Son of the Spider Woman

[tortolis]

The stories I enjoy most on this forum are build on credible, interesting character and dramatic incident. By using the eroticism of muscle and strength to support these elements, they make it all the more intense, as in Rowan?s terrific work. I thought I?d try my hand at these principles, and am posting the result below. I hope readers won?t be put off by the length, actually pretty conventional for a short story in print. I?ve published a great deal elsewhere, but mostly nonfiction and nothing remotely like this, so I?m a little nervous. I hope at least some readers will enjoy it. ? Tortolis


Son of the Spider Woman

What a week. After dozens of casting interviews for Adair?s forthcoming expos? ?Robot-Babies: Where Are They Now?,? the last potential guest arrives on Friday morning at 9:50, ?way early, and what does the new intern do? She takes him back into the production area and leaves him alone to wait in Marsha?s office while Marsha sits in traffic. Except he isn?t alone in her office. He?s seated on the guest chair as Marsha arrives and the new intern is standing over him, seemingly poised to pour a glass of water onto his shirt. Giggling.
So much for the charming apology Marsha had intended to give this guy in the reception area. ?Just what the hell is going on??
?Well,? said the new intern, ?I knew you wanted to get Mr. Davenport to take his shirt off, so I was going to have a little accident and get his shirt all wet, and then offer to take it to wardrobe.? She kept holding the glass in midair, then finally set it down on the desk.
Even with his shirt on and a golf jacket over it, you could see the guy was incredibly built. Broad shoulders, physically imposing. The jacket was unzipped and you could see that male cleavage revealed just a bit at the neckline, like cast bronze. Patina and all.
Marsha breathed in, breathed out. ?Julia,? she said, ?there?s a difference between showing initiative and pulling a stunt like this. Think about it. And think about whether you really want to keep this job. And think about it somewhere else, please.?
After the door closed, Marsha devised a new apology and bustled into the chair behind her desk. ?Reeves Davenport, right? I?m Marsha, guest coordinator for Adair Talks To, and I?m really sorry about all that, Mr. Davenport. Julia?s a college student, we have a co-op education contract with?anyway, believe me, your prompt arrival is the only good thing that has happened in a bad morning. I hope you don?t think the point of this meeting is for us to get your shirt off.? A breath in, a breath out. ?It?s not. Although?? she forced a laugh.
?Don?t be too hard on Julia,? he said. ?It was just a harmless prank, I didn?t exactly discourage her. And please call me Rich. I haven?t used the name Reeves since I was a kid. How on earth did you find me using that name?? He had a confident, inward smile, as if remembering something delicious, but his eyes had a serious gaze.
?I didn?t have to find you,? Marsha said. ?That?s what a research staff is for.? For days she had been talking to people who were off-puttingly insecure or morose ? annoying, wounded little gremlins whose unhappiness showed all over them. They were tense, but they were also easy interviews. Pliable. This one was something else again: cheery, unthreatened, looking relaxed yet sitting bolt upright like a West Pointer, and with a tan. With his expensive leonine haircut he looked a little like the male strippers who used to be popular on Adair Talks To, but those days were gone. Casting had gotten tougher since then; viewers wanted conflict with their sex, and not until after lunch.
?How did your research staff find me??
He looked like a college jock ten years later who had kept in shape. Maybe it was his neck, very wide. But then at least he had a neck. Or maybe it was just his hair, longish and brownish-blondish. He looked sort of tawny, as though he?d spent his whole life camping. ?We dug up some coverage of a press conference your mother gave,? Marsha said.
?The publicity session from 1960? Do you have a tape of it? Do you think you could get me a copy??
?She announces that she's going to ? that she?s ? ?
?She announces her plans to become a mother,? said Rich. ?That session ended her career, she used to say. It actually took a while longer, though.?
The camera would definitely like him, Marsha thought. Rugged but neat. Good skin, good coloring, nice teeth. Not clean-cut, exactly, almost exotic. ?We can dub one for you if you want,? she said. ?Sixties TV. We were lucky to get it. We found it a little embarrassing to watch, to tell you the truth.?
?Yeah, well,? he said, still smiling. ?Maybe I?ll trade you for the tape I have of your mother doing her work.?
Not dumb, either?in fact, a little cocky. That didn?t necessarily mean anything; could be bad, could be good. ?Rich,? she asked, ?have you ever seen our show??
?I don't think we get it in Canada,? he said.
?We reach some markets in Canada, maybe not yours. We?re a talk show aimed primarily at women homemakers. We air mostly around lunchtime and we concentrate on issues of concern to today?s woman. We like to cover traditional subjects in untraditional ways.?
?Today?s woman,? said Rich. ?Uh huh.?
?Subjects like child-rearing. We?re very excited about a series of five shows that we?re putting together right now, and we think we?d like you to be a part of it. It?s about scientific experiments in child-rearing and the consequences of, you know, what happened later on to the children.?
?Uh huh.?
?Would you like me to hang that up for you? Your jacket, I mean. Not the shirt.? She forced a laugh.
And so Reeves Davenport slipped out of his golf jacket and handed it to Marsha, creating the effect of a quiet, blinding explosion. She felt the need to look away rather than be caught staring, but she glimpsed muscles like carved, arcing wedges jammed under the cap sleeves. Keeping her eyes on the hook on her door, she reached back like Orpheus leading Eurydice out of hell. Hand reaching back, eyes forward, don?t look. The muscles of his arms ? the size, the profusion, the complexity of them ? they couldn?t really be like that, could they? She felt a closer look could prove it was a special effect, computer animation, or just misperceived in the moment. But first she needed to continue looking anywhere but at his steely arms, his jutting shoulders, at the suggestive triangle of unconcealed chest below his collar, or else be caught staring and get dragged back to hell. And so she missed seeing how the inner bicep shifted its breadth, lengthening with the easy gesture of an outstretched hand that put his limp golf jacket into hers. He would have to give her another casual look at the moving biceps.
Silence. Maybe she was just hot for this guy?
?So,? he said. ?What happened later on, eh? What happened to who??
?Well,? she said, ?for example, we have one guest who spent his infancy in a Skinner Box, a kind of glass-box environment devised by the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner to control the stimuli to which a child is exposed, and we?ve got a woman who was raised in a utopian commune in Pennsylvania, and we?ve got a man who went with his parents to the Soviet Union so they could bring him up on a collective farm. We have two girls who were raised to be gymnasts and almost didn?t meet their own parents until they were sixteen. These are all confirmed guests,? she said. ?There will be more.?
?Sounds like it could be interesting to today?s woman,? said Rich. He might be a borderline smart aleck, maybe just a bluffer. But just then he chooses to stretch his arms and shoulders a bit, turning one way and then the other, and the effect is like an eclipse. Marsha feels faint, perhaps frightened ? is he dangerous? What could he do with those muscles?
Silence.
The guest chair looked somehow like a toy with Reeves Davenport sitting in it. He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. ?It?s good to stretch, my mother used to say. She?d say you don?t need to pay for yoga classes, just watch how jungle cats do it.? And now Marsha, how had been looking at his eyes, at the room, at anything but his gleaming flesh, couldn?t avoid seeing how the inner biceps were revealed in their taut, relaxed fullness.
?I?ll bet,? said Marsha. ?They?re very impressive.?
?Sorry??
?Come off it, Mr. Davenport. Your arms. You?re like the bodybuilder on the beach, pretending not to flex.?
?Oh, no, not the idea,? said Rich. ?Impressive was part two of the prank that Julia and I were planning while you were keeping me waiting. I was going to lift your desk from right here, from a seated position, like this.? Rich leaned forward, grabbed the forward edge of her desk with both hands and lifted. But instead of the desk rising wholesale in the air, the desktop pulled away from the pedestal in front, remaining attached on her side and tilting down toward her. The telephone receiver clattered and fell, and then the stapler.
?Oh, God, I?m so sorry,? said Rich. He got up and pushed the desktop down from his side, causing a diagonal split where his right hand gripped it and exposing gluey yellow chipboard beneath the walnut veneer. He was only momentarily embarrassed, then laughed. ?So, Marsha, how do you think this interview is going??
?Don?t worry, I?ll get a new desk out of this. They promised me solid wood,? she said. ?And a credenza. I?ll tell them that an Adair guest was almost injured when my desk broke, and I had to convince you not to sue.?
?I?m not an Adair guest yet,? he said. ?What were we talking about??
?I was telling you that basically we?ve got a good show. Not gratuitously sensational, not trashy. Not Oprah, not inspirational, but not exploitative. And we think the Robot Babies week will be very interesting. What we?re trying to do is show how the ? the persons involved in these experiments overcame the ? overcame them later in life.?
?Overcame?? he asked.
?Some of the people we?re talking to are still trying to cope with scars from early childhood,? she said. ?Some aren?t succeeding even now.?
?Like how??
?I would say with, you know, life problems. Some have feelings of unhappiness. Difficulty in accepting and giving love. Forming relationships, that sort of thing. It?s interesting that not one of the people we?ve contacted has wound up having any children of their own. None has been able to stay married, in fact.?
Rich seemed to give this proposition some thought. ?Just like about half of all the married people out there,? he said.
?They tend to feel injured, incomplete,? said Marsha. ?With unresolved issues from childhood.?
?Like all the other people out there,? he said.
?Who knows, maybe you?re the exception. Are you married??
?So these people, if they go on your show, they?ll be talking as victims of these experiments.?
?Well, what they?re doing is commenting based on their firsthand knowledge about a practice that was controversial and important to our viewers. If you?ve seen the baby doctor T. Berry Brazelton on any of the morning talk shows ??
?What they?re doing is cashing in on stuff that happened to them when they were kids.?
This could be going better. ?No, that?s what we?re doing.? She tried to laugh. ?You obviously haven't talked to our executive producer. When it comes to money, this isn?t exactly HBO.?
?Marsha, honey,? said Rich, ?I wish you the best of luck. Thanks for the plane fare and the hotel room. You?ve got the wrong guy.?
Arrogant. He could be a good guest, telegenic and unfazed by a challenging interviewer. What about altering the premise of his segment? Or maybe he could be on the last segment, with a contrasting experience. ?I?m sorry you feel that way,? she said, ?but we?ve hardly carved anything in stone yet. Let?s talk about it a little bit. Are you saying your childhood was, that it was, you know, happy? I bet it can?t have been easy.? It can?t have been easy ? that was a line that almost never failed to get potential guests to open up. ?What was it like growing up with ??
?With the Spider Woman? I didn?t call her that. I called her Mom.?
?What was it like??
?My mother was a single mom who raised me the best she knew how. She was successful in business. I was part of the business. There?s really not much more to it than that. When I was very young, like two or three, she was still pretty famous, and I knew she had an exercise program on TV, but then the press and the public turned on her.?
