Eleven

Ms. Bolton was game. Luckily, she had her workout gear stowed in her tote bag. We arranged to meet out front after last bell. Al and I were pretty excited. All of a sudden, it seemed a pretty daring thing to ask your teacher to go to a health club for a free tryout.

“I sure hope she likes it,” Al kept saying.

“How about us?” I said. “Don’t you hope we like it too?”

“We’re kids. We like practically anything,” Al said. “Grownups, especially teachers, are harder to please.”

We got our English papers back. Martha Moseley got an A minus and there was a minute there when I thought she might possibly blow her brains out.

“How can this be?” Martha said. “How can this be?”

I got a C. Al got a C plus. Ms. Bolton had written across the top of my paper, “Lacks focus!” Al’s was crisscrossed with Ms. Bolton’s red-pencil corrections of Al’s spelling and punctuation.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Al said at recess. “What’re we gonna talk about, our test marks? ‘Ms. Bolton, you’re full of it,’ I might have to tell her. ‘Ms. Bolton, this is great literature. Don’t let punk spelling and punctuation turn you off. Don’t think Shakespeare didn’t have similar probs. Did he let that stop him? No siree.’

“I just might have to say that to her,” Al said. “Then, when she’s coming up for air, I hit her with the rabbit punch. I say, ‘Ms. Bolton, ma’am, read between the lines. Ignore that other stuff. Taste the beautiful rhythm of the words. The symbolism. Memorable!’” Al closed her eyes and smacked her lips.

“Then I hit her again, when she’s down. ‘Ms. Bolton,’ I say, ‘if you don’t change this mark to an A pronto, forget the freebie.’ Whaddaya think?”

“That’s blackmail,” I said. “She might report us. Anyway, quit grousing. The whole thing was your idea in the first place. To ask her, I mean.”

“You kidding me?” Al snorted. “I thought it was yours.”

The day dragged. When the final bell rang, there was a tremendous noisy exit. Kids deserted that room like rats leaving a sinking ship.

Simile? Aphorism? Whatever.

I noticed Martha Moseley stayed put. That meant she was waiting for everyone to clear out so she could nail Ms. Bolton and demand an explanation for her mark.

“We’ll wait for you outside, Ms. Bolton,” I said in a loud voice.

“In a minute,” she said. Then I heard her say, “Martha, I can’t talk right now. Could you come in early tomorrow? We’ll go over your paper then.”

As Al and I waited for Ms. Bolton, Al agonized, as was her wont.

“What if he forgets his freebie offer and hits us with a gigantic bill when it’s over?” she said. “Suppose he turns nasty and bars the door until we cough up the cash? What then? He looks plenty skeevy to me. Sort of like a mobster.”

“You wouldn’t know a mobster if you fell over one,” I told her.

“You know what I mean. He looks like a mobster in a movie.” As she spoke, she paced back and forth at the top of the school steps. One false move and she’d hurtle to the bottom.

“Maybe we ought to call Teddy in for a mobster spot check,” Al suggested. “He’s the Mafia expert, after all. He’d give us the straight skinny. Is the guy a mobster or isn’t he.”

“Will you cut it out?” I said.

“Well, I sure hope nothing goes wrong,” Al said. “If this whole health schmeer turns out to be a total bummer, then you just see what happens on your next paper. You think you lacked focus on this one, just wait until your next one. Man.” Al hit herself on the forehead with such force she wobbled around for a while, looking spacey.

“Ms. Bolton’s gonna hold it against us. Wait and see. See if I’m not right.”

When she showed up, Ms. Bolton was smiling. She looked much younger than when she was in the classroom bawling, that’s for sure. She also looked quite pretty.

“I’m really looking forward to this,” she said. “When I woke up this morning, the first thing I thought was ‘Today’s workout day.’ You would think at my age I could get myself to a gym on my own, but somehow I seem to have become immobilized since I moved here. Unhappiness does that to people, I guess. You get so mired in your own feelings it’s tough to get out from under the rug.”

She laughed and we did too.

We walked three abreast. The buildings stood out against the sky as if they’d been cut from construction paper. It was a windless day in mid-October and the temperature was just right.

“Is this guy who runs the health club a friend of yours?” Ms. Bolton asked us.

