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1. PANAMA HIIT
“I’m getting a beer gut,” Sam moaned, hands spread over his stomach, the remains of a takeout littering the coffee table.
“Middle age'll do that to ya,” Nathan replied, leaning forward carefully to grab a half-empty container and balance it on his knees. Baby Cassie was asleep on his chest and he spent a few minutes trying to work out how to use chopsticks in his left hand.
“Don’t you dare drop noodles on her head,” Elena chastised.
Nathan waved the sticks at her dismissively, then surreptitiously picked an errant beanshoot out of Cassie’s hair.
Sam made a face, "I'm sorry, did you say middle age?!"
"You're past forty, Sam," Nathan shrugged, "Sorry. Middle age."
“What about your Panama HIIT routine?” Elena said, ignoring Sam's devastated expression.
“My what?”
“HIIT. High intensity interval training. Your prison thing.”
“Right. 'Cause that makes it sound... trendy.”
He’d done pretty much the same routine every morning and evening for thirteen years. It mainly involved push ups. Lots of push ups. He’d jogged a little, too, around the dusty track in the exercise yard, but to be honest he’d never been much of a runner and the prisoners weren’t allowed weights for obvious reasons, so he’d had to make do with his own body weight and used the minimal furniture in his cell to improvise: tricep dips on the edge of his bed, pull ups on the bars of the door, sit ups, star jumps, shit like that.
Back in lockup it hadn’t really been about the exercise. For Sam, it was more like meditation; something to focus on and take his mind off the endless oblivion of prison life. Still, it felt weird to do it anywhere but the concrete box that had been his home for the last decade and a half, even when he had an apartment of his own.
And he’d been getting a little lax lately, now that he was free. Mornings were for lying in, basking in the expanse of a double bed and the lack of blaring alarm forcing him up and out for work detail. And evenings were much better spent sitting with a beer and staring at the TV, or gazing out at whatever view he happened to be facing – the calming hush of the sea shore at Nate’s; the twinkling lights of some midnight city on a job with Sully; the backstreets behind his apartment where kids huddled in hoodies, playing tinny music out of their phones and making distinctly unsubtle drug deals. Still, he wasn’t getting any younger. And he was definitely starting to get a spare tire.
“I can get you a guest pass at my gym if you like,” Elena said, as he prodded at his stomach with an unimpressed finger.
He scowled a response. “You know they say ‘hell is other people’? Well they’re wrong. Hell is other people in lycra.”
Nate nudged him and passed over another beer. “What? Scared she can bench press more than you?”
“I don’t doubt it,” Sam said, giving her a respectful nod. “I just don’t do… communal exercise.”
But that was something Sam had come to learn about Nathan’s wife – when she made a suggestion it saved a whole lot of time and trouble to take it as an order.
2. THE GYM
“Okay,” Elena said, as they approached the glass-clad building, “Are you ready?”
Sam hung back, feeling like an idiot in a grubby t-shirt and the too-baggy sweatpants he’d borrowed from Nathan. Everyone going in and out of the gym looked so… polished. Some of the women were wearing make-up. Some of the men were wearing muscle vests. And he instantly hated every single one of them.
Elena reeled off the facilities like a walking brochure as she led him through a turnstile and flashed her ID at the receptionist. “And there’s a sauna, and a pool, and two gyms, and a whole bunch of different classes...” She paused to smirk at him. “Oh, and they play 90s music on Fridays so you’ll feel right at home.”
“I... resent that."
“Or you can just borrow my headphones.”
He mumbled something that Elena suspected was related to the fact that he still didn’t know how to use the mp3 player Nate had bought him for Christmas.
“So, what’s the plan?” he sighed. “Treadmill? Weights? Greased up idiots flexing all over the place? What’s the policy on starting fights in a place like this?”
Elena snorted and dragged him into a room whose back wall was basically one huge mirror. A bespandexed woman stood in front of it, stretching in a very distracting way. A handful of other women of various shapes and sizes clustered around the edges of the room sipping from brightly coloured water bottles and… staring at him.
Elena gave them a wave and placed a firm hand in the small of Sam's back, forcing him forwards.
