The Evening Trainer

So here's how I started my new job: arguing with a man I hadn't seen in twenty years, over a door.

But let me back up.

My name is Stacey Klein. I'm forty-two years old, and until three weeks ago my resume read like a cautionary tale. Fifteen years as a strength and conditioning coach. Two pro athletes I helped rebuild from surgery. One regional reputation. Then a scandal at my last position that I did not cause, thank you very much, but which stuck to me like gum on a shoe anyway. Nobody hires the trainer from the headline. Even when the headline is wrong.

Then Westbrook Academy called. Private boarding school, empty for a two-week intersession break, and they wanted someone to build their athletic program from the ground up. The new fitness center had just been renovated. Big budget. Serious equipment. A blank slate.

I said yes before the woman on the phone finished her sentence.

I drove up on a Monday, hung my whistle on the door of my little office in the athletics wing, and felt something I hadn't felt in two years. Pride. Clean, simple pride.

Then I walked down to the fitness center and found the door locked.

* * *

Okay, doors get locked. This is a school. I went back to my office, found the key request form, filled it out, and took it to the facilities office like a professional.

The facilities office is in the admin building, second floor, and the man behind the desk looked up at me and I looked down at him and we both had the same moment. That little pause where the past lands on you like a dropped book.

"Stacey Klein," Davey Lynch said.

"Davey Lynch."

He's forty-four now. Gray at the temples, still built like someone who does real work with his hands, which I suppose he does. Grounds and facilities manager. Twenty years ago he was the top seed at the state qualifier and I was the nobody who beat him in straight sets in the semifinal. He did not take it well. He called my win luck in the press area, loudly, where I could hear it. I called him a sore loser, also loudly. It was a whole thing.

And now he held the keys to my weight room.

"You're the new hire," he said.

"Looks that way." I put the form on his desk. "I need access to the fitness center. Coach orientation starts Thursday and I can't program anything if I can't see the equipment."

He picked up the form. Read it slow. Put it down.

"I'll get to it."

"Get to it when? Thursday is two days out."

"Facilities has a queue, Stacey. Intersession means maintenance windows. You're not the only request."

Fine. Reasonable, even. I said I understood and asked when. He said soon. I said could he give me a time. He said he'd email me. I waited for the email.

It didn't come.

* * *

Wednesday morning I went down to the fitness center on my own, key card in hand, and the card reader blinked red at me. My access hadn't been provisioned. I walked the hallway to the old gym annex instead, thinking I could at least measure the space, and that door was locked too. That one I hadn't even requested. It just happened to be on my way out.

So back up the stairs I went. Second time in two days. Davey was on the phone when I came in, and he held up a finger at me. I leaned on the doorframe and waited, and I'll admit I used the time to get good and irritated.

He hung up. "Stacey."

"Davey. Funny thing about doors."

"Is it."

"My card doesn't work. The weight room is locked. The annex is locked. My orientation is tomorrow and right now I could not show a coach where the water fountain is."

He leaned back in his chair. "Card provisioning goes through IT, not me."

"Who filed the work order for my card?"

Silence. A short one, but I caught it.

"I've been swamped," he said. "It's on my list."

"Davey." I pulled the chair up next to his desk and sat down, which surprised him a little, I think. "I know what a queue looks like. This isn't one. You've had my form for two days. You looked right at it. So let's skip to the part where you tell me what your problem actually is."

"My problem is your program."

"Excuse me?"

"The renovation budget came out of the athletics capital line. The board signed off on it because the search committee promised a competitive rebuild. That's you. So now the drainage project on the south field gets pushed to next fiscal year, my crew works around your delivery schedule, and the annex is being used as your storage space whether I agreed or not."

Well. At least it was honest.

"That's not my call," I said. "That's the board."

"You're the reason for it."

"I'm the reason the board spent money? Davey, I got hired three weeks ago. I didn't even know this school existed eight weeks ago."

"Doesn't change the math."

"No. It doesn't change the math. It changes whose door you get to lock, though. Which is mine. Which brings me to something, actually, since we're being honest."

He crossed his arms. "By all means."

"The last time you had power over whether I got to compete, you didn't handle it well either."

That landed. I watched it land.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"State qualifier. Twenty years ago. You were the one seed. I was twenty-two and unranked. Twenty-two and unranked. I beat you in straight sets and you stood in the corridor afterward and told anyone who'd listen that I'd gotten a lucky draw. You spent that whole tournament making sure I got the worst court assignments, the worst warm-up slots, the latest match times. I remember. I kept a journal, Davey. I was twenty-two, I kept a journal about everything."

"That's a stretch."

"It's a memory. There's a difference. And here's the part that interests me. You've spent twenty years telling that story as luck. I've spent twenty years telling it as work. And the funny thing is, you lock my door either way."

His face went through something. I watched his jaw work. And then his voice came out and it wasn't steady, and that surprised me more than anything else he'd done.

"You want to know what I remember? I remember training eight months for that qualifier. Eight months. I remember my coach telling me the draw was soft and I believed him, and then you walked on the court and you didn't miss. Not once. Not in two sets." He stopped. Started again, quieter. "You didn't miss, Stacey. Do you know what that does to a person? To prepare for something your whole life and watch someone your own age just... not miss?"

"Twenty-two," I said. "I was twenty-two, not your own age, and I had also trained eight months. I just didn't have a coach telling me my draw was soft. I had a coach telling me the one seed was going to try to break my rhythm with the weather delays, and when you started calling those injury timeouts, I was ready for it."

He stared at me. "You knew about the timeouts."

"I watched tape, Davey. That is the whole secret. I watched tape and you didn't."

He laughed. It was a strange laugh, half air, no real joy in it.

"Twenty years," he said. "Twenty years and you open with the match."

"You opened with the lock."

"I opened with the drainage schedule, which is a real problem with a real budget line, and you turned it into..."

"Into the match? You've been carrying the match for twenty years, Davey. Every time you say my name it's right there under it. I can hear it. I could hear it the second I walked into this office and you said 'Stacey Klein' like it was a serve going past you."

He pushed his chair back and stood up, and for one second I thought he was going to walk out, and I found I didn't want him to, which was its own surprise.

"You always did talk like that," he said.

"Like what?"

"Like you'd already won."

He looked at his desk. At my form, sitting right there on top of his stack, where he'd put it two days ago.

"I'll walk you down myself," he said, and grabbed his keys.

He did walk me down. The whole way, across the courtyard, past the admin building, neither of us saying a word. My key card blinked green at the fitness center door like nothing had happened. Which, in fairness, nothing had. Except twenty years of something.

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't thank me. It's your door."

He turned to go and I almost let him. Almost.

"Davey. Wait."

He stopped. Didn't turn all the way. Just a shoulder.

"The annex. You said I'm using it as storage. I haven't put anything in there. I've been using the old weight room because my brand new one is, well, sometimes locked." I let that sit. "But there's a thing I could use it for. A thing I could use *you* for, actually."

That got him to turn around.

"I'm listening."

"There's a technique. Progressive overload sequencing with a decompression phase. It's newer, it came out of a training group I worked with, and I've been meaning to teach it to somebody so I can run it as a program here. It needs a partner for the resistance work. Somebody strong. Somebody who does real work with his hands, you know, that build." I waved at him, generally. "Anyway. You'd learn it free. I get a training partner, and my doors are my doors either way. You get a skill you can take to your side project, whatever that thing is you're building in the equipment shed, because yes, Davey, I've noticed the shed."

His eyebrows went up.

"You notice a lot."