The Little-Known Muscle

It was about nine on a Thursday morning. It had been a long week, what with my wife roping me into her perennial obsession with gardening, children of the neighborhood crawling out of their schools and homes to incessantly ring our doorbell demanding popsicles, and high stress at work to boot. I needed a haircut. My lawn needed mowing. The list went on.

But instead of doing any of those "important" things, I was at the Y lifting weights. This is because my realistic picture of myself, the one of a fairly scrawny, flabby twenty-something three years out of college but still working at the Olive Garden, has recently been overshadowed by a new image I've conjured: that of a chiseled Greek god lying dormant inside me, just waiting to burst out and dominate the world around him.

So there I was in my appropriately baggy T-shirt and shorts, surveying the sea of masculine machinery before me, preparing to once more delve into the epic struggle to tone quads and hams, bi's and tri's, abs, delts, pecs, and have it all done and perfect in thirty minutes flat.

But as was usually the case, I was not alone. This often takes the wind right out of my sails, as I watch fifty-year-old men lift twice my body weight with one arm and leave with smiles on their faces. Not this day, however; the man with whom I was about to share the weight room looked to be about forty, dressed in gray sweatpants and sweatshirt, a little overweight but very hunched over, and didn't seem so be trying to impress anyone. In fact, it almost seemed like he was there for a nice jog, considering how fast he was flitting from machine to machine and not actually utilizing a single one.

I momentarily considered asking him if I could help him find his meds, but then I thought better of talking to him at all and decided I could ignore him. So I sat down to begin with the triceps machine and waited until the man, like trapped moth looking for an open window, fluttered out.

Ignoring the man was a failing venture. I kept overhearing the conversation he was having with himself as came to one machine, inspected it as thoroughly as a Maytag repairman, then scoffed, "Beh. No good." This went on all the way through triceps, and into ab crunches, too. "No good. No good!" he went on, getting louder all the time as his frustration mounted.

Finally, as the man was approaching the abs machine, I decided I had to either help him out or have him thrown out, because he was annoying the pee out of me. "Excuse me," I said, wincing sissily with pain, "Do you need some help?"

He looked me full in the face and got alarmingly close to mine. His eyes were glassy and gray, the hue perfectly matching his sweatpants; he had a disenchanting sallow complexion and his wispy black hair fell down haphazardly, giving him the appearance of an overgrown emo rocker. "What do you mean?" he asked. "What do you know?"

His breath smelled just like Kix. I hadn't expected that, so I hesitated. "I don't know . . ." I said, leaning further and further back. "What do you mean?"

"I seek an exercise machine," he said. "I seek -"

"I'm sorry, could you back up just a smidge?"

He took a big step back and was now uncomfortably far away for a conversation. It was better, though. "Sorry," he said. He spoke with a strange accent, one that struck me as obviously fake. It was like he couldn't decide if he was Russian, German or French. "I seek what you do not seem to have here."

"Which is what?"

He sighed tragically and patted the metal of the machine beside him. "Something special," he said. "Something . . ." he raised his eyebrows ". . . secret? Perhaps, yes?"

He laughed now, and clapped his hands together. "What is your name?" he asked me.

"Matt," I said.

"And what do you do, eh?"

"I'm a server," I said.

He frowned. "What is this, server?"

"You know, I bring people food and they tip me. Often not enough because they have no idea I only make two thirteen an hour and people don't realize twenty percent is customary -"

"Oh! You a waitress!" he said, nodding his head knowingly. "Yes, yes."

I sighed. "Well, I'm a writer, too."

"Whatever." He waved me off. "You see, you are not those things. Those things you think you are, but not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It is big mystery, but I will tell you. I seek the machine that exercises -" here he leaned in again, looked around the room discreetly "- little-known muscle."

I stared, speechless. His eyes were wide and they held unmistakable glee within. Then, without warning, the glee was gone and he was turning again on the YMCA exercise room. "But these machines, they are poopy. They are what comes out of your back, you know - how do you say it?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Sh -"

"I will not be quiet!" he interrupted. "You don't understand. The little-known muscle, it is the key to everything. It give you all you want. It makes your brain smarter, so you want job, you have job! You want to win a race, it makes all your other muscles stronger. And women? Ha ha, when they see it, you will know my friend. You will know."