“What the hell is this?” he growled through gritted teeth.
“This,” said Elena, with a terrifyingly amused expression on her face, “is body combat.”
Uhh. Body what now?
#
“They just kept going,” he muttered dazedly as Nathan slid a piping hot pizza in front of him, later. “Like freakin’ robots. Jumping and punching and… lunging.”
It had been several hours since they’d arrived back at the house but Elena still cackled every time she looked at him.
Sam shifted uncomfortably on the kitchen stool with a throaty groan. “Jesus. My fucking glutes…”
Nathan choked on his food trying not to laugh. “So… You want me to sign you up for a membership?” he asked innocently, when he’d recovered.
Sam shot his brother a dangerous look and attempted to stuff an entire slice of pizza into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously as Elena swanned in, fresh faced and positively bouncing. Sam’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m telling you,” he said, his words muffled against the dough, “It’s not right. Forty-five minutes she was doing that shit. Without stopping. She’s some kind of machine, I swear.”
Elena grinned back at him and he gave an outraged yelp when she leaned over and swiped a slice off his plate. “Oh, come on!”
"Big baby."
"Robot."
Nate grabbed her by the waist and swept her into a backwards hug. “Hey, go easy. He needs the calories. So, how long did he last?”
She cocked her head thoughtfully. “Ohhh, a good five minutes, for sure.”
Sam spluttered into his beer. “Five?! It was at least twenty. Don’t listen to her, Nathan. She’s not human.” He glared at her, made the ‘watching you’ sign with two fingers, and hunched back over his pizza.
“Whatever,” Elena sniggered, “Just promise you’ll let me watch you try to put your socks on tomorrow morning. It’s going to be hilarious.”
#
It was absolutely not hilarious.
Not at all.
Sam suspected his ass muscles might never recover, but gained a whole new world of respect for his sister-in-law. And he ticked body combat off his ‘let’s never, ever do this again’ list.
3. RUNNING MAN
“It’s cold.”
“Uh huh.”
“And early.”
“Mm hmm.”
“Ughhhhh, how long do we have to do this?”
“Shut up and run, Sam.”
If there was one thing he appreciated about Chloe it was that she was just as terrible of a morning person as he was. Still, here they were, in the freezing ass-crack of the dawn, half way through a 3k. He hadn’t even had his coffee.
How do I get talked into this shit?
Chloe gave him a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, okay, fair enough, it’s grim. But you’ve just gotta push through it. And then you get to feel all smug for the rest of the day,” she told him as they jogged along the dockyards. The sun was still attempting to haul itself over the horizon and every breath sent steam clouds into the air. “Plus, if you go out early enough you miss all the creeps catcalling you.”
“I’m not sure that’s gonna be a problem for me,” Sam said, taking care to keep his eyes off, well, any part of her, as she jogged ahead.
She, on the other hand, openly looked him up and down over her shoulder. “Hmm, yeah, a little scrawny for my liking. And you need a shave.”
“Is the talking-while-running thing really necessary?” he asked, already out of breath.
“Rule of thumb: if you can’t hold a conversation then your pace is too fast.”
“Chloe,” he panted, “I’ve been smoking for two thirds of my life. If I slow down any more I’ll be standing still.”
She turned and jogged backwards so she could roll her eyes at him. He suddenly felt acutely aware of how sweaty and pale and shitty he must look. She wasn’t even breathing hard. This was probably just a warm up to her.
“I don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head at him, “You run around with your brother and Sully all the bloody time when you’re on a job,” she said, “Running, jumping, climbing, shooting...”
His mouth had gone dry, there was a slicing stitch in his side and his legs were as heavy as lead. He tried to ignore the dragging pain and focused on the sidewalk, determined to get the next bridge at least. He gave a tired nod, “Right, but that’s… totally… different… There are... like... other motivations. Guns. Exploding things. Collapsing walls. You know.”
She spun back round on the balls of her feet, not even missing a step, and slowed until she was alongside him. She leaned in closer and he could hear a malicious little smile in her voice, “So how about I threaten to push you in the river if you don’t keep ahead of me?”
