Alan Gobar

Alan squeezed by.

Door-frames. Office furniture. Tables in restaurants, and knees in movie theaters, and pedestrians on sidewalks. In the vast world outside Alan's front door-- Alan was constantly squeezing by something.

In Alan's home, he fit. He squeezed by nothing. He fit the furniture, and the shower, and the kitchen, and the living-room. He fit into his roomy car, and he fit into his garage getting into and out of his roomy car.

Alan was obese, but he was far from stupid. He had learned to make his life work. To make it fit.

Three days before his 36th birthday, Alan received a phone call from his parents in California. They had news of a most wonderful gift, a present which was scheduled to be delivered on the morning of this coming Saturday. It was a gift and it was something very special and they his parents were both very hopeful he would love and cherish and most importantly use it. It was a gift from the heart-- of that, there could be no doubt, for it was very, very expensive, (but worth every last penny), and they his parents were more than glad to give it to him, and didn't care how much it cost, or so they both said individually, several times.

Alan was dressed and eating cornflakes with the Saturday morning New York Times crossword puzzle on the Saturday mentioned when he heard the hiss of air-brakes outside his apartment. Two quick toots of a truck horn and his gift had arrived.

Looking out his bay-window Alan met the eyes of the three men looking up from the sidewalk. He showed an index finger in the universal sign of one who will be right down in the proverbial jiffy, and the three sweaty looking men below nodded their heads and held up a hand each in the universal sign of take your time-- we are more than happy to wait down here in the fuckin’ sun all stinkin' day for your fat ass.

Alan came down in the elevator from his third floor studio apartment and met them on the sidewalk of 3146 One hundred and Twelfth Street with a sincere grin on his face.

“Alan Goober?” The bald man with the clipboard asked.

“Go' bar,” Alan corrected cheerfully. “Alan Gobar,”

“Yea, swell, how ya doin'?” the clipboard man asked, stepping back, his grin becoming wider as he took all of Alan in.

“I am doing very well!” Alan said, nodding his head and smiling at the man with the clipboard and then at his two assistants who stood in the street by their double-parked truck. Both men nodded back at Alan before they focused on the ground, and then at each other, and then back at the ground again.

“We gotch'er gym,” the clipboard guy said just as the sliding rear door of the delivery truck slammed up and open. The two assistants jumped into the back of the truck and Alan said:

“Excuse me?”

“Your gym, your gym!” said the clipboard guy sounding very much, to Alan’s ears, like he was being addressed as “Jim”.

“No, no, I'm Alan Gobar,” said Alan, still smiling. And then, catching himself, he said, “What? What did you say again?”

“We got yer Delux Universal FlexAll Total Gym!” the man said and pulled three or four brochures from the back of his clipboard. He handed all three or four brochures to Alan who took one look at the front picture of the first brochure and felt his heart skip to his throat.

Instantly there was the sound of the hydraulic lift being lowered from the rear of the truck with two immense wooden crates attached precariously aboard.

“How big is this thing?” asked Alan as the two men hefted the crates onto a four-wheeled electric dolly that was half on the curb and half in the street.

“Just sign right here,” the man said offering his clipboard

“Excuse me,” Alan repeated as he signed his name, “Exactly how big is this thing?”

“Where you want this, bub? The front door unlocked?” Asked one of the men with the crates.

“The front... No, what? How big is this? Really! How big is this--” Alan asked, visions of his living room cramped with the machinery inside the boxes that multiplied before his eyes on the sidewalk.

“We got two more crates still inside the truck and then a few boxes of free-weights and what-not," said the clipboard man. "You're going to be down to your fighting weight before you know it. Isn't that right, fellas?"

“Fifteen minutes a day-- That's all it takes!” said one of the assistants, and this verbiage seemed to amuse his buddy to such an extent he dropped his end of things and began to walk down the sidewalk for quite some ways shaking his head.

"Now,” said the bald man with the clipboard, his face barely controlling a smile. “You got an elevator, right?”

-818 words-