Best Friends by Thomas Berger

seventies.”
    â€œBet you’ve got a rent-free deal for mowing the lawn and carrying out the garbage,” said Suzanne, lightly punching him in his right biceps. She winced. “What have you got up your sleeve? A wooden arm? I think I busted a knuckle.”
    They were entering what might have served as a dining room had not Roy furnished it as a gymnasium instead, with floor mats, loose weights, a lifting bench, and a tall, elaborately branched contraption of black steel that in another context might pass as a work of kinetic art.
    â€œYour chamber of horrors,” Suzanne noted. “And that’s your torture machine. What kind of hell have I gotten myself into?” She went to the Bowflex and touched one of its many extremities. “This is that exercise gadget I’ve seen advertised on TV. I didn’t know anybody actually owned one.” She turned back to him. “The mystery of your arm is solved. In my line you seldom encounter anyone so healthy.”
    â€œI’ve been working out since I was a kid. It just got to be a habit. I probably couldn’t stop now if I wanted to.” With women he often felt as if he should apologize for weight training. With men it was the other fellow who was put on the defensive, unless he too performed heavy lifting—but if he had a job in which it was a requirement, he felt superior to the recreational athlete.
    She smiled. “I can find it in my heart to forgive you, but only if you give me a real drink and not some cat piss from the Juiceman.”
    â€œI’m not too much of a nutrition crank,” said Roy, conducting her along the hallway and into the kitchen, “and no teetotaller.”
    â€œNow this,” said Suzanne, who was still wearing her raincoat, “is the first room that makes sense. It’s big enough without being outlandish. It’s also the first that looks as if it could have been used by servants. I like that long table.”
    The kitchen was smaller than the Grandys’, but had ample space for a big central table of oil-finished wood under a hanging lamp. Roy took away Suzanne’s coat and returned to list for her the available libations. She chose Maker’s Mark, neat. She had meant it when asking for a real drink. Roy had heard that the hard stuff was coming back into fashion, but had not till now met any female who displayed that taste. Perhaps he was on his way to fogeyhood. When he looked at Suzanne with age in mind, he estimated she was probably still in her twenties, younger than he by five or six years; Francine had been almost three years older. He was not attracted to youth as such. There was something about Suzanne, despite her wisecracking insolence, that seemed basically old-fashioned. Perhaps it was her white uniform; nursing was not a fashionable profession for the young women of today.
    â€œWhat did you do with your hat?” he asked when they were seated at the table with their whiskey.
    â€œI had already put it in the car when I spotted you looking like you were going to faint.” She swallowed the remaining third of the liquid in her glass and narrowed her pale-lashed eyes. “You’re not one of those who likes to be paddled by someone dressed as a nurse?”
    â€œSorry to disappoint you.” His drink was diluted with water and ice. The cubes clinked unpleasantly against his teeth, so he rose and ditched them in the sink, then reinforced his glass from the bottle, which he afterward brought to the table. “I don’t want to be accused of plying you with strong drink, so please help yourself.”
    â€œI trust you,” said she. “Mostly because you do not call me Suzie.”
    He swirled the whiskey in his glass. “He who avoids diminutives, in a minimizing world, can be relied on absolutely.” He could not remember whether that was a quotation.
    She became solemn for a moment. “This is a professional question.