“Yup, that’d work,” he nodded, putting on a burst of speed that left his lungs burning.
#
He didn’t end up in the river but he did pull a hamstring just short of 2k and claimed bedrest – or couch-rest – for the next week. Chloe brought him a tub of protein powder that looked like chocolate milkshake but in fact tasted like ass. He told her as much, perhaps a little bit ungratefully.
“Well, maybe don’t invest in any expensive running shoes just yet, yeah?” she said, with a pitying kind of look.
He tossed the protein in the trash as soon as she’d gone and opened a fresh bag of chips.
4. A WALL OF MANY COLORS (BUT MAINLY PURPLE)
Now this was more like it.
It’s like rock climbing indoors, Nathan had said, and Sam couldn’t help being intrigued, even if the place did have a stupid name and was full of hipsters.
He made it to the top of the wall in less than fifteen seconds and hung there from a bright orange handhold, grinning down smugly at his little brother.
“This is too easy.”
Nathan stood on the crash mats below, running a hand over his stubble. “Uh… Sam? You’re only meant to use one colour.”
“What?” Sam dropped down ten feet and landed heavily beside him. A few other climbers looked over with disapproving expressions.
Nathan’s voice dropped to an embarrassed mutter, “And you’re meant to climb down, not… jump.”
“Why?”
Mumblemumble.
“What?!”
“Health and safety,” Nathan hissed.
“Pfft. So what’s the point? Why not go climb a real cliff?”
Nathan smiled ingratiatingly at a small cluster of people who had begun to stare. “Can you just… take this seriously?” he asked Sam out of the corner of his mouth.
Sam folded his arms and appraised the climbing wall, which was peppered with a rainbow of handholds in different shapes and sizes. “Fine. But it's still stupid.”
Nathan watched him for a moment to make sure there wouldn’t be any more outbursts and pointed upwards, “So, there are a bunch of different routes, see? And there’s a number and a colour on each hold to show the level of difficulty-”
But Sam’s attention had already wandered and now he was dipping his hands into Nathan’s bag of chalk.
"And... you have to trace out a route first, so that you don't-"
Sam straightened up and clapped a great cloud of dust in his brother’s face. “Okay, so which is the hardest? Let’s do it and get out of here.”
“You’re such an ass."
“Uh huh, so which is it?”
Nathan shook his head and rubbed the chalk off his face before gesturing at the wall. “That one.”
Sam hopped up onto the first handhold with a ‘hup’, “So… I’ve just got to follow all those purpley ones up to the top and then I’ve won, right?”
“It’s not- you don’t win anything, you just… It’s meant to be a challenge. They change the routes each week.”
“Okay, purple, here we go.”
He did okay for the first five or six holds but then got himself twisted, too far away from the next purple grip to reach without jumping, or growing a third arm. He frowned down at his brother. “This is so dumb. Can’t I just use this yellow one for a second? No? Okay, okay... Well, why are there no goddamn ropes? Who the fuck goes climbing without a rope?”
Nathan sat on the crash mat with his head in his hands, “It’s called bouldering, Sam…”
“Well I don’t see any fucken boulders, just multi-coloured shit all over the walls. For Christ’s sake how am I meant to reach that?!”
Nathan peered up at his brother with a grimace. “You gotta plan it out before you… It’s like a puzzle.”
“But that’s not realistic. No time to think about a route when you’re being shot at. I mean, when did you last plan a climb, Nathan?”
“Most people aren’t getting shot at when they go climbing…” Nathan said under his breath.
Sam let out a loud growl of frustration from above. “Purple my ass, this is impossible!”
Nathan tried to ignore the sniggering from the other patrons. “Look. Maybe try switching hands? Or climb back down to that triangle one and then-”
“Oh no, no, no, you are not about to tell me how to climb a fuckin’ wall, Nathan!”
#
"So, how’d it go?” Elena asked, biting her lip to stop from smirking when she saw the expression on Sam’s face.
“Show me a real rock and I’ll climb it for you,” he snapped. “Then we’ll see who’s freakin’ purple.”
Purple? Elena mouthed to Nathan behind Sam’s back.