?It can?t have been easy,? said Marsha.
?I was on camera as a little boy, you know. I used to bring her a piece of apparatus or a glass of water sometimes.?
?Really? At two or three??
?I looked older. And?look, my mother was never the weirdo she was made out to be. She was highly ethical in business and stuck with her principles. Her show was excellent for its time. If she was a Christian evangelist she would?ve had dinner at your White House. Instead, you guys made a cartoon character out of her and drove her out of your country.?
?Whoa,? said Marsha, ?let's ease up a little here. First of all, when your mother left the U.S., I wasn't in school yet, so if there was a conspiracy against her, I wasn?t in on it. Second of all?? Marsha leaned back and opened a file folder. ?Look,? she said, ?let me backtrack a little. This discussion is what?s called a pre-interview. It?s not in the nature of an argument, we?re both on the same side here, I?m just finding out the basics of your story and how you express your ideas about it. But I?ve got to tell you, I viewed our tape of your mother?s press conference, and weirdo is definitely a word that would occur to some people. Also compulsive, and delusional. That?s one reason why you could be such a good guest. Look how well you came out. It can?t have been easy. What particularly interested us about your situation is in this quote from her press conference. Listen to this:? Marsha riffled through a marked-up transcript. ??What I am saying is not?? wait a minute?here it is. ?What I am saying is that we now have, for the first time in human history, the power to go beyond the long-assumed biological limits of our species. What I am saying is that we can, through the associated sciences of human biology and physical culture, create a man stronger and more physically perfect than has ever before walked the face of the earth. A man that redefines what it is to be human. And I intend to do it.? Now, that has got to be an impossible burden to place on a kid. I?m assuming that kid is you.?
Rich eyed an award on the wall just above Marsha's head, wondering whether it was real or fake. ?It wasn't a burden,? he said, ?it was a blessing. And she, we, achieved her goal, just as she always did.?
Achieved her goal?stronger and more physically perfect?one possibility was that this guy was as crazy as his mother, and his fitness level, albeit amazing, was a byproduct of neurotic obsession. Sometimes crazies were effective guests, but it was always risky to put them on camera. ?Are you saying ?? Rich shifted in the guest chair just as Marsha was glancing up from the transcript, and again she felt her stomach lurch. Those muscles! He wasn?t even immodestly dressed. But under his polo shirt but you could see how his shoulders ? the way they massed under the cloth?just his arms were exposed below cap sleeves, but they were so deceptively big and sculpted. How could a guy?s arms be confusing, blinding? The ribbed bands straining around his upper arms had worked their way up to the place between? Bicep. Delt. She knew that much. How did he get the shirt on over his chest and arms, anyway?
She needed to regain control of the interview, and there was no reason why she shouldn?t. She looked back down at the transcript, groping for some words. Focus on his eyes, she thought. Then she looked back up at him. ?Mr. Davenport ??
?Look,? said Rich, ?I'm sorry, but this isn?t what Pam Adair?s secretary said it was going to be about when she contacted me.?
Breathe, Marsha. ?Pam Adair?s secretary?s job is to get you to come down and see us,? she said. ?Whatever you were told, it worked. What were you led to believe??
?She just talked about me sharing my experiences of growing up as the son of one of television?s first physical culture experts,? said Rich.
?That sounds to me like just what we?ve been talking about.?
?What we?ve been talking about,? he said, ?is another media lynching.?
?Look,? said Marsha, ?obviously, something about ?Adair Talks To? appealed to you enough for you to come down here, right? Most people actually like the idea of being on a television talk show. Now, I?ve told you some of our ideas, and so far you?re less than thrilled. Fine. Okay. Why don?t we talk about some of yours??
?I?m not exactly a television producer,? said Rich. ?What I thought?what I thought was that my mother was an interesting, complex woman with interesting, complex ideas who got a very raw deal in the press, and I thought that maybe I could rehabilitate her image a little bit.?
?Sure. Go on.?
?I didn't really think that the show would be about me.?
?I see.? In hundreds of interviews, this was surely the first time that anyone had sat in Marsha?s office and said ?I didn?t think the show would be about me.? She kept her eyes on his and nodded slowly, with pursed lips. ?Well, Mr. Rich Davenport, I actually think we?ve got some common ground here. In fact, I really think we?re getting somewhere, and I hope we can work something out. In the meantime, here?s my suggestion: go back to your hotel, work out or look around town. Treat yourself to some good meals on us. Is the gym we found for you all right??
?Fine.?
?Good. Think about what I?ve said and I?ll think about what you?ve said, and I?ll call you up at the hotel and we can talk again. And we?ll get an associate producer to help us out and we?ll introduce you to Pam Adair. How does that sound??
?Good enough.?
?Fine.? She stood up, and so did he. ?Thanks so much for coming. And if you?d like our studio hairstylist to do you while you?re here, she?s a genius, I promise you, and so nice. Not a bit like me! Just call my secretary, Nancy.? She forced an idiotic smile, and held it while they shook hands, then returned his jacket across the wounded desk. And as he left with the jacket hanging limp from his hand, his body seemed to announce itself loudly, the long torso tapering from its full shoulders? breadth down to the narrow waist, where tucks gathered in the excess fabric. Even from behind the arms were full of complexity. She thought of spindles of yarn in a factory. No doubt there were other muscles like that under his clothes. And one hell of an ass. How tall is he? She should?ve asked.
But the clothes ? navy polo shirt, khakis. Preppy.
She thought back over the interview, then phoned her friend Regina at Beth Israel Hospital. ?Hey, Reg, have a minute??
?Sure, what's up??
?I need a favor. Do you know who Diana Davenport was??
?Sure, an early graduate of the Adele Davis school of medicine. Around here we don?t like that stuff.?
?Who?s Adele Davis??
?Natural foods fanatic. Holistic medicine. We used to call her the nut among the berries, though if you call her a fanatic, I?m not sure what you?d call Diana Davenport. What a menace. She took things to a further extreme. Claimed there was no disease that couldn?t be cured with the right combination of exercise and nutrition and good vibes. I think she was into meditation and positive thinking, something akin to Christian Science with Gaia instead of Christ. Today she?d never get away with the claims she made on TV. It might interest you to know that she died of lung cancer as a relatively young woman.?
?Did you know she had a son?? asked Marsha.
?No. Did you know she was a card-carrying, Schlafly-quoting anti-feminist??
?Her son walked out of my office not ten minutes ago.?
?Marsha, don?t accept advertising for anything he?s selling.?
?No, here's the thing: we?re researching a series on adult survivors of experimental child-rearing techniques and we come across a press conference by Diana Davenport in which she announces that she?s going to have a child, and that she?s going to turn him into the strongest and most physically perfect man who ever lived. Her words, strongest and most physically perfect. Since the original ascent of homo sapiens. That?s the guy who just walked out of my office.?
?He must be really amazing in bed.?
?I don?t know, his mother didn't mention that in the press conference. But here?s the thing: I?m trying to figure out if this guy would make a good guest for Adair Talks To.?
?So??
?So the point of these interviews is basically for me to find out what the guest?s hot buttons are and press them. Most of them wind up gushing and crying, you know? We don?t have to believe them. We?re like lawyers, we just want to create the right story, we don?t want to know if it?s true. This guy completely turned the tables on me. I?ve never gotten so rattled with any potential guest. He had me convinced he?s Superman incarnate. A space alien, something.?
?Hot??
?I?d say very hot, but that?s not it.?
?Cute??
?Well, I?d say very cute, although his hair is kind of 70s. The body?s, well, there are no words. From what I saw. Still, I can?t figure?when he took off his jacket?I had this teen girl moment. I almost fainted. Really. I?ve never reacted that way, even in high school.?
?So you?re hot for him, that?s great, go get him. You don?t need my permission. Is there an ethics thing because you want him for the show??
?No, I really don?t think that?s it. I?m not hot for him. Well, maybe I am. But so what, you know? I?ve fucked five of my trainers from Equinox, they had muscles and ?way better hair and they didn?t make me faint by any means.?
Reg wasn?t sure where to take this conversation. A fling might be just what Marsha needed. But really, the son of Diana Davenport? ?You know, a boy?s best friend is his mother,? she said.
?I?ve got the line on his mother. She seemed to be having paranoid delusions as her career was ending. In fact, I think that?s one reason why she thought food additives were poisonous. But this guy seems semi-normal, like a frat boy on spring break in Fort Lauderdale. Or so I thought. But then he also seems sort of radioactive, like his skin is glowing and he could explode any minute. Then he says his mother succeeded with her breeding project. And the result, presumably, is him. I can?t figure a premise, a story that fits. That?s why I?m calling, not for dating advice. I?m trying to figure if he?s for real.?
?Depends on what he thinks. But what his mother thought is probably not possible, even theoretically.?
?Why not??
?Because the limits of human physical capacities are more a matter of genetics than conditioning. Diana Davenport believed that characteristics acquired through conditioning could become part of our genetic makeup, and it just ain?t so. The same theory was once the basis of a series of genetic experiments that turned out to have fraudulent data. Back in the early days of the Soviet Union. Refuting it became part of the foundation of modern genetics. Now we know that evolution is a process of random genetic mutation and survival. You can?t make the species adapt genetically through diet and exercise or anything else besides natural selection.?
?He sure is a strapping specimen,? said Marsha. ?And he could be a good guest even if he is nuts.?
?What?s his body like? Like Schwarzenegger??
?Well, I didn?t see him with his shirt off. But sometimes he seemed bigger, sometimes?not. Anyway, he?s like cut to shreds. He makes Arnold in his prime look fat.?
?Yeah, well Arnie was fat. Is fat. Competitive bodybuilders are fat for most of the year, and they really screw up their bodies. Year round.?
?You think you could examine him? If I said we needed it for the show??
?Well, jeez, Marsh, you could coax me to look at this guy naked, but couldn?t you just ask him to take his clothes off for you? I thought this is a time-honored tradition among producers.?
?Don?t ask. Lawyers are the time-honored tradition now. Besides, I want you to tell me if there?s anything about him physically that marks him as son of Spider Woman. Suppose he really is the strongest, most physically perfect whatever? Anything really remarkable that would fit his story. Something we can say had something to do with his childhood. That your average lusting housewife might not realize unless it were pointed out.?
?Yeah, like the size and strength of that one particular organ of greatest interest to them. You don?t need me for this. The guy says he?s strong? Weightlifting is a competitive sport, the records are a matter of public information. Just see how much he can lift. Or ask him.?
?I can do that, and I will. Just look him over and give me your professional opinion of whether he?s deluded or Ubermensch. Or a fold-out davenport sofa.?

