Do No Harm

Chapter 10

The men with their tattoos and glistening muscles worked among the weight machines, pretending not to notice the onlookers, who clustered with their Muscle Beach T-shirts, shooting pictures and herding children. The first weight of dusk had settled through the air, but storefront lights illuminated the men through the chain-link fences that set the weight area apart from the Venice Boardwalk and the beach beyond.

Clyde watched from the anonymity of the crowd, a face among other faces, another body sweating in the August night. He had only recently begun to emerge from his apartment again, and he still found the brief stirrings of breeze to be invasive. Inside the pen, a bald man with a pointed goatee and two hoop earrings broke protocol, turning to the onlookers and spreading his massive arms wide. The prongs of his triceps gripped the undersides of his arms like claws. The crowd erupted with noise; cameras flashed.

Clyde looked down at his own arms. White and fleshy. In front of him, an overweight little boy with a cardboard-stiff baseball cap pushed up on tiptoes. Kobe Bryant slam-dunked in faded purple and yellow on the back of his T-shirt. The boy's hands, red and sticky with the remnants of some summertime snack, pushed and clutched at the shirts in front of him, leaving colored smudges.

An enormous black man lined large metal disks on each side of a weight bar until it bowed under the weight. He sat on the edge of the bench press, crossing his arms in front of him. The crack of his shoulders was audible even over the noise of the crowd. He leaned back, taking the bar from the cradle, bringing it to his chest, and hammering it back up in the air with triumphant grunts.

Standing in the crowd, a face among faces, Clyde watched the man labor and imitated his grunts, softly at first, then growing louder. He didn't realize he could be overheard until a blonde in front of him turned, eyes aglitter with sparkling makeup, and stifled a giggle with a hand. He looked quickly away from her eyes, staring silently at the gum-dotted pavement, and she whispered something to a friend before turning her attention back to the muscular men. Clyde's hand found the key around his neck, his thumb working it over like a rabbit's foot.

Gradually, his eyes lifted from the pavement, studying first the blonde's straw-bottomed clog that raised her foot so her ankle flexed, then the split sheath of her capri pant leg, which embraced the pink cylinder of her calf. Her bottom, firm and rounded, protruded abruptly from beneath her blouse. He leaned forward until he could smell her hair spray. He leaned forward until he was pushing up against her full behind, a face among faces in the press of a crowd.

Her thin shoulder blade pushed back ever so slightly into his soft chest as she jockeyed for space, not yet aware that his jostling was directed. Ahead, the weights clinked against each other; the men strained and flexed. His breathing quickened, taking on a faint groaning. Her neck firmed with realization. Her head started to pivot, slowed with shock.

Before the eyes could reach him, Clyde turned and pushed through the crowd, head lowering on the wide stalk of his neck, hands sinking into his pockets. People spread and closed behind him.

"Fucking pervert!" she yelled from somewhere in the crowd. She yelped, a short hiccup of disgust and fear. "You fucking sicko! Goddamn it!"

Clyde left the lights of the boardwalk behind and threaded through the darkening streets and alleys. The ocean breeze had left a staleness on everything-cardboard boxes slumping curbside, rusting hoods of abandoned cars, the soft, rotting wood around doorjambs. He slid his thumb across his filmy fingertips, the motion growing quicker and quicker until his hand was a blur.

He stepped onto Main Street and joined a current of people at a crosswalk. An old blue Civic had pulled too far into the intersection, blocking the crosswalk, and the woman sat foolishly at the wheel as the stream of pedestrians split around her car. His footsteps grew firmer as he approached, the bustle of people flowing all around him. With a grimace, he altered his step when he reached the car.

His hand flew forward, smashing palm down on the blue hood. The woman jerked back in her seat. He stood perfectly still, leaning toward the windshield, glowering, the front license plate hitting him midshin. Fear replaced shock in the woman's face, and she opened her mouth, but then caught a closer look at his red-rimmed eyes, the angry heaving of his chest. Her mouth dangled open, like that of a broken doll's.

The crowd continued to move around the car, people glancing and then moving on or not even noticing him at all. And suddenly he was gone, a dying whisk of movement, the sweaty imprint of his hand slowly evanescing from the metal of the hood.

Hurwitz, Gregg

Do No Harm (2002)