Alice, Part IV: Stone Muscles by Merz; mrmerz@yahoo.com Alice had some bad times in the nineties "Well, hello, Johnny, how have you been?" There is only one person who calls me Johnny since I turned 21. Even my mother has called me John for over twenty years now. John Smith is an ordinary citizen and taxpayer. JB Smith used to be a corporate executive. Johnny Smith was a friend of Alice's, so I could never mind her calling me that. I had to look at her twice in the late night diner. I might have had an easier time recognizing her from behind because of those wide shoulders and back. I've never figured it out but clothes drape differently over the same body contours depending on how firm the flesh underneath is. You can just sense the difference between rounded fat and rounded muscle. Her shirt across those shoulders looked a silk handkerchief spread over an anvil. I knew her hands were average size as she held a coffee cup, but they seemed tiny because her arms flared so dramatically from sinewy wrists to full, round, muscular forearms. A couple thick veins ran across the backs of her hands and wrists, up the forearms and disappeared into her shirt at the elbow. "You're looking really good," she added, putting down the cup by her empty dinner plate. "You, too, Alice. God, what's it been - ten years? You look fine for such an old broad," I said with a wink. "You're such a bad liar. I look like hell and you know it." Well, she was right. Her blonde hair was paler than before and thin. She wore it short and sort of moussed straight up. Dark circles ringed eyes that looked red and dull. Her face was drawn. "Would you like to sit down?" she asked. I sat. "I read about your partner last winter. I'm so sorry. That must have been really tough for you. You're still on the force?" I asked. "It's still hard. It doesn't get any easier. I got that nice note you sent through the department. A little sun ray coming right out of some gloomy skies. I should have written back, but I wasn't up to it. Yes, I'm still a cop but lately I work a desk at the station. You still selling shoes?" That had been our private joke since I got out of college. I'm a chemist and got a job with a company that made athletic shoes in the early seventies. I worked on formulas for better soles for specialized running shoes, then got into management. Now the company's founder is a billionaire, the "shoe company" controls a sports and fashion empire, and I once made more money than I would have imagined possible. "No, I left them not so long after the last time I saw you. Now I'm a schoolteacher here in town. Teach the kids chemistry, coach the cross-country squad, advise the photography club. The grown up nerd propagating my species." "They're lucky kids. Look at you - now you even have the Albert Einstein hairdo to go with all those brains you have. You lost yours a little earlier than me, but I might catch up the way things are going," she said running a hand through her short hair. She forced a half smile with her mouth that her eyes failed to pick up. We had both gotten over any self consciousness about our looks so I didn't think the aura of sadness I felt from her had to do with any ravages of time. I was confident she could wrestle those into submission for another forty years. I saw the lines around her eyes and mouth that years of laughter had left behind, but there was no humor showing tonight. "My kids would call it the Bozo the Clown hairdo. I just sort of let it go over the summer. Next month before school starts again I'll cut it back so I can look respectable and straight for a new class of inquiring minds. Is it losing your partner that still has you down, if you don't mind my asking?" She rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes and let out a long sigh. "That's a big part of it. Johnny, he was the just the sweetest guy and a real good cop. He really cared about the people we had to deal with on the street, he always believed they had good in them no matter what trouble they had gotten in. If they were running off the rails, he believed they could turn themselves around and he would help them do it. He put in the volunteer time with youth athletics and other things so it wasn't just talk. He made a model of himself everyday to everyone around him. We made a good team because you remember I had a lot of the same notions back when I worked in corrections. At first he had a lot of reservations when we were paired up. I mean, I was a forty-year-old rookie, and a woman to boot. The first night we were out he kept dong little things that were polite but suggested he wasn't sure I could carry my end. Maybe you can tell that I built myself up before getting a late start in police work. I made him lie down on my back while I did pushups and we never had a single problem after that." She was talking in a sort of dreamy, distant voice, "We were a real good team. He was this big guy - your height and maybe 250 pounds, and a power lifter. He had