Marsha told Rich the physical exam was a formality required of all prospective guests by the syndicator?s insurance company. By 9:50 a.m. on Thursday, ten minutes early, he was sitting on Regina Farkash's examining table, wearing a standard johnny open to the front as instructed. Regina's manner was cheery and brisk, like service from an airline stewardess. ?Hi, Mr. Davenport, I'm Regina Farkash, I'll be examining you. How are you today??
?Feeling fine.?
?I understand you?re going to be a guest on ?Adair Talks To,? she said. ?They just want to be sure you won?t melt under the lights.?
?Be gentle with me, doctor,? Rich said. ?I?m fragile.?
?Marsha Valerio's a good friend of mine, I?ve done a number of examinations for the show. Parents living??
?Just my dad.?
?I understand your mother was Diana Davenport.?
?That's right.?
?She died of lung cancer, didn't she??
?That?s right. Smoked a pack and a half a day. More when stressed.?
?Do you smoke??
?Never even tried it. My mother tried to make sure I was never in the same room with cigarette smoke. I still avoid it.?
?Any other cancer in your family?? She looked in his in ears, then his eyes. ?Look at the doorknob and close your right eye.?
?Not that I know of.?
?Now your left eye. How about diabetes? Heart disease??
?Nope.?
?Now step onto the center of the scale and stand up straight? Six-four and three quarters, how does that sound??
?Sounds about half an inch high, actually.?
?See that? That?s what happens when you cross the forty-ninth parallel. Now let?s see what you?shit, this thing must be broken.? She hit the digital readout as if scolding it. ?You don't weigh more than three hundred pounds, do you, Mr. Davenport??
?Actually, I do.?
?I don?t think so. We?ll get to that later.? She grabbed her blood pressure cuff. ?I like the old manual sphygmomanometer you pump up by hand, this is probably the last one in New York. What I'm going to do now is ??she pushed his gown sleeve up ? ?shit, I don?t think this is going to work either because of your upper arm development, it won?t fit. If you?ll excuse me, I?ll just ??
?I think it?ll fit down here,? he said, indicating an area near his wrist. ?Nurses and doctors love my veins. You won?t have any trouble getting a reading.?
Holding her stethoscope to the inside crook of his arm and listening, she said ?Your heart sounds like a tom-tom. Good. Now slip off the robe.? She took his pulse at his wrist and looked at her watch. ?You know that old joke about either you?re dead or my watch has stopped? Well, my watch is okay, but you?re dead.? It occurred to Regina that his heart could be enlarged, like a runner?s. ?Could you step over here for a minute? I want to get a chest X-ray.?
His development really was unbelievable, but as she palpated his abdomen, the tough sheath of muscle tissue made it hard to tell what was underneath. ?You?re very muscular. Are you an athlete??
?You mentioned my mother. I think you know fitness and health was her vocation. Mine too. But I don?t compete in anything.?
?Not bodybuilding??
?Especially not bodybuilding,? Rich said. ?Diana would spin in her grave.?
?Your resting heart rate, for a man your size?Do you take any sedatives? Sleep aids? A beta-blocker??
Rich smiled almost audibly. ?No.?
?Amphetamines, SSRI?s, MAOI?s? Antihistamines? Analgesics??
?I don?t take any prescription drugs or controlled substances. No over-the-counter medications. I haven?t even taken an aspirin in a year or so.?
?What about anabolic steroids, diuretics, hormones??
?No steroids. No bodybuilding drugs.?
?Mr. Davenport, this will be just between us. Completely confidential.?
?Not really,? Rich said. ?You're telling Marsha Valerio. But the answer really is no. If I took steroids, I?d be the biggest hypocrite who ever lived. I?d also?break the terms, the legal terms of the trust that provides my living.?
?Well,? she said, ?that?s interesting. Your mother was ahead of her time.? She was smiling frigidly. ?If you?ll excuse me for a moment, I?m going to take a look at your chest X-ray, they should be done with it by now. I?ll be right back in a couple of minutes.? But she didn?t move.
?You know, I may be dead,? Rich said, ?but my weight really does run around three-twenty. A little higher than that, actually.?
?I really don?t see how that?s possible, Mr. Davenport.?
?Honest. I?m extremely dense. Ask my doctor. He weighs me every day.?
?Every day??
?He?s on my training staff.?
Silence. ?Okay, let's just mark it at three-twenty, then.? It really didn?t matter, since? ?Have you ever been weighed in a water displacement tank??
?Yeah, but it?s not very accurate because I have slightly negative buoyancy.?
More silence. ?Well, Mr. Davenport, I don't know about that.? Regina smiled patronizingly. ?I?m not sure that?s actually possible for human beings, since our bodies are mostly water and most of what?s left just can?t have that kind of specific gravity. We?ve got hollow cavities, porous tissues, you know. Doctors aren?t the only ones full of gas. People aren?t made out of rocks. Though you sort of feel like you are.?
?Maybe I?m just different.?
?Maybe. Any allergies??
?Not really.?
?Not really??
?Sometimes in a very dusty room I?ll sneeze. Or on a high pollen day.?
?Shocking,? said Regina, smiling.
More silence.
?Well, like I said, chest X-ray. Back in a few moments.?

