Friday I worked from home.
The apartment did its Friday-from-home thing. The kitchen window letting in the wide flat LA afternoon light that bounced off the parking structure across the alley and into my living room at the wrong angle for working, the laptop fan running its long resigned afternoon hum on the desk, two energy-drink cans empty on the corner near the keyboard and a third half-finished and going warm. The street outside was at the soft pre-rush volume where the cars hadn't started piling up yet but you could hear them gathering. A neighbor's TV was on across the hall, one of the daytime shows that runs on autoplay until five.
The session was tomorrow. Nine AM. PeakForm West Hollywood. Trainer: Amber.
I'd known this for two weeks. I hadn't looked at her profile photo again. That was deliberate.
At four-thirty I closed the laptop.
I picked up my phone. Put it down. Picked it up again.
Marcus answered on the second ring.
"You're calling me," he said. "It's Friday afternoon."
"Four thirty-two."
"This is about the trainer."
"I've been working all day. Eleven tickets. I'm calling to say hi."
"The trainer with the profile photo."
"PT session tomorrow morning. I'm calling because it's Friday."
"Tell me about the profile photo," Marcus said.
I told him. Pale blonde, near-white, the kind that doesn't exist outside expensive salons or Scandinavian genetics. High cheekbones. A sports bra situation I described to Marcus in terms I'm not going to repeat. I'd booked the session before I could talk myself out of it. Squat form, free session, correct venue.
"Did you look her up," Marcus said.
"I looked at the gym website."
"In context."
"General facility information."
"Did you find her."
"There's a staff page. She's been there eight months. The bio's four sentences."
"Did you read it more than once."
"Twice."
"Owen."
"The second time was for the photograph. The staff photo's higher resolution than the app profile." I stopped. "I was fact-checking my expectations."
A second of nothing on the line. Then: "Was she like the photo."
"Better."
"Right," Marcus said. "So you've been thinking about this for two weeks."
"In the background."
"What percentage."
I looked out the window. The parking structure across the alley. The third level was about half-full at this hour. A black SUV pulling into a spot at the corner, a man in a suit walking toward the elevator with his phone to his ear. None of it useful.
"Fifteen," I said. "On and off."
"That's a lot of percentage for the squat."
It was. For two weeks I'd been thinking about it more than I wanted to count. Not planning. Not letting it go either.
"What happens if she's exactly like the photo," Marcus said.
A pigeon had landed on the ledge across the alley. Gray with a white patch on the breast, the kind of pigeon that lives between buildings in this neighborhood and has opinions about humans. It looked through my window at me. I looked back.
"Then I ask her for coffee."
"There it is."
"After the session. If it goes well. If there's an opening."
"You're going to ask her for coffee," Marcus said. "And the shirt you're wearing is not the gray one."
I hadn't mentioned the shirt.
"I haven't packed yet."
"Owen."
"I'm packing tonight. In a completely neutral way."
"Which shirt."
The green shirt was in the drawer under three other shirts I'd put on top of it in some private negotiation with myself. No official decisions had been made. The unofficial decision had been reached approximately eleven days ago. That was a separate matter.
"The green fits better," I said. "Factual statement about the cut."
"You've already packed it."
"I haven't packed yet."
"Right," Marcus said. "You'll pack tonight. You'll go tomorrow. She'll be exactly like the photo plus everything the photo didn't show. You'll ask her for coffee with the framing you've been working over on the commute."
"I don't have a framing."
"You have three."
I had approximately three.
"Call me after," I said.
"After the squat and the coffee. Call me."
"We'll see how it goes."
"I know we'll see how it goes. I want to hear it before you've turned it into something orderly. Last year you got the Hartwell renewal offer and called me ten days later with a breakdown of the tradeoffs."
"Different situation."
"You had a spreadsheet, Owen."
"It was a decision with multiple variables that—"
"Call me before the spreadsheet," Marcus said. He had somewhere to be. I could hear it in the way the background of his line had shifted. He was walking somewhere, the sound of foot traffic and a car alarm somewhere behind him. We'd known each other since junior year.
I put the phone on the coffee table.
The apartment had the quiet of a Friday at five. The kitchen window light had dropped about ten degrees and gone amber where it had been white. Three energy drink cans on the desk, two of them empty and one warm. Mail on the kitchen table that had been there nine days. A credit card offer, a parking-permit renewal notice from the city, two flyers for businesses on Vermont I had no intention of using. A bank calendar on the wall with tomorrow circled in black ballpoint. I'd done the circling at eight-fifty-one AM two weeks ago. I hadn't looked at it directly since.
One friend in this city I'd call about this. That was Marcus. Two other college people also in LA. Dinner every month or so, a Saturday brunch sometimes if everyone's schedule lined up. Fine. Good people. The kind of friendship that would've been more if we'd been in the same city the way college means the same city. We weren't. Same metro area.
Marcus was the one I called about this. He'd been the one I called about the Hartwell job, about the college relationship that ended. He knew me better than I was always comfortable with. This afternoon I'd needed to say it out loud to someone.
I went to pack the bag.
The bedroom was the long narrow side of the apartment with the window onto the street, the bed unmade, the dresser the same dresser I'd had since college. The gray shirt was folded where I always kept it. Clean. Fine shirt. The kind that says I came to do a thing and I did it. I held it for a second. Then I put it back and got the green one out from under the stack I'd buried it under, smoothed it twice, folded it again.
It fit better.
I folded it into the bag. Shorts, shoes, water bottle, the headphones I'd been meaning to replace for four months. Standard contents. I zipped it and put it by the door.
The Friday outside the window had moved through into the early evening. Vermont was starting to fill with the after-work drift, a couple of guys at the BBQ place on the corner setting out the sidewalk sign, the light dropping further toward the yellow part of itself.
The squat was getting fixed tomorrow. That was the objective.
I thought about the objective and nothing else for another forty-five minutes, and then I went to bed.