Nathan looked as if he’d aged a good five years in the space of an afternoon. “Just… don’t.”
Bouldering got ticked off the list. And Nathan had to find a new club.
5. THE KICKY THING
“What about cycling?” suggested Elena.
“Meh,” Sam shrugged, “I'm more a motorbike kinda guy.”
“Football? I mean, ugh, ‘soccer’?” Chloe said, rolling her eyes.
“Does not play well with others,” Nathan interjected in a stage whisper.
Sully took a long, pensive drag of his cigar before saying, “How about yoga?” and it took a good few minutes until the rest of them stopped laughing.
They sat in a raggedy line on the deck at Nathan and Elena’s place, watching the sun dip below the sea.
“Try carrying this thing around for nine months,” Elena yawned, hoisting a sleeping Cassie on her shoulder, “Hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Nathan shot her a scandalised look. “That thing is your daughter.”
“Well, she's heavy!” protested Elena, “And she gave me sciatica.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, “So you made a human with your body. We know, quit bragging.”
“There must be something you're good at, Sam,” Chloe said.
Sam shrugged. “Fighting?”
There was a thoughtful, almost polite silence.
“I mean,” he said, “I’ve been in fights.”
“But have you ever won any?” Nadine asked, deadpan.
He gave her a withering look, but before he could respond Chloe leaned across and slapped him on the knee, “Hey, maybe Nadine can teach you some moves.”
Nadine and Sam scoffed at the same time.
“Yeah, funnily enough I'm not a big fan of being hit in the face,” he said.
“Surely you’re used to it by now,” Nadine replied curtly.
“Come on,” Chloe wrangled, nudging Nadine in the shoulder, “You can show him a thing or two, can’t you, sunshine?”
The others joined the goading, ignoring Sam’s indignant yelling, until Nadine gave the tiniest of smiles and got to her feet. “Alright then, let’s go, Drake.”
“Oh this I’ve gotta see,” chuckled Sully, and Nathan unceremoniously tipped Sam’s chair forward so that he fell on all fours onto the sand.
“On your feet, soldier,” Elena said, prodding him with a foot.
“Jeez, gimme a break,” Sam muttered, "It's five against one tonight." He made a long, drawn out business of dusting himself off before finally squaring up to Nadine who had already stripped off her jacket and stood bathed in the glow of the setting sun like some sort of freakin' goddess.
“Alright,” he said, scraping at the stubble on his chin with one hand, “Teach me that... kicky thing.”
Nadine dropped her stance in surprise. “Kicky thing?”
“Yeah, you know, that spinny-kick thing. You socked me right in the head with one of ‘em in Libertalia, remember?”
“A roundhouse kick?” offered Nathan, helpfully.
“Yeah, that’s the one.” Sam did an experimental twirl and ended up hopping on one foot, “How the hell d’you get your leg that high?”
Nadine sighed and gave him a stare that could have stripped paint off a wall. “You really want to learn?”
“Uhh, yeah? Having been on the receiving end I know how much it hurts.”
This information elicited an appreciative twist of the lips from Nadine, then she straightened her face once more. “Are you going to take this seriously?”
“Of course.”
Nadine paused for a moment of consideration then nodded once. “Alright. But I’m only doing this in case we ever have to work together again,” she said, poking a finger into his chest, “I want to know you can actually defend yourself next time.”
Sam gave a scathing laugh and batted her hand away, “Uhm, I think you’ll find I can hold my own, with or without your ‘special training’.”
“Oh, is that why you spent two weeks handcuffed in the back of one of Asav’s trucks when we were in India?”
Sam’s face dropped a little, “That was… That was tactical.”
She snorted. “Tactical?”
“Yeah. I was infiltrating.”
Sully sighed, opened the cooler and passed a fresh round of drinks down the line. “This could take a while…”
The audience exchanged silent looks and settled back in their seats to watch the show.
6. THE SECRET
One good thing about Victor was that he didn’t mind if Sam smoked. Another good thing about Victor was that he could always find a decent whiskey no matter where they were in the world. And another good thing was that he didn’t make snarky comments about what Sam ate, or how he spent his free time, or what kind of women he hooked up with. Sam'd had his run-ins with the guy, but when you got down to it, Victor was a real salt of the earth fella. And Sam was only slightly drunk right now.
