his tee-shirt to the point it might snap like an over-used elastic. The plexi-glass partition must have been more for my protection than his; I wondered if he turned green when angered.
    “Kelpya?”
    “Pardon me?”
    “I said can I help you?” His tone suggested he didn’t care much for helping me, probably didn’t enjoy working the night shift, but his bouncer-like qualities made him the ideal candidate for the job. I, for one, wouldn’t screw with him.
    “Um, I’m looking for a place to work out.”
    “Sorry, this is a shoe store.” A dry chuckle struggled out of his mouth.
    “Do you mind if I have a look around?”
    “Whatever. Don’t touch nothing unless you pay the drop-in fee.”
    “Right.” No more threat needed.
    I left the muscles from Brussels perusing a magazine and went into the weight room where I found more people punishing their bodies with weights at ten forty on a Tuesday night than I expected. A moment of panic nestled in my gut. How would I know Alfred Topping?
    Five minutes.
    I wandered past weight racks and worn benches a decade beyond their best days. The odor of sweat multiplied in here, every piece of equipment and hard-working body exuding it like an air freshener gone horribly awry. A few patrons glanced at me and I was thankful for my new jacket covering my skinny arms and less-than-Conan-like pecs. I quickly realized evenings must be the favored time of the hard core guys: no one in the room possessed biceps smaller in circumference than my thigh. Even the woman doing squats alone in the corner made me look like the skinny geek whose face she would have kicked sand in.
    Two minutes.
    Despite the warm, thick air in the room sticking itself to me like a band-aid, a line of cold sweat trickled down my spine. Minutes remained until I’d know the truth of my circumstances. All those years railing against the church and the idea of God might come to an end. If it did, I didn’t want to let my new employers down.
    One minute.
    Three men gathered around a fourth in the bench press area raised a cheer. I looked over but couldn’t see through the forest of tree trunk legs, so I moved closer. The man lying on the bench pushed a barbell skyward with so many plates on each end you’d need a math degree to figure out how much weight it held. The bar bowed slightly in the middle as he pushed upward, the other men urging him on.
    “One more.”
    “You can do it.”
    “C’mon, Alfie.”
    Alfie: short for Alfred.
    Thirty seconds.
    All the muscles in my limbs tightened as I watched Alfred grunt and strain, legs bouncing with the effort, purple veins standing out in his neck. The man standing near his head put his hands under the bar, spotting him, but Alfred shook his head and huffed a quick breath; the man stepped back. The bar rose until he locked his elbows, then he lowered it again, bouncing on his chest, and pushed up once more. Halfway to the top, he stalled out.
    Fifteen seconds.
    I felt sweat on my forehead but made no attempt to wipe it away--I wasn’t sure my arms would work.
    Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen.
    Seeing the way his veins bulged, I expected a heart attack to take Alfred’s life, if anything, and either thrust me into my new profession or send me packing for the mental hospital. It surprised the hell out of me when the bar slipped from his grip.
    It surprised everyone else, too.
    The man standing at Alfred’s head snatched at the bar but missed, tipping it off course. I swear I heard his fingers brush the gnarled steel. The barbell crashed down onto Alfred with a sickening crack, snapping his lower jaw and crushing his throat with his own chin. Breath blew out through his broken mouth, spraying blood three feet in the air. His arms, still aloft trying to press the missing barbell, jerked and twitched. The man who’d been the spotter