Alan Gobar

Alan squeezed by.

By door-frames. By office furniture. By 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 everything.

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.

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

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

Looking out his bay-window Alan met the eyes of the three men below looking up at him from the sidewalk. He shot his index finger into the air in the universal sign of one that will be right down in a jiffy, and the three sweaty looking men below nodded their heads and held up three five-fingered-hands in the universal sign of take your sweet time, we are more than happy to wait here all day in the stinkin' sun for ya'.

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 a ways and beginning to grin wider as he took Alan visually in.

“I am doing very well!” Alan said, nodding his head and smiling first 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 almost without meaning to before they looked at the ground, and then at each other, and then back down at the ground again.

“We gotcha 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:

“What?”

“Your gym, your gym!” said the clipboard-man sounding very much like he was telling Alan that he was in fact “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 a 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 individually 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?”

“The front... No, what? How big is this? Really! How big is this--”

“We got two more crates still inside the truck and then a few boxes of free-weights and what-not. You're going to be down to 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 which 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 and a controlled look on his face, “Is the front door unlocked?”

-818 words-