Regina went two doors down the hall to her office and quickly phoned a colleague in sports medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital, the popular Leo Ax. ?Damndest thing,? she said. ?I wish you were here and could take a look at this guy I?m examining. He?s got the lowest resting heart rate I?ve ever measured, exactly thirty. But he?s huge. How huge I can?t be sure, because my scale is saying three-twenty and my eyes are telling me two-fifty. He?s six-four. Do those electronic scales lie??
?Try weighing yourself on the same scale??
?Yes, but that just tells me it?s accurate at one-third the weight.?
?What about a BMI??
?We don?t do that. But he appears to be incredibly lean and he says he has negative buoyancy. I explained to him that?s not possible, but??
?Actually, it can occur, I?ve seen neutral buoyancy, or nearly. Just not in guys of his stature. It happens in athletes who look emaciated, like bicyclists and pilots of ultra-light aircraft, and also when starvation is the cause of death.?
?Great.?
? Is he well??
?He appears to be perfectly well, lungs clear, BP, EEG, reflexes all good. His heart sounds like a frigging kettle drum and his coloring is beyond good, it like glows in the dark. But his skeletal muscles are very obtrusive, I couldn?t get anything from palpating his abdomen. His development is really unbelievable.?
?Steroids??
?He says no, and I believe him. For one thing, there?s, no gynecomastia, no shrunken testicles. No pimples, great skin. I should have his complexion. Besides, do you know who Diana Davenport was? This guy is her son.?
?Don?t know her.?
?A famous Adele Davis type, an exercise guru from the sixties. He wouldn?t pollute the body, it?s his cathedral.?
?Is he a professional athlete? If he wants to come up here, I?d love to get him into my database. Does he have a complaint??
?Not really. A TV producer sent him here to confirm his claims about his fitness, which are very extreme.?
?Tell him we can improve his performance in any sport. Or treat any injury with minimal loss of conditioning. At no charge if he?ll join my study.?
?Thanks, Leo.?

