Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

and heavy weights swinging around was too dangerous a place for a dog, I changed quickly and headed out.
    Janet, wearing men’s boxer shorts and a cutoff T-shirt with the logo of the gym on it, was on the phone, making faces as she listened.
    “Go warm up on the treadmill,” she said, as if I were a hamster. Minutes later she came to fetch me.
    “Most women have more strength in their legs than their arms and chest,” she said. She had a clipboard with her and a form with my name on top of it. “Let’s start with your legs and work up.”
    “What?” I said. The music was deafening.
    She took me over to a machine that you lie down on and took the pin from where it was, moving it down for more weight. I would have thought the other direction more appropriate. Getting on the machine, I was squinched into a little knot, my knees practically inside my mouth. When I pushed against the plate my feet rested on, I was propelled backward and my legs, which felt as if the bones might shatter, partially straightened out. Janet positioned my feet and told me to begin. I thought I spotted a sadistic gleam in her eye, but I couldn’t be sure. It might have been a trick the fluorescent lights played with reality.
    “This hurts,” I said, after a dozen or so leg flexes.
    “It’s supposed to,” she said. “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not going to get stronger.”
    Just about when I thought someone had set fire to the whole damn gym, Janet looked up from her notes to offer some encouragement.
    “Okay, Rachel, you’re doing good, now let’s see three more. Five, four, okay, good form, woman, keep it up, four, three, two, let’s do it, don’t give up now, three, two, one , excellent.”
    The woman, besides being an admitted and practicing sadist, couldn’t count her way out of kindergarten. My legs felt as if someone had tom them out of my body and sewn them back in without anesthesia.
    Janet stopped counting, but when I stopped, she flicked her hand at me, a motion that I assumed meant I was to continue.
    “So how are you doing with Avi ?” she asked absentmindedly, but instead of waiting for an answer, she resumed. “It’s like I said, isn’t it? Just being around him. Okay, rest,” she said, but by the time I’d taken one breath, she was flicking her hand for me to push again.
    “You can tell him anything,” Janet said, sighing. “He’s like the parent you always wanted and never had, very wise, and really interested in you. No one listens like that man. Okay,” she said, “three, two, one . Good .”
    To my surprise, when Janet expressed her approval, I wanted to double the weight and do twenty more reps. Fortunately , she was off to the next machine before I got the chance. I got up and trailed after her, as imprinted as Conrad Lorenz’s geese.
    All around us, half-naked, muscle-bound men were grimacing in pain, grunting even louder than the earsplitting music, lifting weights as big as compact cars, and looking at themselves in the mirror any chance they could. There were females at the gym too, thin, pretty young girls reading magazines full of new hairstyles as they rode their stationary bicycles, others with earphones running on the treadmills, and some passing through on their way downstairs to step aerobics class. There were heavy women, too, two of them, both working on the thigh machines.
    “Come on,” Janet said, “we’re going to work on your butt.”
    I followed her across the gym to yet another torture machine and listened carefully while she told me how far back to push the lever and how long to squeeze my glutes before releasing the lever so that it could come forward again.
    And here I thought this would be mindless.
    “He’s such a stitch,” she drawled. It took me a second to realize she was talking about Avi again. “Like he always says, ‘You talk too much,’ the minute you finish.” Janet shook her head and laughed. “You talk too much,” she repeated, and laughed again. “But only after he’d listened to every word you had to say, and only as a way of telling you it was time to do the form, to get your energy moving again.”
    She began to count, “Only three more, woman, let’s do it,” reminding me of the dentist my family used when I was a kid, always saying “Almost done” as he was about to set the all-time world record for drilling without a pause.
    “You’re going to be wearing that butt of yours behind your knees if you don’t work it,”