this tiny little wife he married right out of high school, and three kids. The youngest graduates next year. We used to lift weights together on our days off, really pushing each other. I still don't go in for maximum weights - too hard on my old joints - but we could really intimidate the tough guys on the street. Sometimes he'd have me lift some punk up over my head by the armpits. He'd tell them if I was too much for them, think what he would do if he caught them screwing up again. It was all an act. He was just a big old teddy bear who happened to be as strong as three regular men. The guys called us Papa Bear and Mama Bear." "Anyway, I'm due at work in a little bit," she said, rising to pay at the counter and leave. "Could I see you again? Maybe tomorrow? I'm free all day with school out," I said, rising with her and looking deeply into her sad eyes. "That probably wouldn't be such a good idea for you. I'm kind of a loner these days - not good company at all," she replied, looking away. "The more reason. We can talk about happier times." I touched her hand. "Please. I had been thinking of a way to reach you before I read about your partner, and I've been thinking of you often lately." "Why not. You can see what I've come to. Do you know the road into the city watershed west of town? I got a key to the gate from a friend - police privilege. Follow the road through the gate about half a mile, then follow the trail down to the river. I'll be there all morning." I told her I'd bring a picnic lunch and she left. Next day I followed her directions and found the gate she had described after a fifteen-minute drive from town. The city watershed was a wooded area off limits to the public. A mountain stream feeds a reservoir in the watershed and the city's drinking water is piped from there. Half a mile past the gate I parked next to her car. Grabbing the lunch I had packed I followed a little trail steeply down until it emerged by the stream on a rocky bank flanked by high cliffs. I started across the stones to where I saw Alice moving, then stopped in astonishment. She moved mechanically between three piles of big rocks spaced about twenty yards apart. She would pick a rock off one pile and carry it over to the next pile where she set it down and grabbed another that she carried to the next pile. The rocks were all sizes from footballs to boulders as big as pillows. The largest rocks she cradled in her arms and staggered under the weight. Smaller stones she raised overhead or up onto one shoulder. The littlest ones she might carry two at a time, holding one on either hip. I stared in fascination for about five minutes as she moved like a robot, looking right through me. Finally I called to her. "Hi, Alice. I brought lunch." She stopped and dropped the big rock she was carrying against her chest. As I walked over to her she blinked down at herself, looking like she was awakening from a dream. Her shirt and shorts were soaked with sweat, her clothes, arms and one cheek were streaked with dirt. "God, I'm a mess," she said in an odd, hollow sounding voice. With no hesitation and no glance at me she stepped out of her shorts and shoes, peeled off the heavy wet t-shirt and marched into the icy water. I had thought the night before she looked bigger than I remembered. She was huge, with thick slabs of muscle draping her back, shoulders and arms, her thighs swelled with power and hamstring muscles the size of footballs flared under the skin, her calves pulsed and clenched with each step. I guessed she would weigh close to 185 pounds on her five foot five inch frame. She was shivering when she emerged from the water, clutching herself and trembling as she picked up her clothes. I swept off my sport shirt and wrapped it around her. "You can't put those things on again, they're wet. Put this on. I have a towel in my car" I raced up the trail and grabbed my gym bag. She was standing where I had left her, dripping under my shirt. I started toweling her off and couldn't help staring at her physique. Hunched and tensed against the cold emphasized the roundness of all her muscles, the big domes of her deltoids, the softball size biceps and curving triceps, lats that rolled away across her back like the ocean rolling to the horizon, abs that looked like a cobblestone wall. I rubbed, feeling their solidness, fighting the hardness I felt rising in my groin and the sick feeling I was getting in the pit of my stomach. "Alice, what are you doing here?" "Welcome to my world, Johnny. This is about all I do nowdays. You heard that my partner was killed, but you don't know the details. He and I surprised a small time drug deal going down in an alley. We separated the two hoods to sort out what was what when I heard a shot. Frank's guy had pulled a gun out of somewhere and shot him right between the eyes. I screamed like a little girl. My guy tried to run, but I cold cocked him and grabbed the shooter. He even got a shot off at me before I took the gun