Rich Davenport didn?t bother with Leo Ax. Instead, he went to the offices of Adair Talks To at 9:50 the next morning, unannounced. When Marsha arrived at reception he was standing there holding his golf jacket in one hand like a dishrag, looking overwhelming and different: wearing spandex sports tee stretched preposterously to fit him, with sleeves just capping the extreme bulge of his shoulders and ending at the deep muscular division where his biceps and triceps swelled impossibly out. The body of the shirt tapered down from the hugeness of his chest in a long, alpine drop. ?I have to talk to you,? he said. Marsha's throat tightened as she simply gaped at him, unable to look away, feeling fright more than anything else.
?No problem,? she said. It was hard to talk. ?Let's go to my office.? At her desk, with its fresh wound, she looked for something to distract her ? her desk diary ? yet Marsha couldn't get her mind off the breadth, the sweeping curves, the layers of his chest and arms. She felt embarrassed as if he were naked and she were staring. And though he didn't seem outright angry, the idea that he might be annoyed seemed, together with the impression of gigantic but restrained power, to be dangerous. Would he break some more furniture? Break her neck? It was exhilarating and scary, like driving too fast on a mountain road. ?What can I do for you,? she said.
?I called Pam Adair's secretary yesterday after I saw Dr. Farkash,? he said. ?I asked her if you ever require your guests to take physical exams. She said no.?
?Well,?
?I think you just sent me to Dr. Farkash to see if I'm for real.?
She felt as if she were falling off a cliff. ?Rich, to tell you the truth, I thought it might be possible that we would wind up with you doing some kind of physical demonstration for our audience. After all, if you want to rehabilitate your mother's reputation and she made these claims about you, that seemed to me like a viable way to make a good show. Yesterday didn't seem like the right time to mention it, to, you know, push so hard. But we haven't got all that much lead time to put this thing together.?
?Uh-huh.?
?And of course under those circumstances we'd want a physical.?
Rich thought she was probably lying. Marsha and Regina looked the same age and seemed a lot a like. They could be friends from way back. ?Dr. Farkash wanted me to see another doctor. She kept calling me a bodybuilder,? he said.
?Isn't that right??
?Not really,? he said. ?Bodybuilding is pretty much the opposite of what my mother stood for. It's just a matter of muscle size and appearance. Physical fitness really has nothing to do with that. It's a matter of cardiovascular efficiency, flexibility, strength, coordination, body composition. Vital capacity. Work capacity. Endurance. And even that doesn't encompass my mother?s total vision, which goes beyond fitness to something she called physical magnitude.?
?So why do you look like Mr. Universe??
?I don?t. There are bodybuilders whose measurements are bigger than mine, at least what they call cold measurements. But there are lots of reasons I look the way I do. Basically it?s because of what's actually happening to the muscle tissue that is exercised according to my mother?s approach to physical development. She always said I would look muscular. Not muscular like a bodybuilder, muscular like a horse. She wasn?t exactly right, as it turned out. But if you look at competitive weightlifters, rock climbers, people like that, the strongest ones aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest muscles. The muscle tissues themselves are made up of cells shaped like little spindles that increase in number, shape, and size, and they change in both size and shape when we move.? He stopped short, realizing that he was embarking on one of his mother's lectures. ?My muscle cells are smaller, narrower than a bodybuilder's, but there are more of them.?
?Why??
?Because I stress them in a lot of different ways and in the long run a lot more than a bodybuilder, so that eventually as they replicate, they get smaller and crowd together. In cycles: they get larger and more numerous, then get smaller so they can keep producing new cells, then the cells get larger. Sort of. Actually, it's a little different now, so many years after puberty.?
?Are you strong like a weightlifter??
Rich looked around the room. There was no way she could understand about his strength. It was like a dangerous animal that had followed him everywhere as he grew up and got stronger. It got him in trouble when he least expected it. There wasn't a single object in Marsha's office, it seemed, that he hadn't once accidentally broken, a wall that he couldn't put his fist through. No door was locked to him, no one was safe with him, no one could oppose him, and nobody knew it. ?Yes,? he said.
?How strong?? she asked.
?Come with me.?

