J Rain: Dark horse

“Yes,” I said, “she is.”

We moved over to the incline presses. Together we added weight until we ran out of plates.

“Place is going to hell,” said Sanchez, looking around, then swiping two forty-fives from another bench.

“Yes, but it’s cheap. And apparently open twenty-four hours.”

“You sound like a goddamn commercial.” He handed me one of the plates and we pushed each into place. The bar looked very unstable and heavily overloaded. “We’re attracting attention again.”

I had eased down onto the incline bench. In the mirror I could see that two or three young guys, including some gym trainers, were now watching us. I ignored them. So did Sanchez, who spotted me by standing on a steel platform. The forty-five pound bar was sagging. Weight clanked as I went through my twelve reps. I focused on the Chargers training camp, which was coming up soon. This motivated me, pushed me to lift more and work harder. I focused on looking good for Cindy. This motivated me as well. Only on the last rep did Sanchez lend some help. Then he guided the barbell into place.

“Didn’t need your help on the twelfth,” I said.

“Sure you didn’t,” he said.

A voice said: “Hey, man, how much weight is that?”

We both turned. He was a surfer. Bleached hair and some minor muscle tone. He had a piercing in his nose, and some idiotic Chinese pictographs up and down his arm.

“You too stupid to do the math?” asked Sanchez. He turned to me. “Kids nowadays.”

“Kids nowadays,” I added sagely.

The surfer looked at the weight we were hefting and decided that he would not take offense. He left. Good decision.

Sanchez did his twelve reps, and to be a dick I helped him with the last two. After two more sets each, we sat down on opposing benches and sipped from our water bottles.

“He leave a suicide note?” asked Sanchez.

“Nothing,” I said. “But he had been fired earlier that day.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “He’d been taking a lot of shit about leaving Derrick alone on the night of the murder.”

“Hell of a thing to be fired over.”

“Uh huh.”

“Papers say he was a hell of a coach,” said Sanchez.

“Three CIF championships.”

“Why do you think he popped himself?”

“Hard to say,” I said. “Detective Hanson tells me the man was divorced earlier in the year. They say divorced men are the highest risk for suicide.”

“Thank you for that useless bit of fucking trivia.”

I ignored him, and continued.

“Add to that your best athlete being accused of a heinous murder, and compound it with losing your job…”

I shrugged again.

“You shrug a lot for a detective,” said Sanchez.

“I know. It’s part of the job description.”

We moved over to the squat rack. We slammed on as many forty-fives as we could find, then some thirty-fives.

“You know,” said Sanchez, “people here think we’re freaks. Maybe we should go to a real gym.”

“I like it here,” I said, hunkering down under the bar and placing my feet exactly the width of my shoulders. “Besides, it’s open twenty-four hours.”

Sanchez shook his head.

He was watching me knowingly with those nondescript eyes. Nondescript only in color, that is. Everything else about them was, well, very non-nondescript.

He knows what you’re thinking.

The words flashed across my mind, along with the popular Christmas tune, and a chill went through me.

I was having another Big Mac. Or three. He was drinking another coffee. Lukewarm and black. Just like I like my women. Kidding.

“So have you told anyone about me?” he asked.

“That I speak to God in a McDonald’s?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone I know. Hell, even people I don’t know. In fact, I just told the sixteen-year-old gal working behind the counter that I was meeting with God in a few minutes and could she hurry.”

“And what did she say?”

“Said she was going to call the cops.”

Jack shook his head and sipped some more of his coffee. I noticed he still had the same streaks of dirt along his forehead.

“So your answer is no,” he said.

“Of course it’s no, and if you were God you would know that.”

He said nothing; I said nothing. A very old man had sat in a booth next to us. The old man smiled at Jack, and Jack smiled back. The man leaned over and spoke to us.

“I’m coming home soon,” he said.

“Yes,” said Jack. “You are.”

“I’m ready,” said the old man, and sat back in his seat and proceeded to consume a gooey cinnamon roll.

“What was that about?” I asked Jack, not bothering to lower my voice. Hell, the man was as old as the hills, no way he could overhear us.

“He’s going to die tonight,” said Jack, rather nonchalantly, I thought.

“Well,” I said after a moment, “his heart could only take so many cinnamon rolls.”

Jack looked at me and sipped his coffee carefully, cradling the paper cup in both hands. He said nothing.

“Why do you drink with both hands?” I finally asked.

“I enjoy the feel of the warm cup.”

“And why do you look at me so closely?”

“I enjoy soaking in the details of a moment.”

We had gone over this before.

“Live in the moment,” I repeated. “And all that other bullshit.”

“Yes,” he said. “And all that other bullshit.”

“There is no past and there is no future,” I continued, on a holy roll.

“Exactly.”

“Only the moment,” I said.

“You’re getting it, Jim. Good.”

“No, I’m not, actually. You see, Jack, I know for a fact that there is a past because a young girl got slaughtered outside her house. In the past.”

“You have taken a personal interest in the case, I see.”

“And now someone has killed themselves. A coach at the same high school-but, of course, you know all of this.”

Jack sat unmovingly, watching me closely.

“I saw his brains on the wall and I saw the hole in his head,” I continued. “Damn straight this case has gotten personal.”

We were silent. I could hear myself breathing, my breath running ragged in my throat. I had gotten worked up.

“You know, it’s damn hard having a conversation with someone who claims to know everything,” I said, concluding.

“I never claimed to know everything. You assume I know everything.”

“Well, do you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, fuck me. There you go.”

“But you’re forgetting something,” said Jack patiently. He was always patient, whoever the hell he was.

“No,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”

“Yes,” he said, telling me anyway. “You, too, know everything.”

We had gone over this before, dozens of times.

“The answers are always within you,” he said.

“Would have been nice to know during algebra tests.”

“You knew the answers then, just as you know them now.”

“Bullshit.”

He smiled serenely.

“If you say so,” he said.

“Fine,” I said, “So how is it that I know everything, when, in fact, I don’t feel like I know shit?”

“First of all, you know everything because you are a part of me,” he said.

“Part of a bum?”

“Sure,” he said. “We are all one. You, me and everyone you see.”

“So I know the answers because you know the answers,” I said.

“Something like that,” he said. “Mostly, you know the answers because the answers have already been revealed to you. Would you like an example?”

“Please.”

“What’s the Atomic symbol for gold?”

“Wait, I know this one.” I rubbed my head. “Fuck. I don’t remember. Wait, I’ll take a stab at it: G-O?”