away, but my Kevlar vest stopped the bullet. Then I went berserk. I did some terrible things to him, then I broke his neck with my bare hands. The investigators wrote it up like Frank had been part of the struggle until he was shot, because the murdered was so messed up nobody would believe I had done it all myself. I didn't get in any trouble over the killing. The city had a dead cop, a dead felon with a lifetime bouncing in and out of jail, a live junkie who admitted the drug deal, and I had a cracked rib where the bullet bounced off. Obvious self defense, but I was put on routine administrative leave, got to talk with a shrink, and got assigned to a desk for a while. Now it's six months later and I'm still talking to the shrink, I'm still can't be cleared for patrol duty, and I think I'm losing my mind. The way my days go is that I wake up at ten and clean myself up, eat at some diner or other, go sit at my desk for a long shift. When I get off I come here and carry rocks until all my muscles hurt and I can't lift my arms anymore. I grab a meal on the way home, then I cry until I fall asleep every night. The shrink suggested I take up yoga for the meditation and all, and to get out among other people even a little bit. It's made me more flexible but the meditation part just opens up a vacuum that gets filled immediately with these demons I'm carrying around." "Jesus, Alice, what demons could do this to you?" "Well, my partner and the best friend I had was killed while I just stood there. All by itself losing Frank and knowing that some low life had put down such a sweet, loving, giving person would rock me. Then, my response violated all my training as a cop. I never touched my gun, I never tried to step back and control the scene, I ignored every safety rule that should have kept me alive and get the shooter into custody. It was just my dumb luck he shot me where my vest was instead of in the head like Frank. He could have gotten clean away. So I'm a fraud who screams like a girl when trouble comes and can't behave like a cop when the chips are down. And then there are the things I did to that man. I broke him up. I felt bones breaking and I heard him screaming and begging but I just kept on until I felt his neck snap in my hands. Now anytime I close my eyes I see Frank lying dead, or I see myself helpless and screaming, or I see this smashed up junkie, or I see myself killing a human being barehanded without an instant of remorse. One image after another and they're always there. A couple of times, early on, I put my gun in my mouth but I couldn't pull the trigger. Days off are worse. I go to grief management groups and anger management groups and suicide prevention groups and yoga class and I talk with the shrink. Anything to fill time and hold back the demons for a little while." I choked and felt my own tears well up. I hugged her tight against me, leaning down to gather in her whole broad body. "I'm taking you home," I said. I got her somewhat dressed in my extra clothes. I'm six feet-three, but my sport shirt buttoned at the fourth button because her shoulders were so much wider than mine, and her pecs mounded high on her chest above her small breasts. The sleeves were snug around her big arms. There was no way she would have fit into the t- shirt from my gym bag so I wore that. Her thighs threatened to burst out of my gym shorts, but the waist fit all right. At least I had her dried and dressed and warmed up. We sat at the base of the cliff eating the sandwiches I had brought. She wasn't up to carrying on a conversation so I talked about my own life. As I described teaching science and coaching and advising the photography club I sounded unbearably dull even to myself but I needed to fill up the silence engulfing Alice. As I drove us back to town in my car, I asked if she had friends she could stay with. She said no, Frank had been her only close friend in town since she joined the police, she hardly knew the neighbors in her apartment building. Working nights limited her social circle. She had known some folks at the all night gym where she and Frank had lifted, but they weren't really friends and she hadn't gone there since the shooting. "I want you to move in to my place, then," I told her. "I can't stand thinking of you going through this alone. Just until you get back on your feet." "Oh, Johnny, I couldn't do that. You don't want a freak like me hanging around. I'm terrible company and bad luck and now I'm a mental case. I belong in a cage, not in anybody's home." When I insisted she guided me to her apartment and led me through the door. Her apartment was airy but a bit Spartan. The living room had a love seat, an easy chair, and a wooden rack holding a mountain bike. A bookcase displayed a variety of fiction and non-fiction books, a coffee table had two neat stacks of magazines. One dealt with health and fitness, the other with corrections and social work. She said she didn't want to bring a book because she