Rich had asked for a temporary gym membership as a condition of meeting with Adair Talks To, and since his arrival he?d been working out at the mid-town club that Marsha chose for its proximity to the studio. He couldn?t do all the exercises there that he did at home, but he liked it for its seriousness. When they arrived there, he asked for Mr. Lenhardt.
?Rich, how you doin?!?
?Hey, Jocko, this is my friend Marsha from the Adair Talks To show. She?s the person who sent me here. I want to demonstrate some lifts for her, can we go into the gym for a minute??
They followed Lenhardt into the weight room. ?You gonna put this guy on TV?? he asked. ?You should.?
?Maybe,? she said. ?It?s up to him.? There was a mild clatter in the place. It smelled vaguely like a garage. There was almost no one in sight.
?I want to show her a deadlift, Jocko, we?re going to need a lot of weight. Let?s say eight hundred.? They racked the weights onto a bar on the floor. ?Say, Jocko, what?s the current world record for the bench press??
?What day is it? Bench press marks are changing because of these compression shirts that have raised the weights. Guys are talking about the thousand-pound barrier like it?s the four-minute mile. Me, I think they?ll never break a thousand pounds. I also think that the compression shirts do the lifting, so who gives a shit what the record is.?
?Uh huh. Okay, that ought to do it.? Rich gave him a comradely slap on the shoulder. The collegiality of the weight room was a contradiction to him. ?I?ll give you a holler if I need you.?
?Sure thing.?
Once Lenhardt had walked away, Rich hoisted the loaded bar easily into its stand above a weight bench, then lay down beneath it and quickly pressed it five times in succession. Then he sat up. ?That movement is called a bench press,? he said. ?It?s the most popular lift in weight training. It?s used to develop the chest. I could do that movement with a thousand pounds as easily as you could count off the reps, but I don?t think they have a bar here that can accommodate that weight. But like Jocko was saying, a guy about twice my size with a huge supportive abdomen could get on a bench like this and grunt and do an explosive, throwing movement, not the way I just did it, and do it just once, and thrust up nine hundred some odd with the aid of a powerfully elasticized shirt that works like a giant spring, the way a kangaroo?s leg tendons work, enabling it to hop with great speed. And then maybe do it once again twenty minutes later.?
?How much could you bench press? Personal best??
?I don?t know. I don?t do the bench press much. It?s actually not all that useful an exercise to me.?
?Can you lift a car??
?It?s very easy for me to lift the end of a car straight up. I?ve never tried to get under a car and balance it over my head. Why would I want to??
?Could you lift the end of a truck??
?I don?t know. Probably. I don?t want to know.?
?What do you mean, you don?t want to know? Why not??
?My mother used to say that a jungle cat doesn?t know miles per hour and a gorilla doesn?t know weights on a bar, but they know their capacities intuitively. They know in the moment of exertion, and that knowledge is sacred. Natural knowledge.? He got up intending to leave the gym without looking at her. If she wanted to follow him, fine. If not, fine. But then Lenhardt sauntered back with a gleam in his eye.
?Hey, Rich, did you tell her about the thing?
?What thing,? said Rich.
?Yeah, what thing,? said Marsha.
?We had a competitive bodybuilder coming here and Rich broke hurt him in a smackdown yesterday. If his hand is broken, it may be the end of his career. Mine too, my boss wants to fire me.?
?Really?? said Rich.
?Follows this guy around,? said Marsha.
?Nah, not really, it?ll blow over. The guy was completely obnoxious, everyone hated him in the weight room. He broke every rule, bullying, screaming grunts, not wiping up. But he had his gawkers, and my boss thought he was good for business. Believe me, he wasn?t. Rich is twice as built and he?s already got a following after three days.?
?So what happened??
?Well, Rich here won?t tell me exactly, and I?ve got about five different versions so far from other members. But apparently the guy pushed another member off a weight bench and racks this high weight for bench presses, and Rich comes over to him and hefts his weight easily. People are saying you curled it with one hand. Whatever you did, it doesn?t take much with this guy Larry, and he starts with the insults and without waiting tries to sucker punch him in the gut so he can punch him as he doubles over. He?s done this before. Only Rich doesn?t double over, in fact he smiles, and then he catches the guy?s fist in his hand. And squeezes until the bones break, smiling the whole time, with the guy kicking and screaming and calling for the cops. And here?s the one thing everyone agrees on: Rich says to him ?yeah, get the police, all these people saw you assault me and I want to press charges.? I love it.?
?That last part is right. Well, I?ve got to be going. See you around, Jocko,? said Rich, saluting as he left. ?Why don?t you give Marsha a training on me?? But Marsha followed him out and trailed him to his hotel room asking him questions. He wasn't answering.
When they got upstairs, she sat down in a chair next to a desk. ?I don't understand you, Rich,? she said. ?What the hell is your trip? What do you want? Why aren't you famous? What do we have to do to get you on Adair Talks To??
?You know what I use that desk for?? he asked, by way of answer. ?I jump from it, with weights strapped onto my waist. It?s an important exercise. Scientists in the former German Democratic Republic discovered that repetitive jumping from a height produces very important increases in leg strength and endurance. Weighted jumps, nothing else produces their training effect. So I do them with my legs at all different angles, wherever I go. Of course, there's no more German Democratic Republic, so I?m the only person who does them now. You know what else I do? I do them with my arms.? Then he got up on the desk, did a handstand with his knees bent, and landed on the floor on his palms, straightening his legs overhead. ?And you see that bar next to the bathroom door?? he asked, maintaining his handstand position, pointing with one foot. ?I brought that with me. It?s for hanging upside-down, like a bat. Using what used to be called gravity boots. You should see the things I can do upside-down.?
?I?ll bet.?
He swung his legs down and sat down on the bed. ?I don?t know what I want,? he said. ?You know, some bodybuilders get huge and some of them are extremely well built, but it?s all hypertrophy, and that?s not my trip. Some of them aren?t actually healthy. Their weight is too high when they?re not competing, then they deplete their bodies when they do compete so their muscles will show. Powerlifters excel in just one particular kind of strength, the single explosive movement. Mother didn?t believe in competing, and I don?t either.? He stared as if he could see Diana. ?Mother believed you compete only against yourself. She thought that eventually, everyone should be like me. But in the meantime, there?s nobody like me. Anyway,? he said, seeming to rouse himself, ?she thought I?d be more like her idea of the natural man, but I?m not so sure. She saw people going about trussed in their clothes, as she?d say, and eating cooked and processed foods and leading lives in which the usual state of being was stillness, with movement to be avoided. She wanted to liberate me from that. All the exercises she developed are based on various kinds of natural movements, but they really go beyond anything that would occur in nature. So I?m not sure I?m that much more of a natural man than a guy in a suit. But my mother felt trapped by civilization, by all the process and artificiality. She was bulimic, you know. That?s why she was so thin. She craved junk foods, yet it represented everything she hated. She freed me from that, all right.?
?You must?ve been so isolated,? Marsha said. ?What did your friends think??
?Didn?t have many. None to speak of, really. I was educated mostly at home. For a while I wanted to go to a public school, but it only lasted a couple of years. The principal called her in once and said I was intimidating the other students. I?m not sure it really happened, but if it did I don?t think it was as big a deal as she made it. But Diana was glad for the excuse to get me out again.?
?How young were you when you started training?? asked Marsha. Now she was getting somewhere.
?Very young. Not yet five. The literature says that you can?t accomplish much training at that age, but Mother did. She just knew it had to be handled differently. Teaching the muscles and the mind, she said. I remember?strange thing. I would bring her props on the show sometimes and I knew what the deal was when I was really young, I knew someday soon I?d start training. And I remember the first thing that happened when I did, actually the day before I started, Mother told me about the pain I would have, how I would ache and feel I couldn?t do more but that I would have to do more, would have to know I could do more. She was like a coach, a priest, a mystic almost. The first few days I felt so sick to my stomach, so nauseous, I was sure I?d throw up and be ashamed of the mess. And I cried, and I didn?t want her to see me crying. That made it worse. I didn?t want to do it, I wanted to run away." Marsha saw there were tears in his eyes. ?But you know, instead of comforting me, she talked to me with joy in her voice, saying I must learn to love the nausea, love the pain, learn always to recognize the difference between pain that would hurt me and pain that would make me stronger.? A tear escaped his eye and he brushed it away. He seemed completely without self-consciousness. ?She was right, of course. But she never once told me she was proud of me, you know. Strange woman.?
This was great stuff. ?What about your father?? she asked. ?Was he there for you??
