Adam Johnson - Emporium

* * *

In the morning, I wake to the whine of my mother’s hair dryer across the hall and the phone ringing downstairs, so I head down to the kitchen in my boxers, where I find Greg, in his undershirt, hair wet, talking on the phone and peeling an orange.

“It’s for you,” he says when he sees me. He passes the receiver. “Some woman, maybe your teacher.”

“Morning, sunshine,” Loren says when I answer.

I cup my hand over the phone. “Maybe it’s none of your business,” I tell Greg and head out the front door to stand in the driveway for some privacy. But lots of women in the neighborhood are out working in their yards. The fire station is two blocks down, and this is the time of the morning when the young firemen go jogging down our street.

“What’s going on, is something wrong?” I ask Loren.

“I can’t just call you?”

“It would be kind of weird if my mom answered. How’d you like me to call and have Jack pick up?”

“Would you like to speak to Jack? He’s in the next room eating his protein flakes. I’ll get him if you want.”

Across the street, Mrs. Goldwyn is raking leaves in her sweats and next door, Mrs. Sekera prunes in polka-dot gloves. They both look at me in my boxers.

“You know what I’m saying,” I tell Loren.

“I just called to say I want to see you. Jack’s got an exhibition and then a late-night revival.”

The firemen come by, five young men in tight blue shirts and nylon shorts, trotting with radios in their hands.

“Okay, I’ll pick you up at eight,” I tell her. “What did that guy say to you?”

“What guy?”

“The guy who answered the phone.”

“He asked me if I was your girlfriend,” she says.

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him to go write ‘I will not be nosey’ a hundred times.”

The garage door opens, and my mom comes out, lugging the big briefcase.

“Who are you talking to?” she asks.

“Nobody.”

“Nobody, out here in your underwear?”

“A girl.”

“Okay now, a girl. That’s more like it.”

Mom spots Mrs. Sekera. “Did I miss them?”

“Boy, did you,” she answers.

* * *

In Civic Responsibility class, Cheryl passes me a note. We are watching a video on being nice to animals. The teacher apparently forgot that we’d seen this one before, and during the part where the man in red suspenders throws the chickens into the pit, Cheryl lifts an arm, as if scratching the red spot on her neck, and holds a folded paper out for me. I almost have to reach into her hair for it.

The note is really a flier for the Power Team, a weight-lifting group coming to campus today. The posters are all over school: four muscle-bound men hold the corners of a Volkswagen Beetle, while another reclines in a folding chair beneath.

Cheryl turns to me in the dark. Backlit by the video, her eyes and teeth are extra white. “The other day, were you just messing with me?”

“You mean, about the cigarettes?”

“Because I was serious about not letting people tell you what to do.”

“I wasn’t making fun of you,” I say.

“If you’re serious about finding the strength to do your own thing, you should come check out the Power Team.”

“The Power Team?”

“Yeah,” she says. “They cut through all the hype. My dad is on the team, and he’s living proof of how much someone can change.”

“So your dad’s like a weight lifter?”

“More of a motivator. Can I count on seeing you there?”

“Sure,” I tell her. “You bet.”

We all still gasp when the video shows footage of “retired” racing greyhounds.

After class, I run into my old friend Terry Patuni at the fence where the cheer team is practicing. There are several guys there smoking. I stand next to him, and we put our fingers in the mesh. The team is making a pyramid by kneeling on each other’s backs. “Why don’t they ever line up the other way,” Patuni asks, “so we can see their asses?”

“Yeah, what’s with that?” I say, and it feels kind of good to just hang out with him. We used to be better friends, but I wouldn’t move in with him, and then I was kind of a prick once at the end of our senior year. My dad needed extra help one Saturday, and I brought Patuni along. His father is dead, and for some reason, I kept guffing it up with my dad, making it look like we were best pals.

We go eat a discount lunch in the Food Studies kitchen, which is kind of unnerving because they watch you eat it. Today it’s lasagna, and I’m no expert, but it’s either overcooked or needs more sauce. There’s always something wrong with the food that we can never pin down, but it only costs a dollar fifty, and it’s better than those sixty-forty soy burgers and vitamin-fortified tater wedges they pawned off on us in high school.

Patuni is pretty worked up about the Power Team, going on and on about it. We eat on metal stools above a Formica island, and he keeps showing me the flier. “Look at the pecs on those guys,” Patuni says. “Think of the babes you’d pull.” He keeps leaning his stool back on two legs, which is against the rules in the Food Lab.

“I think I’m going to check out this Power Team thing,” I say, acting like there was never anything weird between us. “You want to do it together?”

He squints at me, shrugs. “Sure, yeah.”

On the exit ballot, I rate the meal an 8.5, while Patuni cuts them with a 6.

In the gymnasium, we sit on retractable wooden bleachers and wait for the exhibition. Only about thirty people show up, mostly guys, but Patuni points out that there’s nobody from the college here, and we take this lack of official endorsement as a good sign. There are several weight sets on the basketball court, including a bench press on the free-throw line with black plates stacked deep enough to bend the bar. We’re trying to act cool, but really, we can’t take our eyes off all that iron.

In the front row I catch Cheryl looking back at me. She waves.

Suddenly, “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor plays over the public announcement system. Five guys in tight, red wrestling suits come running out. They jog circles around the weight gear, clapping in an exaggerated manner meant to make us join. Nobody does.

The Power Team doesn’t really say much. They just start lifting incredible amounts of weight, which is how we like it. An enormous man in a flattop ducks his head under the bar of a squat rack and takes the weight on his shoulders. He backs up in slow, staggering steps while the other guys crowd around, chanting, “feel the power.” He looks at the ceiling, chugging air, and dips down until his ass touches the ground. His rise is so slow we can’t take it. He braces his teeth, snatches great gasps of air, iron plates trembling.

“My God,” I say.

“Jesus,” Patuni says. He keeps spitting on the floor between his knees and rubbing it out with his foot, a habit of his when he’s excited.

The weights slam back on the rack, and the other guys ask him how heavy it was. He looks out to the audience. “I didn’t feel a thing,” he announces.

Patuni and I look at each other. “There’s cocky,” Patuni says, “and then there’s pissing in people’s faces.”

Another Power Teamer does a tremendous military press while the others jog in place and chant “yeah, uh-huh” over and over. When the bar is over his head, and his elbows lock, he manages to stutter, “I used to be weak. Then one day I found strength.” He drops the weight, which visibly moves the hardwood floor. They all high-five.

“Is this like a skit or what?” Patuni asks.

“I think they’re gonna try to sell us weight sets,” I say.

The black Power Teamer lies down on the bench.