I laughed. "Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. This 'little-known muscle', is it . . ." I started pointing downward.

He closed his eyes and shook his head emphatically. "No no no, it not your thingy," he said, flailing his hands back and forth. When he'd calmed down he looked around again, leaned in and said, "The little-known muscle is . . . here." He pointed.

"Really?" I said. "But I'm sure there's a name for that already."

The man shook his head gravely. "Muscles around it, yes, but not the little-known muscle. No, you will find it in no textbook, no page of Interwebs. Few will speak of it, but it is true. Seek it out, my friend. Seek it out." He looked around the room. "Once you have found it, once you believe, find me. I will be building the machine that will make it strong, and together we will rule."

I looked at him very seriously for a moment, but seconds later I was laughing. He looked pretty sore, but I just had to ask, "Hey, why is it called the 'little-known muscle'? Why not 'the secret muscle'? The phrase 'little-known' doesn't exactly spring off the tongue, you know."

He grimaced and shot me the darkest look I'd ever seen. I thought I heard thunder in the distance and the lights in the room seemed to flicker. "Writers," he scoffed. "What do you know?"

Then he stormed out of the room, never having told me his name. Happy to be rid of the psycho, I finished my workout.

But that night I tossed. Oh, that night, I turned.

I got up slowly and carefully so as not to wake Amber and tiptoed to the bathroom, where I took off my clothes and looked at myself in the mirror. No, not at myself, at it. Was it true? Could it be real?

And what would I do if I could train it, make it do my bidding? Might I become a superhero and use it to fight crime? Would I use it to get myself elected to public office and change the world? Would my bowling score finally reach triple-digits? I had no idea. The possibilities were endless.

The next morning I resolved to take the crazy YMCA man's advice and seek it out. So I called Ball State University and after a number of connections, disconnections, reconnections and redirections I got a hold of the head of the Department of Physiology and Kinesiology. He told me he was extremely busy and didn't have time to add any appointments to his schedule until I mentioned the little-known muscle. "Come right away," he said, and hung up.

Since he didn't let me ask him where his office was, an hour and a half later I entered it. It was everything a man could want out of an office and more: basketballs, soccer balls, and every other sort of scrotal object lined the walls; beautiful shimmering whistles hung from trophies of every color and lacquer known to man; the concrete floor offered an elegant drain for the pipes above, should their indefatigable joints ever burst; and the man before me sat, under a beam of radiant light from the eighteen-inch window above, behind the biggest hunk of a cast-iron desk-like structure I'd ever seen.

He rose immediately when I entered, a gesture I was afraid would destroy his clothing, as the stress his bulging muscles placed on his polo shirt and short shorts already seemed too much to bear. He removed his glasses and stepped around the desk to shake my hand. "Professor Casey Detwiler," he said.

"Nice to meet you," I replied. He gestured to an ergonomic plastic chair which I gladly took and allowed my butt to sink into as he lowered himself into his own behind the desk. "So you . . ." he began, but interrupted himself to rise again, cross the room and shut the door. "So you know of the LKM," he said in a low voice, returning to this seat.

"The what?"

"The little-known muscle."

"Oh," I said, and nodded. He seemed to be waiting for more, so I said, "Yes."

He nodded slowly and tapped a pencil on his desk as he studied me in silence.

"But I don't know much," I went on. "That's why I'm here. I was hoping you could help me."

"With what? Where it is?"

"No, I know where it is."

"Of course you do. Well?" he asked, looking suddenly quite incredulous.

"I was hoping you could tell me more about it," I said. "Like why isn't it in textbooks? Why does it seem to be a big secret? What can it really do?"

He stroked his chin for a moment. Then he threw his pencil down on the desk and demanded, "Is this a joke?"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"I invited you here expecting answers," Detwiler said, rising from his seat. "Clearly you're on the inside. Obviously you know about the LKM and you're - what? Toying with me? Trying to give me a message, trying to tell me to leave it alone, is that it? Well, you people can't make me stop."

"Whoa, whoa, hey," I said, afraid he was going to crack my skull between his fingers. "I'm just a guy who heard about this thing from somebody else. Yesterday. I don't have any information. I thought you were the expert." When he only stared at me in response I added, "Dude, I just work at the Olive Garden." I almost never call people dude, but for some reason, I did then.