couldn't focus her attention to read anymore. The living room also had a variety of grip strengthening "toys", as she called them. She said she would use them while watching television, but that she didn’t watch TV any longer either. In the bedroom her wardrobe was also neat and compact. The closet had a couple uniforms, four dresses divided between those that disguised her physique and those that flaunted it, and some slacks and sweater combinations. She picked out a pair of khaki pants, a tank top, and a denim shirt to change into. In her second bedroom I saw a weight set totaling a couple hundred pounds, also neatly stacked. I guessed she would do any serious workouts at a gym where she could use heavier equipment. I did see a 60-pound dumbbell I recognized from when I had first met her. She had called it her lucky charm in the past, so I grabbed it to take along. She said she could curl it, but now mostly held it between her knees while chinning herself on a bar secured above the doorway with stainless steel bolts. She selected the clothes and toiletries she would need for a few days. We locked up the apartment and I drove home with my silent passenger. My house was small and somewhat cluttered compared with hers. I quickly packed away my darkroom stuff from the spare bedroom and hung her clothes in the closet. I arranged to have her mail forwarded to my house, then settled her in the little backyard under my willow tree with instructions to sit tight while I fetched her car. I biked back to the watershed, loaded my bike into her trunk and locked the gate as I left. With a stop at the grocery the trip took about two hours, but I don't think she moved in that time. I found her sitting under the tree, staring off, her hands in her lap. She said she really didn't feel like sleeping before going to work. She had hauled only half her usual tonnage of rocks that day, after all, but did admit she could feel some effects from her morning effort and was a little dizzied by the sudden change of address. I offered her a backrub to help her relax even if she didn't sleep. She felt a little more modest than when she took her impromptu dip in the stream earlier, so she went to her room to undress and drape a sheet around herself. I stretched her on a futon on my living room floor and went to work. I oiled and worked the thick muscles of her neck and down toward her back. Soon my hands and forearms ached as I struggled to knead the dense, heavy muscles. She had built her strength over thirty years of manual labor and weightlifting. I had to apply my full weight to massage through the ropes of lats and great slabs of trapezius muscles. I was dripping with sweat by the time I started on the great layers of deltoid, straining to feel bone anywhere under her biceps and triceps. She dozed off at some point as I worked, and slept on as I finished. I looked at her as she slept. Her skin had the tone of any woman in her mid forties, no longer tight enough to contain the veins that ran along her arms and shoulders. Her skin was pale and pink where she kept it out of the sun, smooth and healthy. I straightened the house and later began to prepare a simple dinner for when she awoke. It would be a late dinner for me but about the regular time for Alice as she headed to work. I had just settled down to do some reading when I heard her start to sob. She let me take her into my lap. I wrapped her naked in a blanket and held her head against my chest, a small person heavy as armor steel and somehow wounded deep inside. Later we ate and she drove downtown to work. I went to bed myself but lay awake for hours. My mind ran in circles while my emotions struggled against the shadow at the edge of that consuming darkness she was carrying inside. We soon fell into a routine around her schedule. She seemed to sleep only a little, but walked through the pattern she had described to me. I tried to dream up other diversions for the hours after she got off work, trying different ways of tiring her body and comforting her spirit. We went mountain biking, I took her to my gym where she made a mild sensation, we worked in my garden. Some days she insisted on returning to her rock piles in the watershed, and I would accompany her. While she moved mountains one stone at a time I read in the shade or jogged on the forest road. A couple of times she agreed to let me photograph her. She wore a two piece swimsuit and my black and white photos showed her muscles rippling at the strain of lifting and carrying enormous weights to no purpose, her blank face reflecting the progress of the stones to capture her soul. I hoped one day to show the photos after she found a happy ending to the endless project. I wondered if I would ever get the chance. After a week I asked her permission to talk with the psychologist she had been seeing. With her consent the psychologist talked freely about his impressions of her mental state and where he thought she might be heading. It wasn't a lot