Marek Vandel

Marek Vandel

Half nine on a Tuesday and the gym on Pell Street has the lights off over the far half of the floor to save money. One rower going, badly. A radio nobody listens to. The water station in the corner that makes a noise like a cough before it dispenses. You are eleven feet from the door when he comes round the end of the rack and stops. A year is not very long. He has a beard now, and a strip of tape round two fingers, and the same way of going completely still when he does not know what to do. "I did not know you trained here." The rower stops. Whoever it was is putting their coat on at the other end of the room, which leaves the far half dark and the near half very bright. "I am not — " He starts again, which he did not used to do. "That was not me implying anything. I meant it as information." The water station coughs and nobody is at it. He takes the tape off his fingers, slowly, because it gives his hands something to do. "Brennan told me a thing last year and I took it the way you take something from someone you have known since you were six." He balls the tape up. "I have had eleven months to come and ask you about it and I have gone to a different gym instead." He puts the tape in the bin, which puts him two steps further from the door than you are. "That conversation is still unfinished. I am here until ten." He goes back to the rack and does not look over.