Detwiler sat back down and seemed to be in deep thought. "All right, I believe you," he said at last. "But where did you hear about it?"

"From a creepy European at the YMCA."

"How did he know?"

I shook my head. "He didn't say. He didn't even tell me his name."

Detwiler nodded. "European, eh? That makes sense. Europe is where it's rumored to have begun."

"Where what began?"

"The cover-up," Detwiler replied. Then he sighed. "I only know so much. An association of physicians are said to have come to an accord about the LKM. They decided it was a muscle that ought never to be trained. But some say a few of them developed methods to build the LKM in secret, and became so great they were actually able to alter the course of history, behind the scenes."

He groaned, and the groaning soon turned to rage, and before I knew it Detwiler was on his feet, picking up the trashcan beside his desk and slamming it violently into the wall. Balled-up papers tumbled out. "Do you see those?!" he shouted. "Names, faces, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, home addresses, all dead ends. Nobody knows the secret exercises. Nobody."

"Don't you mean the 'little-known exercises'?"

He ignored me. "I can't train it. I just can't figure it out." He held out his arms, looked them over. His eyes traveled down the length of his own body, front and back, and he exuded the most horrible sadness. "All these muscles," he said, tears in his eyes. "For what? None of it matters."

"Well, aren't you a lot stronger because of them? I mean you could probably lift me -"

"Why would I want to do that?" he asked, snapping his head to look at me. "I can do nothing with these - these - things. Don't you understand? Nothing!"

Seemingly exhausted, Detwiler fell back into his chair and wept. I let myself out.

All that day at work I found myself wondering about the other servers. It was hard to focus on taking orders when my eyes kept wanting to follow my coworkers as they walked by, always wondering, had they figured it out? I found myself staring at the male servers, bussers and cooks, hardly noticing as they looked quizzically back at me, then my wedding ring, then me again. All I could think was that I just couldn't tell with all their clothes on, and when I found myself imagining what the LKM might look like underneath their uniforms I realized this obsession had to stop.

Then it hit me: what about women? Did they have the LKM too? I hadn't given that a single thought. Maybe there were women out there who knew how to exercise the one muscle that gave them not only the physical edge over men, but the edge over all humanity. It was a fascinating thought, which led to staring at my female coworkers now. I was getting some pretty weird vibes from people, which made me wonder: do they know that I know? Do they know I suspect they know?

Then I got my answer.

Jon was working the bar that day, and since it was pretty slow he was getting off earlier than usual. We happened to be heading out at the same time. "Hey," he said, without looking at me.

I turned to him. "What?"

"Just keep walking," he said.

"Hey, how come you're looking off into space as you talk to me?"

We headed out into the sunshine and he put on a pair of sunglasses. "Just keep walking to your car like nothing's going on, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

"I know where you've been looking," he said.

I straightened up a bit and my heart started beating faster. "What do you mean?"

"You were looking - here," he said, and pointed to the LKM.

I gasped. "You know?"

"Shut up and listen," he said. I was shocked; Jon was usually such a nice guy. "When I get to my car I'm going to take out a sheet of paper and write down an address. Then I'm going to get in my car and as I drive by yours I'm going to slip it out the window. When you get to your car - are you listening?"

"Yeah, I'm listening," I said. I'd been staring, mesmerized, at the spot where his LKM lay just beneath his uniform.

"I want you to open your trunk. Pretend you're looking for something, and then pretend you've found it but you dropped it. That's when you bend down and pick up my paper. Be at that address tonight at midnight. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said, just as we parted ways. I opened my trunk as agreed, and surveyed the parking lot for any onlookers. When Jon drove by I reached down and picked up the paper.

As I was driving home I slapped my head, thinking I should have known; Jon was an athletic performance major in school. I knew right away that's where he must have learned about the LKM. He'd heard the murmurings, and he'd gone underground to hear and see more.

My wife was planting flowers when I pulled into the driveway, and I knew it was time to tell her. I pulled her inside, set her down on the couch and poured out the whole story.

"But that's stupid," she said. "They should just call it 'the secret muscle'."

"Babe, you just don't understand," I replied. "But I have to go tonight, at midnight. It'll be all right, I promise."