of help. He said acute depression was common after the sort of trauma she had experienced, that sometimes it went away quickly while other times it never did. Alice refused any pharmaceutical treatments. He wasn't very concerned about suicide because she seemed to have passed that point and now was trying to take care of herself with regular meals and exercise, reflecting a desire to live. He was aware in general of her rock carrying excursions and told my they seemed to connect her emotionally to a happier time in her life. That much I had figured out: she was going through the motions of a summer job she had as a kid, humping big bags of potatoes in her hometown. He concluded by saying there was an ember still glowing deep inside that could flame back up into an embracing of life or fade out completely, but he had no magic tricks that let him reach it. I filed that information away and just tried to keep her mind occupied or her body busy. One day while we were doing some house cleaning, moving more of my stuff out of her closet, I came across my old rock climbing equipment. It was a sport I had pursued in the '70's and '80's, but had left behind when I left my old job and moved across town from my old circle of friends. I thought about the cliffs in the watershed and the emotional charge I'd gotten from climbing. I asked Alice if she'd like to give it a try. She was willing so I fitted her with a harness and rented a pair of rock shoes that fit snugly but weren't painfully tight. I taught her to belay a climber in my backyard. When I was satisfied she understood the various signals and the general safety principles we made a plan to try it the next day. We arrived at the trailhead next morning and I sent Alice down with the climbing gear. I took the rope and walked through the woods to the top of the cliff above the stream. I had mentally marked a spot where I could anchor the rope directly above the route I wanted to climb. There I set up a pulley system attached to a tree that allowed the rope to run freely. I tossed down both ends of the rope after passing it through the pulley and took the trail down to join Alice. I put on my harness, helmet and climbing shoes, then made sure Alice was set up to belay me. Climbing the cliffs proved a bit trickier than I had expected from below. There were plenty of small handholds and footholds, and a crack ran an inch wide up the route before petering out two thirds of the way up. I quietly grunted and cursed my way upward, deeply grateful for the belay rope and a pair of strong hands ready to catch it if I slipped. I finally touched the top and had Alice lower me back to the ground. We traded places with Alice tied to the rope end, my helmet on her head and me belaying her from a large boulder I had anchored myself to. She probably should have been more nervous as she approached the cliff, but didn't have the emotional traction for even that normal response. Before starting Alice slipped off the zippered sweatshirt she had been wearing so she climbed in shorts and a sports bra. Her shoulders bulged out of the armholes and I couldn't help staring as muscles like steel cables crawled along the exposed parts of her upper body. I could hear her grunting and straining as she began to work her way up. At ten feet she called down that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I assured her she was doing fine and offered some advice on trusting her feet more while relying less on arm strength alone. That's the standard advice given to all novice climbers and is universally ignored as they face a climb up a rock wall. Another ten feet up she fell. I had kept the belay loose enough so it wouldn't be tugging up on her harness. She fell three or four feet before I caught her with the rope. The impact of her 185 pounds gave me a good jerk against my anchor and stretched the rope another couple feet at her end. She yelped as she slipped off the rock and grabbed the rope for dear life. As she dangled above the ground she said I should bring her down. I assured her she was clearly safe tied to the climbing rope. She found holds back on the cliff and resumed climbing with even greater exertion than before. When she reached the point where the crack ran out she once more asked if it was time to come down. "You aren't done yet," I yelled up at her. "There's plenty of holds for you to finish this route. You saw I did so you can, too. I'm not letting you wimp out. As somebody once said to me, you aren't done until you're done." She cursed me for a bit, then reattacked the cliff. I could see her arms swelling and pumping massively as she hauled herself upward. I had seen plenty of climbers get by on strength rather than skill, but Alice was in a league of her own. At a couple of points her legs were hanging free in space as she advanced hand over hand. Finally she whooped and touched the top. I lowered her quickly to the ground and took her off belay. As I ran to where she stood at the base