We told her about the pet shop turning into the health club practically overnight.

“His name’s Al,” I said. “Same as hers.”

“Listen. My feeling about this guy is he’s a total flake,” Al said. “Don’t expect too much, Ms. Bolton, O.K.?”

“I never do,” she said.

A sign on the door of Al’s Health Club said CLOSED.

“What’d I tell you.” Al said. “It just opened. How can it be closed already?” We could see two men inside, talking. They didn’t look like the same two we’d talked to.

“Knock,” Al told me.

“Why don’t you?” I said. She likes to give me orders, especially when we don’t know what’s what.

I knocked anyway. Somebody had to.

Nada. No response. Those bozos didn’t give us the time of day. We went next door to the shoe-repair place and asked the man hammering away at somebody’s new heels if he knew where Al was.

“I never seen him,” the man said. I admired the way he talked with his mouth full of nails. He never swallowed one. “They come and they go over there. All day, all night. You can’t tell nothing. Maybe you come back another day, huh?”

We were just about to give up when the door to Al’s Health Club opened and the great man stood there, blinking in the light like he just got out of bed.

“Hi,” Al and I said. “How are you?”

He drew a blank. It was plain he didn’t remember us.

“You said we could have a free tryout,” Al said. “Remember? You said word of mouth was the best advertising and we both have big mouths.” She gave a nervous little laugh. I tried, but the best I could manage was a weak smile.

“You promised us a freebie,” I said. My voice came out kind of squeaky. I cleared my throat. “You did. Really. We brought our teacher. She likes to work out too.”

Al considered this information. Then he said, “Sure. You say so, I gotta believe you. Why not. I make you a promise, I keep it. Big Al’s a man of his word. You better believe it. Come on in.”

We followed him inside. It was kind of dark, and the two men at the back had disappeared.

“We got a problem with our electricity,” Big Al told us. “Also with our deliveries. It’s slow, starting up. Lot of headaches. But we’ll make it. You want to change, there’s a couple of rooms right there. You ladies slip into your sweats and I’ll see to the equipment. I got a nice place here. I want it to run smooth, know what I mean?”

Al and I went into one of the changing rooms. Ms. Bolton went into the other.

“If he’s Big Al,” Al whispered, “then that makes me Little Al, right? Know something? I always wanted to be called Little Al. This is a first.”

“Ouch,” I said as her elbow got me in the eye. “Take it easy.”

Al’s underpants had SUNDAY written across them in bright red.

“It’s Tuesday,” I told her.

“Now you tell me,” she said. “No wonder I don’t know what day of the week it is. I’m always doing that.”

My gym shorts were dirtier than I’d thought, but I pulled my baggy Mickey Mouse T-shirt down as far as it would go and it almost covered the shorts completely.

“You think we should go through with this?” I whispered to Al. She had on her gray sweat pants and sweatshirt. “I’m color coordinated,” she said. “Sure, why not?”

We went out. Ms. Bolton was still in the changing room.

“O.K., girls,” Big Al said. “This is your first workout?”

We nodded. Behind us, we heard Ms. Bolton’s door open.

Big Al’s eyes popped. He squeezed his nose with two fingers and closed his eyes. Then he opened them.

“Wooeee,” Big Al sighed.

We turned. Ms. Bolton was dressed in a lime green leotard over a pink body suit.

She made Cher look out of shape.

Al and I were stunned, bowled over. To think that she kept all her gorgeous self under wraps in her baggy clothes and her red tights.

Amazing.

“I’ve been working out since I was fifteen,” Ms. Bolton said. “I used to be, well, not fat exactly, but sort of spongy. No muscle tone. My brothers turned me on to working out. They got me interested in lifting weights and running and doing sit-ups. Then I went to a fitness center and really got hooked. I can hardly wait to get back into doing that stuff. It makes me feel really great.”

“Hey, miss, you wanna stand in my window for a couple hours?” Big Al said. “One look at you, they’ll knock down the doors. How about it? I’d pay.”

“I know,” Al said. “Hang a sign on her that says AFTER and one on me that says BEFORE.”

She gave Big Al a piercer.

“What’s it worth?” she asked him.

“I’ll hafta think about it,” Big Al said.