"Just be careful," she said. "And if you wake me up coming back into the house I'll strap you down and pluck out all your nose hairs."

I kissed her and said, "I'll be careful."

That night I dressed in black, right down to my underwear, because it made me feel extremely cloak and daggerish. I dressed in layers that included a T-shirt and shorts I thought would be perfect for working out the LKM. My tennis shoed feet stepped into my car and revved it up with a verve I'd never felt before.

Ten minutes later I was pulling up to an abandoned Kmart. I double-checked the address. This was it.

I crossed into and out of light from busted up parking lot lamps as I approached the front doors. To my surprise, though I could see no one inside, they slid open for me.

"Stop," a voice said from a distance. It wasn't Jon.

I looked around me in darkness. "Hey, how did you get these doors to open from way over there?"

"It's an automatic door," the voice said. Then the lights began coming on slowly, starting in a far-off department. The man who had been speaking came forward, and I could see him now as a scrawny kid with big plastic glasses who looked to be no more than seventeen. "What are you, Amish?" he said.

"No, I just - the lights were off, and I thought - you know what?" I said defensively, but had nothing else to say. I put down my accusing finger. "Who are you?" I asked.

"I am Frederick," he said. "You must be Matt Bloom. We've been waiting for you."

"Who's we?" I asked.

"You already know one of us," he said. "Jon?"

"Well, right," I said.

"Come with me."

We walked the Kmart wasteland, through what had been small appliances, clothing, automotive, toys, everything the everyday consumer could possibly desire. You could tell what everything had once been just by the size of the shelves, the spacing between them. You knew because you'd been in so many of these places, all your life, and the images were burned into your mind.

"What once was again will never be, but what forever will be will always and again be eternal," Frederick said.

"Excuse me?"

"It's what we say in the Guild. It means that, like, there's always going to be stuff to buy or whatever, but the Muscle . . . man, once you've exercised it, you won't care about any of that stuff anymore. It is what will always and again be, and all this is just, you know, stuff."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, how does it go again?"

"'What once was again will never be, but what forever will be will always -'"

"Yeah, that's a terrible sentence," I said. "It's redundant. It's verbose, and incredibly unclear and, geez, I can't explain it. It's stupid. It's a stupid saying, and just a bad, bad sentence."

He stopped and I suddenly realized I might have offended him, and I also realized he had friends here, any of which might be able to snuff out my life at any moment. But instead of looking upset, he looked pleased. He took a step toward me, and very awkwardly put his hands on my shoulders. "Perhaps that is why you need to become one of us," he said. "Maybe you can, like, do a new saying for us."

I gagged a little bit, but I think I hid it well. I nodded solemnly. He patted me reassuringly on the back and we went on.

Finally we reached the back of the store and Frederick led me down a narrow hallway, past the unisex restroom to a metal door painted beige. "We're going into the break room?" I asked.

Frederick didn't answer. He just opened the door and ushered me inside, where five men about my age or younger sat around a small card table. They rose when we entered. "Welcome, Brother," Jon said.

"When have you ever called me that?" I asked him. "What is this?"

"This is the Guild of the Muscle," Jon replied. "You've already met Frederick. This is Tom, Jim, Sam and Albert. Brothers, this is Matt."

"Hello," they all said in unison.

I'd already forgotten their names. One stepped forward and said, "Jon tells us you seek the Muscle."

"Yes," I said, my eyes flitting from Jon to Frederick. "Though it is little-known."

"We are the keepers of the Machine of Destiny," Jon said. Then he leaned in closer and said, "I'm really sorry I didn't tell you about this before. We have pretty strict guidelines about guys having to come to us seeking the Muscle and everything before we can let them in. I hope you don't hold it against me for keeping it from you."

"No, it's fine," I said. "I feel the same way about my yodeling club." I attempted a smile, but glares from around the room kept my face stolid. "Seriously, though, is it just guys? I mean, do women have the Muscle?"

"Oh man, I'd love to have a girl in the group!" one of the guys said. The guy next to him, the one who had spoken to me first, slapped him across the face. "Discipline," he muttered.

"That is yet a mystery," Jon said. "But let us show you what you have come to find."

He walked across the break room to a storage closet and put his hand on the doorknob. "In here is the key," he said, "to unlocking the potential of the Muscle. Under pain of death, you will tell no one what you see here tonight."

