Hummingbird Salamander(7)

But even as I said “Silvina,” it felt like overstep. That I wasn’t meant to say the name aloud. Not yet. The name lingered in the space between us. Did I think Allie would be immune because she was young and unimportant? Had I never heard of collateral damage?

“Priority?” Allie asked. We had deliverables for a million-dollar contract with a client in just a week.

I hesitated.

“High-priority.” I did not elaborate, even though Allie didn’t gossip or overshare.

“That’ll mean overtime,” Allie said.

“That’s fine.”

“And it might jeopardize—”

“I don’t care.” Then reconsidered my tone. I never raised my voice to Allie. Except when I did. “I mean, you can have overtime, and also delegate to someone in the intern pool. I’ll get Alex to authorize.”

Allie nodded slowly, and I could see she was uncomfortable.

“What account?” Usually, that’s what I led with. The anchor.

Forget it, I wanted to say. It can wait. But I couldn’t. “Low-priority” might mean a week to know more. I didn’t think I could wait that long. Somehow felt I needed intel, context, as soon as possible. For threat assessment. At least, that’s how I rationalized it.

“Potential new client. I can’t talk about it yet.”

Allie nodded. “Got it.” But did she?

I didn’t yet see that giving Allie this task might sacrifice her to something. An idea, a cause, she never signed up for.

Or did I? Wasn’t that why I gave her the task? To put the act at one remove from me?

Imagine you analyze security protocols for a living. You help minimize breaches. You actually think you might be good at it. But something comes at you from an unexpected direction. It takes you a while to understand what this thing is, what it means, how it could change everything.

In the gap, you’re lost.





[10]


I was a wrestler in high school, a weight lifter in college, a semi-pro bodybuilder for a handful of years after that. Wrestling saved my life, in a way, even though it was just three of us folded into the men’s team. All the away trips. All the bus rides in the dark. Traveling far from that farm. The number of times I had to stay late for practice that reduced the hours in my room at home. The way we bonded. Even if I don’t even know where they live now.

I became a wrestler because I loved a certain kind of aggression born, in part, of joy. My body was made for the task: the training and the matches both. Competition was the only thing that put my body to the test, kept it in the state it was meant to be in, and back then if sports could be perpetual, always 24/7, I would have loved that.

Except I couldn’t. Like bears are always injured, exist in that state, I was always injured. Shoulders or ankles or something. But to me back then … that was a state of being. To be joyful was to have the signs of having stretched myself, and injury told me who I was supposed to be, just as soreness told the older me now.

What wasn’t born into me was the anger I channeled into physical activity. How I snuffed it out, even if it smoldered deep. Never quite gone. Waiting.

But trying to be a bodybuilder missed the point: I’d gotten away. I was gone. Whatever I needed wasn’t performative. Couldn’t be fixed posing on a stage. Needed to stay grounded, personal.

Now I go to fat, then come back again. I don’t care.

So I went to the gym at lunch, to work out the tension. Lunch hour traffic, along with overcast skies and sludge, made me wish I lived somewhere warmer and more remote. Except, heat is not my friend.

I came to rest at the bottom of the hill in the potholed strip mall parking lot. Took my hands off a steering wheel I’d been holding on to too tightly. The parking lot smelled of gasoline or motor oil. I favored a parking spot in the middle, under a streetlamp.

I’d found the place ages ago after becoming disillusioned with the antiseptic gym near our house. I liked that it was a little out of my way. A dive gym, and across the street a dive bar I might, daring, frequent once or twice a month when I came here after work. Oldsters and shady types in this gym, abutting a neighborhood once middle class, now a crucible for meth busts. Pure intentions, but maybe I was slumming.

The trudge to the smudged glass doors tattooed with dust and the logos of extinct energy drinks. Inside, the thin, sharp line of some cleaning product, punctuated by years of accumulated sweat and the pungent ache of WD-40 lingering on some of the machines. Free weights rusting through their silver paint like something ancient becoming visible. Old-style Nautilus equipment the owners kept fixing with off-brand parts. Benches with split upholstery. Hardly a mirror in the place. No TV.

An old black man named Charlie was there most days, custodian and security both. He had a flag from Antigua on the wall behind his favorite chair. I thought he owned the place, but we didn’t talk much. Usually, Charlie was working out when I got there. A nod of recognition was enough.

Most everyone left me alone. When they saw me on the bench press with numbers of like 360 or, once, 420, the men faded away. When they saw me deadlift. That’s when I became more visible and invisible to them. But all I really cared about was no one saying anything stupid to me.

Imagine me at the gym every other day, locked into my thoughts. Putting on my armor, if it was the morning. Taking it off if evening.