of the cliff she held her hands in front of her like claws. The veins that crawled up her forearms, over her biceps and spread over her shoulders pulsed angrily. The muscles in her forearms jumped with every heartbeat. My own heart froze when I saw tears on her cheeks. "You're crying. God, I'm sorry," I blurted out. I hoped this would take the pain away for a bit." She held her arms out to me and said, "I can't move them. I think my forearms are going to explode. I can't even untie the damned knot on my harness." Then she laughed and wiped at the tears. "That was just awesome. From the time I got off the ground I never thought about any of my troubles, I just thought about climbing up and not falling. When I did fall I felt for sure I was going to die, and for the first time in six months that mattered to me. In just that flash I remembered I wanted to live. Then I started fighting. I fought and fought until I reached the top. God, help me with my arms." I rubbed vigorously along her forearms. It felt like massaging a wooden table leg. I started to babble about her muscles, how hard, how big, how much I loved seeing them working while she climbed. "You really do like my muscles, don't you?" She asked. "Here, take hold here. Tight." I gripped both hands around her upper arm as she straightened it, then flexed against my grip. Her bicep burst through my hands, ballooning to softball size and etched with blood-engorged veins. "You like me being strong just like I like being strong. In a moment you won't, though." "Why? What's going to happen?" "As soon as I get my hands back I'm going to throw you in the river, you manipulating bastard. You knew this was going to happen to me," she said, advancing on me. I tried to fend her off but her strength so far outclassed mine I didn't have a chance. She flicked aside my guard effortlessly and seized me around the hips. She shook me like a rag doll, then shifted her grip and tossed me across her shoulders. She marched to a sandy spot nearby where dumped me in a heap and jumped on top of me. I kept trying to resist but in a moment she had captured both my wrists and stretched them above my head. She curved her back and slammed her iron hard body into me a couple times. Then she let go of my wrists and sat back to gloat. "So you like looking at my muscles. Do you think they're sexy?" She crossed her arms and massaged her thick biceps. "God, yes, you're so strong and so beautiful," I gasped out. "They were big before. I think these months of carrying these damned rocks around may have made them even bigger." She reared back and showed me her double biceps pose. "You don't think they've gotten too big?" she asked flexing her arms harder and harder. I sat up enough to grip her arms. It felt like squeezing two bricks. "The bigger they get, the sexier you are," I said and sank back. I felt an erection growing painfully. She was sitting on top of my lap and smiled even wider as she felt it, too, wiggling on top of my manhood. She peeled the sports bra over her head, letting her full upper body surge into view. Her firm stomach rose in ridges of muscle, her lats spread like wings. She flexed her pecs so her small breasts glided up and down her chest. I hadn't seen her full smile light up the laugh lines around her eyes and mouth before. Now her joy came alive in her face. "You have just created a monster, mister. Before we leave here we are each going to do that climb again. I want to see how you could make it look so easy and so graceful, like you were just flowing upward. You've always been so graceful like that, like one of those tall shore birds that walk around on their long thin legs. So stately, so proud. I walk next to you and I feel like a lumbering bear. Just standing still you look like an arrow ready to take flight. Since I met you you've been the most beautiful man I've ever known. So you're going to do that climb again for me, but first I'm going to fuck you senseless so you can't pull any tricks on me. I'm alive again and I want to get back to enjoying life. I know this is just one step back, but I feel so great to have taken this one." Now it was my turn to feel tears. Beautiful? Me? I'm Ichabod Crane. I'm a gangly balding geek. I'm barely advanced from the beanpole I was when we met twenty-five years before. But a beautiful woman thinks I'm beautiful. The rest of the morning went pretty much as she had described it. After the most powerful and playful sex I've ever experience I staggered back to try climbing again. Then she climbed again, this time with more technique than pure muscle. She slept for nine hours before work, the best sleep she had had in months. The few weeks left before school started for me again were spent getting Alice moved completely into our home, getting her approved for patrol duty and requesting to change her schedule to one that allowed us more time together. The rest has just been one step at a time for us, and will be for all the years I can see ahead.