"Death?" I said. "Geez, Jon. You were such a gentleman before today."

"Look, we're not going to kill you," Jon said. "Just don't tell anybody, okay?"

I nodded and said in my most serious voice, "All right."

Then he opened the door, and my mouth dropped open at what I saw inside. It was it, and I knew it immediately. It was the machine to perfect the little-known muscle. It appeared to me to be exactly the right height, the right size, but of course it was adjustable for maximum performance depending on one's body type. So many questions sprang to my mind: how many reps in each set with how much resistance would maximize performance? How many sets? How many times per week? How long before you started to see real improvement? What if you damaged the Muscle? What then? What then??

But I didn't have a chance to ask any of those questions, because as soon as they sprang to mind the lights went out. There was a flurry of activity. Bodies slammed into objects, hands and arms shoved. I heard the sound of screeching metal as the Brethren attempted to move the Machine of Destiny somewhere. Then I heard shouting from a distance and thought I saw thin beams of light. Suddenly one of those beams hit me full in the face and I was blinded.

"FBI, freeze!"

Handcuffs were clasped onto my wrists and I was being forcibly shoved through the narrow hallway toward a rear exit. Someone opened the door for me and I found myself surrounded by the Brethren and held at gunpoint by two federal officers, a man and a woman.

"What is your name?" the female officer asked me.

"Uh, Matt Bloom," I said, trying to keep my knees from buckling.

"What is your occupation?"

I didn't know what to say. I mean, I'd never spoken to an FBI agent before, especially not one who was holding me at gunpoint. I wanted to be truthful, but I wanted it to sound as impressive as possible. "Um, I'm a freelance writer."

"Freelance? What is that? People hire you to write books and stuff?"

I struggled with that one. The truth was too depressing to communicate, and I was afraid she would shoot me out of pity if I attempted telling it. So I said, "Yes."

"You should write about this," the male officer said.

"No, I think that's a very bad idea, Carl," the female officer said.

"Oh, come on, Barb. It's not like anybody's gonna believe him," the male officer replied.

"Yeah, I guess not," the female officer said.

And yes, that is exactly what they said.

A minute or two later a short semi truck pulled up near us and the agent who was driving rolled down his window. "We got it," he said. "We had to bring it through the front 'cause it was so heavy."

"Okay, we're on the way," the one called Barb replied. She holstered her gun and so did Carl. "By the way," she said, "in case you were wondering, we do have the Muscle, and honestly, it looks a whole lot better on us than you." She shrugged, then she and Carl together got into the back of the truck. Tires peeled out, and in a cloud of smoke they were gone.

"I want her in the group," one of the guys said.

"Silence," Jon said, hanging his head. "They found us. How did they find us?"

There was an edge to his voice that the Brethren clearly felt. I watched as they began to slowly back away, and soon enough they were all running off into the night.

"Hey, how come they're running away from you?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, Matt," he said. "I thought I would be able to enlighten you tonight."

I looked around. "I mean, because they all seemed really scared of you. Why would they be scared?"

"I suppose we had a mole," Jon said, staring off into space. "Someone who just couldn't live with -"

"I mean, do you actually kill people who tell about the Muscle?" I asked, backing away like the others, unable to recognize this man I'd worked with for almost two years.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he replied. "It's gone. Tell whoever you want."

"Well, all right," I said, and started walking away. "Bye, Jon," I said, but when I turned around, he was gone. As if he had been night itself.

The next morning I got up, changed into my usual T-shirt and shorts (not the ninja ones I'd worn the night before), and went back to the Y. It was the usual crowd for a Saturday morning. Nobody having trouble finding the machine they wanted for the muscle group they wanted. Everyone enjoying the physical, psychological and spiritual benefits of a regular workout routine.

Except me, because I knew better. I knew there was a machine out there, somewhere, that could put all these other machines to shame. I knew because I'd seen it with my own eyes.

Oh, how tempting it was to flit from machine to machine, muttering to myself that this wasn't it or that wasn't good enough. But I resisted that temptation and succumbed to the reality that I would have to do the same work as everybody else to become a stronger person.

So I sat down at the triceps machine and, looking discreetly yet longingly down at the little-known muscle, pushed to lift the weight, and began to count.