?One of my mother's very close friends was an exercise physiologist who was an employee of the show,? said Rich. ?Mother?s ideas were her own, but he helped her with the science involved. He?s almost eighty now, but he still works with me on my training ideas. He?s still on my payroll. I think he was my biological father.?
?You think?? Unbelievable.
?Well, you know that Diana told the press she would be father and mother to me, and she really believed that. We never thought of him as my actual father. I think she also wanted to be sure that all her money would be mine without spousal entanglements, as she put it. But I like him, we?re good friends.?
A trust fund baby with a body like that. Marsha flashed on the idea of rough sex with Rich Davenport. Could be dangerous, but then, what a way to go.
?Tell me,? said Marsha. ?You're so much stronger than a powerlifter. If what you tell me is true. Have you got a better build than a bodybuilder??
He snorted. ?I don't know,? he said, ?ask a bodybuilder.? With utter dispassion he pulled his shirt off over his head as Marsha sat agape and worked at retaining her composure. ?Basically, they talk about size, proportion, and symmetry of the muscles. It seems to go in fads, but size is always the main concern. There's the matter of how well defined the muscles are, and what they call density, which really isn?t density by my mother?s standards. Now, you can see what's meant by definition ? ? with a generalized, sweeping gesture, he indicated from his chest to his waist ? ?the visible separations between muscles. In some muscles, the fibers are actually defined within the muscle itself.? He indicated the valley between his pectorals, with its taut corrugations. ?Proportion, my proportions are somewhat different than most bodybuilders, because, because each muscle has an origin and an insertion where it attaches to bone, and my origins and insertions tend to be somewhat smaller, flat and attenuated, because of the way my muscle fibers have been developed.?
?What the fuck does that mean??
?It means my muscles taper more at the ends where they attach to bone. They?re smaller there, which is good, as far as a bodybuilder is concerned, because it makes the shape more, you know. It makes the rest of the muscle look bigger, rounder.?
?There?s nowhere where your muscles are small.?
?Actually, I believe that the biggest bodybuilders are bigger than I am.?
?Well, I don't believe that.?
?That is, when relaxed. You see, what gives them their size is not just the amount of muscle they've built up, or the tone of the muscle, but the fact that it?s always engorged with blood to some degree. That?s what they mean by pumping up. That's why they're bigger after a workout. You see, when the muscle performs work, when it moves against resistance to produce force, the fibers contract, they actually get shorter, and at the same time they get fatter, filling with blood. It's easiest to see here ?? he extended his left arm and ran his finger along the torpedo-shaped extended bicep, and then flexed ? ?see what happens?? The muscle sprang into a kind of eruption, higher and rounder, striated. Marsha was getting used to staring and believing what she saw. Then the strangeness of it all would hit her all over again. ?The muscle fibers contract and the muscle itself gets shorter ?? he continued to gesture without apparent effort or concern ? ?even though the volume of the muscle grows. The muscle fibers are more engorged with blood at this point. That's what makes flexed muscles hard, the same reason as an erection.? He was calmly using himself as a chart and comparing the act of flexing his bicep to getting a hard-on. ?My development,? he continued, ?it?s different than your typical bodybuilder?s. But instead of it being more like a powerlifter?s, where flexing makes less of a difference in size, with me it makes more of a difference in size.? He extended and flexed his arm rapidly three or four more times. ?See??
It looked like he was inflating his bicep, which curled like a peaking wave as it grew. Watching it with the blank curiosity of a little girl, Marsha reached out and, without asking first or understanding her action, cupped the amazing muscle in both hands. It turned out to be hard as a rock. Hard as a rock, engorged with the blood of Rich Davenport. ?There's no bodybuilding title you couldn't have,? she said.
?I doubt that,? he said.
?It looks like you have more different muscles than a bodybuilder. All over, thousands of them.?
?We all have the same number of skeletal muscles, give or take, five hundred or so, depending on how you count. But I know what you mean. They?re highly differentiated on me. That doesn?t mean I could compete with a bodybuilder.?
?Sure it does.?
?And there?s posing. It?s very difficult, it actually takes the effort of pushing against resistance to make muscle contract without exerting force. You not only have to make a good impression with the way you move, but you've also got to flex hard enough to get your muscles to be their biggest. That's tougher for me. I'd have to flex three or four times just to show off any given muscle. Plus the fact that it gives me the creeps. Diana used to say it was sheer display, sheer narcissism. Did you ever see an animal in the wild posing??
She snorted. ?You?d blow anybody else off the stage,? she said.
?I guess,? he said. ?I don't know. Sometimes I have the urge to come out into the public. That?s really why I came down here, I guess. But when I think out the possibilities, I always change my mind. My mother always expected me to be a public figure, I know that.?
Marsha now believed she was sitting on a hotel bed next to the strongest, most perfectly developed man who had ever lived, he without his shirt on, she quite aroused. ?What about girls?? she asked.
?Well, what about them??
?You know what I mean,? she said. ?Are you married? Engaged? Do you even like girls? Do you prefer boys??
?God,? he said. ?How do I explain this.?
?Boys, or some fetish. Never mind. You don't have to talk about it if it?s embarrassing, or anything.?
?It?s not that. Actually, the whole sex thing is a perfect example of the larger problem. My mother wanted my life to be a kind of exemplar to be learned from, but by making me different, it?s done the opposite in some ways. I can?t socialize in ways that lead to natural relationships and physical intimacy, the ways that a therapist would say are healthy. I?m too different. And then, if I were to try to be intimate with someone, I could hurt my partner. I?ve sort of given up on the whole idea. So where does that leave all her ideas about benefiting humankind and healthy living? A celibate life that dies with me??
?You?re a fucking virgin??
?Well, no, I don?t think of it that way. I just haven?t had sexual relations with another person. You see, testosterone is extremely important to muscle growth, and rather than find artificial ways of maintaining high levels of regulating it, Mother wanted me to?well?she had at least a theory about everything. You could say that having a sufficient number of orgasms has always been part of my training regimen. The literature is not clear on this.?
?You mean you were under orders from your own mother to go into the bathroom and jerk off into a hankie a certain number of times a week?? Funny, Marsha had worried about embarrassing him. Why should anything in the world be embarrassing to this man? She thought of apologizing for her crack, but the person behind those muscles couldn?t possibly be hurt by words, right?
Apparently not. ?You know,? he said, ?Masters and Johnson found no physiological differences between the orgasms men had in intercourse and those they had when masturbating. Except that the ones they had masturbating were somewhat more intense.?
?Believe me,? she said. ?There is a very big difference.? Then she stood up and faced him, placing her hands on the perfectly arched masses of deltoid muscle defining his shoulders, and kissed him hard.
Surprisingly ? or maybe not ? for someone who claimed to have no sexual experience, Rich Davenport was a very good kisser. He certainly wasn?t afraid to go for it. But then, what could he possibly be afraid of?
The concrete, vivid presence of Rich Davenport?s bigness was overwhelming Marsha, and she virtually tore off her own clothes in her eagerness to tear into his sheer size. He was a wall, a vehicle, a monument of muscles under her groping hands. When he was very stiff she locked him in an embrace and said ?hold me tighter than that. Yes. Tell me something.?
?Yes??
She released him. ?How easily could you kill me right now??
?What??
?Could you kill me if you wanted to??
?Sure. But I don?t.?
?How easily??
?Very easily.? He spoke gently, perhaps indifferently, perhaps remembering something distant.
?Tell me the ways.?
Now they were lying full length. Rich had one arm around her shoulders and stroked her hair with his other hand. His pants were still around his ankles, soon to be kicked off. ?Well, I could strangle you. I could strangle you with one hand by grabbing your neck.?
?More.?
?I could break your neck. I could break your spine anywhere you like.?
?More.?
?I could smash your brains with one punch to your forehead. Or squeeze your skull like a vise. I could do that with one hand, cracking it in a pattern that would baffle the experts on CSI like I did to that asshole Larry?s hand at the gym. You want me to try it??
?Another way.? Marsha was almost gasping.
?I could suffocate you by embracing you so hard that you couldn?t breathe. Like a boa constrictor.?
?Oh, God, Rich, you know what? I want you to hold me tighter and tighter until I tell you to stop. Okay? Keep getting tighter until I tell you to stop. Make me almost stop breathing.? She was with the strongest man in the world and he was giving her his incredible body, the fullness of its strength. And for about five seconds, it was all that she had ever wanted.
Then Rich said, ?I?m sorry, I have to stop. I can never let myself go. I could hurt you.?
?Never you mind that,? she said, climbing on top of him and grabbing his erect dick. ?You just leave it to me and don?t worry about a thing.?

