Tunnel Vision

50

This would be a night to remember for Billy—one he’d mark the calendar from. Breaking his own personal best.

He had converted his garage to a home gym, adding a rack of free weights, two benches, one tilted, one that lay flat. He also had a used Cybex machine for his back and shoulders.

He still belonged to the local health club, but he liked having his own workout space where he could do his routines without a lot of other people around. In fact, he preferred to work out alone. His wife was visiting her parents in Albany, so he had the place to himself and could pump in peace and quiet. His hope tonight was pushing his bench press to the next plateau.

Billy was proud of how his upper body was bulking up. He was doing forty-pound curls and seventy-pound shrugs. But he had to work on his chest. He wanted bigger, chiseled pecs like some athletes and movie stars. And the way to do it was to bench regularly and increase his maximum, which meant finding the weakest part of his lift and focusing on that.

His weakest was at hoisting the weight off his chest, so he’d concentrate on lifting the bar no more than six inches. Workout videos recommended going slowly, bringing the bar negative all the way and not cheating by bouncing off the pecs. His goal was to get ripped for the beach now that summer was here. His favorite uncle was a lawyer who owned a place on Martha’s Vineyard where he and his wife stayed for a week every July.

He warmed up at two hundred and forty, doing three sets fairly easily. After a rest and some water, he did a set at two sixty. That went well, and he felt strong. So strong that he slipped another two ten pounds on each end of the barbell, bringing the total to two eighty—twenty pounds higher than his max. Yes, he was pushing it, but all he wanted was one full lift to break his record.

He planted his feet firmly on either side of the bench, then raised his arms and gripped the bar as it sat in the spotter stand. This was more weight than he had pushed, and he was aware of the effort to hold it in place at arm’s length. So much of bodybuilding was in the head. The trick was to be totally in the moment, to focus on particular muscles to take to the next level.

Toward that end, he turned off his cell phone, dimmed the lights, and inserted earplugs to block ambient noise—cars going up the street, dogs barking, planes overhead. So as he lay on the bench, gripping the bar, he concentrated like a laser on his pectorals, tuning out everything else until he became those muscles.

He closed his eyes in total concentration, feeling his arms extend, his pecs harden. As the training videos said, he imagined a stronger, more powerful Billy. He imagined himself leaving his own body and entering his ideal body.

As he pressed shut his eyes, Billy thought, Strong. Powerful. He thought, I can do this. I am my all-muscle self.

He adjusted his grip on the cross-hatchings until he was fully comfortable. He lifted the bar from the spotter above his face, feeling the full exertion, then lowered it to his chest, where he let it rest a moment.

When he was fully psyched, he pushed with all his might to raise the bar to full extension, where his bones would lock in place. His arms shook as the blood swelled his arms and shoulders and bulged the arteries along the sides of his neck.

Just as he reached that position, a voice cut through the earplugs.

“Billy.”

His eyes opened as his heart nearly burst from his chest.

In the dim light, he saw a reflection in the mirrored wall at his feet—a dark figure standing directly behind his head. “Wha-wha-wha,” was all Billy could say.

Then he heard a whispery voice mutter something else.

But before it registered, his arms collapsed to his sides, slamming the bar onto the ridge of his nose and eyes, then rolling down his face to rest on the soft pocket of his neck.

It happened in such a violent blur that he could barely process that the bar was crushing his windpipe, pressing impossibly hard toward the floor, instantly cutting air from his lungs and blood to his brain.

He could not scream. He could not see for the blood flooding his eye sockets. He could not breathe.

He thrashed with his arms and bucked with his hips, but the bar weighted impossibly against his throat, pinning him to the bench. And the more he struggled, the more his brain dimmed and the strength seeped out of his muscles.

In the microsecond of awareness, he tried to see the face of his killer, but he was not even certain anyone was there or if the figure was in his head. It made no difference, because night filled his brain, and the next moment he was dead.