A Taste We Almost Missed

Henri is forty-four years old, and he has been watching Bret bench press for close to twenty years now. He knows the routine by heart. Bret, forty-three, associate professor of classics, shows up at the gym on Tuesdays and Fridays, drops his bag by the squat rack like he owns the place, and does his warmup sets while pretending he doesn't need a spot.

Henri spots him anyway. That's the job. He's a trainer at a private gym in Eastwick, has been for eleven years, and spotting a guy who pays membership like everyone else isn't unusual. But he always makes sure the schedule puts him near the free weights on Tuesdays and Fridays, and he doesn't examine why too closely.

"Come on, you're stalling," Henri says, standing behind the bench. "Wrists are good. Go."

Bret pushes the bar up, unracks it, and lowers the weight slow and controlled. He counts his reps under his breath, which Henri finds funny. Grown man, doctorate, ten years of publish-or-perish behind him, and he still counts out loud like a kid at summer camp.

"Four," Bret says, breath coming out hard. "Five."

Henri watches his face while he works. There's a specific look Bret gets at rep six, lips parted, a little line between his eyebrows, and Henri has thought, not for the first time and probably not for the last, that his friend has a mouth he'd like to test. He's thought it since they were both in their twenties. He keeps it filed away the way you keep a lottery ticket in a drawer. No harm in holding it, no point in expecting anything.

"Seven," Bret grunts.

"You've got two more in you."

"Please don't tell me what I've got in me."

Henri grins at the ceiling lights. "That came out wrong."

"You did that on purpose." Bret racks the bar with a clang and sits up, wiping his face with the towel around his neck. "You're in a mood today."

"I'm always in a mood. You just notice on Tuesdays."

"Eight," Bret says, lying back down for his last set, because of course he does. "Nine. Ten." He racks it again and stays flat on the bench for a second, staring up. "Okay. That's me done. I'm dead. Write it on my file."

"You've got lats, though," Henri says, and then wants to bite his own tongue off.

Bret lifts his head. "Excuse me?"

"Your lats. They've filled out since spring. Whatever you've been doing, it's working."

"I've been doing nothing. I've been grading." He sits up properly. "Are you complimenting my back?"

"I'm a trainer. I notice backs. It's occupational."

"Uh huh." Bret stands and takes his water bottle. "You want to get a drink later? Murray's working."

"Sure," Henri says, because he always says sure, and he goes anyway.

***

The Muddle is half empty at eight on a Tuesday, which suits all three of them fine. Murray, forty-one, is behind the bar wiping down glasses even though there's nothing to wipe. He dated Henri for about four months when they were in their late twenties, Henri twenty-nine and Murray twenty-six, and it ended the way a loaf of bread ends. Nobody was mad. They just finished.

"You two look like a sandwich board ad for middle age," Murray says, pouring them each a beer before they order. "Come in, sit down, sigh about your backs."

"My back is excellent," Henri says.

"His back is excellent," Bret agrees, taking the stool in the corner.

"See, this is what I mean. You finish each other's sentences about spines. Twenty years of this." Murray sets the glasses down and shakes his head, but he's smiling. "I've watched this show since before it was in syndication."

Henri changes the subject, mostly because Bret has a paper deadline and will complain about it otherwise, and for an hour it's ordinary. The tap room noise, a couple of grad students arguing about something at the far table, Murray telling a story about a customer who tried to pay with a two-dollar bill and a promise. Then the grad students leave, and the bar gets quiet, and Murray starts closing out the till, and the beers have been coming at a steady rate.

"Hey," Henri says, before he can stop himself. "I had a dream about you once."

Bret looks up from his glass. "A dream."

"A dream."

"What kind of dream?" Murray asks from the register, not even pretending not to listen.

"The kind you have about people," Henri says. He can feel his ears going warm, which is ridiculous at his age. "A while ago."

"How long ago?" Bret asks. He's turned on his stool now, body angled toward Henri, and he doesn't look amused. He looks interested. That's worse.

"I don't remember exactly. Years."

"Years." Bret sets his glass down. "You've known me for almost twenty years and you've had a dream about me and you're mentioning it now, at closing, on a Tuesday."

"The timing felt right."

"It didn't." Bret picks the glass back up. "Tell me the dream."

"No."

"Why not? I'm asking."

"Because it's a dream, Bret. It doesn't mean anything. Dreams don't mean anything, that is the entire deal with them. Your brain just runs the dishwasher."

Murray makes a small sound that he covers with a cough.

"It meant something to you," Bret says. "You're forty-four years old and you just turned red telling me you had it. So tell me the dream."

Henri looks at his beer. There's about a finger left in it. He could tell him. It wouldn't even be a hard story. In the dream they were in Bret's kitchen, the one with the bad window over the sink, and Bret had been doing dishes, and nothing happened except that Henri stood close behind him and Bret leaned back into him without turning around, and that was the whole dream, just that, standing there, and Henri had woken up at his own kitchen table with his coffee gone cold and had thought about it for a week.