Marsha got up and gathered up her clothes while Rich lay on the bed without his. Naked, clothed, it didn?t seem to make any difference to him. Why should it? Until that moment, it hadn?t occurred to Marsha to be embarrassed about her own body, but now she hurried her clothes on, then went into the bathroom and took them off again to clean up. She wasn't overweight or anything? in fact, she took better care of herself than most of the guys she knew. But still ? as she emerged, she stood in the doorway looked at him there on the bed, one arm up over his head, one arm down by his side, one leg bent, staring upward. Completely relaxed, the natural man, not one inch of him that wasn?t incised by coiled muscle, and he?d just been with a woman for the first time. Maybe.
?You better shower off,? said Marsha. ?You?re messy.?
?I will.?
?We?ve got to think about what we want to do for the show,? she said.
?I?m not sure I want to do anything for the show,? Rich said.
?What do you mean??
?I?m not sure about the whole idea,? he said.
?Are you kidding? You?re made for television. You?re why television was fucking invented. We?ll do a great show around you. We could spin this about a million different ways.? Actually, Rich could be somebody?s ticket. Maybe hers.
?Well, what?s the point? You asked me what I wanted to do with the show and I don?t really know. I don?t really know what Diana would have wanted with it. I?m not Diana and I?m not what she expected. The experiment was successful, but success wasn?t like she thought it would be. It turned out to be a dead end.?
?No, no, you?re wrong. Trust me, going on a talk show can be a very big opportunity. Lots of people see you. Television people. Talent agents. Promoters. Isn?t bodybuilding an industry?"
?Fuck that,? said Rich.
Yeah, right, fuck that. There were about a million things he could do without someone taking a percentage to let him do it. ?You know, you could have your own show. Be Diana's successor. More than that. Exercise, nutrition, way of life.?
?I don't know.?
?What about acting? You could put every action hero out of business.?
?Nah. Why should I? Hollywood sucks, and I?ve got my privacy as things are.?
?Rich, you?re sitting on a gold mine. You are a gold mine. But the gold has no value unless you take the trouble to go and get it out there.?
?I don't need more money,? he said.
What about power? Didn?t he want to reach people, to change the world? Have really big money, not just enough money? The endorsements alone could mean millions if they were handled right. Marsha imagined Rich with the most beautiful beach house in Malibu, the object of tabloid speculation. ?You should come to California,? she said. ?Live on the beach.?
?Nah. I like it fine where I am.?
So close, so close. But Rich Davenport was probably not her ticket, probably not anybody's ticket, probably not even coming on Adair Talks To. ?Then why did you come down here?? she asked. ?To get laid? You didn't have to come this far.?
He laughed. ?No.?
?You were never going to come onto Adair Talks To, were you??
?I thought maybe I would,? he said. Then he laughed. ?Not to get laid. I think more to get noticed. Every so often, I want to.? Naked, he got up and walked to the bathroom. He could not have looked more perfect or more at ease. ?I will say this. The moment I met you, I knew I?d found someone who would do me without my having to move a muscle.? After he?d showered, he came back and stood in the doorway with the towel in his hand, as he?d held his golf jacket that morning. ?You know, I?ve been in therapy a few times. One psychiatrist told me that there?s nothing wrong with a little healthy showing off. The trouble is, Diana didn't agree with that.?
?Rich,? said Marsha, ?I?ve got a news flash for you. Diana Davenport is dead.?
?Not yet,? he said. ?I?m still working on that. When she?s dead, I?ll give Pam Adair?s secretary a call.?
Marsha looked those incredible muscles up and down one last time before leaving. ?Not Pam?s secretary,? she said. ?You call me direct.?

FontsFonts

[ts1976]

Oh wow! This was brilliant!

Are you planning on continuing?

[tortolis]

thanks. I don't have plans for returning to this character, but I have a couple of other starts that I could work on.

[howardbeatman]

I meant WOW and I said WOW

[mlbjock]

That's a shame. This is a wonderfully new twist on the concept of muscle perfection and strength. I can't think of anything quite like it.

Regardless, I look forward to your next work.

Originally Posted by tortolis

thanks. I don't have plans for returning to this character, but I have a couple of other starts that I could work on.

[lestertabey]

A clever plot and the mechanics of composition, usage, etc. are extraordinarily well done. Thanks.