It was mostly the adrenaline fallout, he told himself. Another job gone wrong (though really, when the hell did they ever go right?) and all that running, jumping, climbing, shooting stuff that made your blood thin and your brain fizz and your heart all but tear out of your chest. And they weren’t getting any younger – that they could agree on. Victor complained about his knees and sought out a suitable hidey-hole of a hotel. Sam complained about his back and sank three shots before Victor even ordered their food.
This was Sam's kind of exercise. The spontaneous-oh-shit-I-might-actually-die kind. He just wondered how long he’d be able to do it before he started to sound like Victor with his 'I’m getting too old' spiel.
He glanced at his partner, who was spinning his cigar over his knuckles like a slow, slightly tipsy magician.
“How’d you do it this long?” Sam asked him. “You’re in decent shape for a – what are you, pushing eighty?”
Sully gave an outraged snort that turned into a good-natured laugh. “You wanna know the secret to surviving this game?”
Sam leaned back on his chair. The muscles in his shoulders complained with a pop. “That I do.”
“Fine food. Fine wine. Fine cigars. Fiiine company. Never stay in the same place for more than forty-eight hours. Never bet against a woman who’s smilin’ at ya. Be polite to the locals. Learn as many languages as you can. Don’t assume you’re even one step ahead of anybody. Oh, and never work with anyone called Drake.”
It was Sam’s turn to laugh. “You had that little speech all prepared, didn't you? How many times has Nathan heard it?”
“Too many.”
“But really. How are you still doin' this?”
Sully stubbed his cigar out with a sigh and looked at him straight. “You find yourself a pair of idiot kids and you do your best to keep ‘em alive for twenty-odd goddamn years. That’ll keep you trim. Believe me, the stress of you two made the pounds fall right off.”
Sam had to look away. He really, really hated it when Sully used his dad voice.
“Well,” Sam said eventually, quietly, into his drink, “You did, y’know, a passable job. I’ll give you that.”
“Thanks, kid.”
And he never called Sam ‘kid’. That was Nathan’s thing. Jesus, how drunk were they right now? Sam blinked and sniffed and tried to cover it with a cough.
“You’re wondering if you’re getting too old for this shit?” Sully asked, a little too perceptively.
Sam gave a slow nod, then shook his head. “I think… I don’t know. Maybe. But normal life just doesn’t seem to agree with me.”
Sully waved at a passing waiter for another couple of drinks.
“Well, if you’ll take the advice of an old, decrepit octogenarian,” he said, eyes twinkling for a moment, “Whatever you decide to do, make sure you find something worth doing it for. I have no regrets on that front. Because it’s really not about what you’re doin’. It’s who you’re with.”
The drinks arrived. Glasses clinked. And both of them might have got something in their eye.
EPILOGUE
“I’m not saying I’m better than you but you gotta admit I’ve got rhythm.”
“It’s not a competition, Sam,” Elena groaned.
“It absolutely is a competition. That’s why the mirror’s there, so you can all see who’s the best. Hint: it was me.”
“No one was looking at you.”
“Come on, I’m the only guy there, of course they’re looking at me. It’s genius. Why didn’t I think of this before? I got four phone numbers today.”
“Don’t call them.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll work your way through the whole class and then I’ll never be able to go back to Zumba again.”
Nathan met them at the front door, drawn by the increasing volume of their argument. “Zumba? Really? Again?”
Sam threw his gym bag at his brother and pulled off a move that looked like he was trying to Heimlich manoeuvre himself. “Really. Zumba. Again. You should try it, little brother. Better than falling off a cliff.”
“Maybe next time. Hey, Sully called, he’s got a new job lined up for you.”
Sam’s face fell, “Already? Ah shit.”
Elena patted him on the back as she headed in for a shower. “Hey, we’ll be here when you get back. I’m taking you to spin class next.”
“I am so totally there,” Sam called after her. Then, in a whisper to Nathan, “What the fuck is spin class and how much is it gonna hurt me?”