He could say all of that. Instead he says, "It was about your car."

"My car."

"You were detailing your car and you asked me to hold a sponge."

Murray loses it behind the register. He laughs so hard he has to grip the counter. "A sponge. Henri. A sponge."

"It was a very detailed dream. There was a sponge, and a bucket, and you told me I was holding the sponge wrong."

"I don't even wash my own car," Bret says. "I don't own a bucket. I've never in my life asked anyone to hold a sponge."

"Like I said. The brain runs the dishwasher."

Bret looks at him for a moment, and there's something working behind his face, some math he's doing. Henri has seen him do that face over student papers and over the one time somebody tried to shortchange Murray in front of him. It's the face he makes before he decides something.

"Okay," Bret says finally. "Sponge dream. Sure." He finishes his beer and stands, pulling his wallet out. "Murray, whatever he owes, I've got it."

"You don't have to," Henri starts.

"I know." Bret drops cash on the bar. "Tuesday and Friday, right? You'll be there?"

"I'm always there."

"Right." Bret pulls his jacket on. "Night, Murray. Night, sponge guy."

He's out the door before Henri can say anything else. Henri sits there with his empty glass, listening to Murray stack the till.

"You know what I don't get," Murray says. "You've been carrying this around since before I met either of you. One conversation. That's all it's ever been. One."

"He's my best friend."

"Yeah," Murray says. "I know. I was there." He takes the glass out of Henri's hand and gives him a look that Henri doesn't quite know how to read. "Go home, Henri. Think about it some more. That's your move, right? Thinking about it?"

Henri walks home past the used bookstore under his apartment, the lights off in the window, the smell of old paper coming up the stairwell. He lies in bed and does not think about the kitchen or the dishes or leaning. He thinks about lats.

He thinks about lats for a long time.

On Friday Bret shows up at the gym at nine at night, twenty minutes after Henri has flipped the sign to closed. Henri is wiping down the benches when the bell over the door goes and there he is, standing in the doorway in a hoodie like he's robbing the place.

"You're closed," Henri says.

"I can see that." Bret steps in anyway. "I need a recovery session."

"At nine at night?"

"Your hours say you close at nine."

"My hours say I close at nine, not that I give deep tissue work at nine."

Bret sits down on the nearest bench, which is a squat rack bench, wrong height entirely, and looks at Henri. "I slept wrong. My shoulder has been a rock since Tuesday. I looked it up, and apparently foam rolling is a scam, and you're the only person I trust to tell me what's a scam."

"So this is a medical consultation."

"This is a friend asking a friend."

Henri looks at him. Forty-three years old, associate professor of classics, sitting on gym equipment like it's a park bench. Henri has watched him bench press for close to twenty years and never once had him on a table.

"Fine. Ten minutes. Lie down."

Henri gets the table ready while Bret pulls the hoodie off. Under it is the t-shirt he always wears to the gym on Tuesdays and Fridays, gray, washed to nothing. Henri has spent eleven years here being professional about that shirt. He puts his hands on Bret's shoulder and starts working the muscle and Bret makes a sound like he's been waiting for it all week.

"Okay," Bret says into the face cradle. "Okay, that's, yeah."

"Your traps are made of rope. You carry your stress like a coat."

"I carry my stress like a person who grades forty papers a week."

Henri works down the shoulder, across the top of the back. He is telling himself to keep it clinical. Count the strokes. Stay off the spine. It's his own rule, the one he's kept for eleven years, and he breaks it for the first time when his hand slides lower than the shoulder needs and Bret doesn't say anything. Just breathes. So Henri does it again.

"You're good at this," Bret says, muffled.

"It's the job."

"No, I know. I mean you're good at it. How long has it been since you did this for me?"

"Never."

"Never?" Bret turns his head, which is hard in the cradle, so it comes out as more of a twist. "Twenty years and you never once worked on me?"

"You never asked."

"Whose fault is that?"

Henri's hands stop. The room is very quiet, just the hum of the treadmill nobody's on. "Yours, probably," he says, and starts again, lower, between the shoulder blades, and Bret's whole back moves with one long breath.

They go to the diner on Colton after, because it's the only place that does eggs at ten. Bret orders a scramble and Henri gets the same thing he always gets, and somewhere in the middle of the food Bret puts his fork down.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You're going to anyway."

"The dream. The real one."

Henri cuts his eggs. "There's one dream."

"Henri."

"It was your kitchen. The one with the bad window over the sink." He says it to the plate, because it's easier than saying it to Bret's face. "You were doing dishes. That's it. Nothing happened. I stood behind you and you leaned back a little, that was the whole thing."

Bret is quiet long enough that Henri finally looks up. He doesn't look weirded out. He looks like he's doing the math face again.

"Nothing happened," Bret says.

"In the dream, no."

"And you sat on that for years."

"I sat on it for years, yes."

Bret picks his fork back up and eats a bite of scramble. Then he says, casual as a weather report, "I've never been with a man."

Henri's fork stops too. "Okay."