His arms were really talking to him now, so Brad decided to do the running test next, and he got no complaint from Ratel, who was watching and taking notes from across the room. Now he was more in his element. He cranked the treadmill up to a nine-minute-mile pace, and found it fairly easy. He used the time to rest his weary arm muscles for the push-ups, which he thought would be easy as well. After the two-mile run, his arms felt pretty good, and he dropped down for push-ups but found he could only manage twenty-eight of them before his arms gave out.
“Dexter, you wouldn’t have been able to graduate from Air Force basic training with those numbers, let alone the Air Force Academy,” Ratel told him after he trotted around the blue mat and stood before him. “Your upper-body strength is pitiful. I thought you were a high-school football player—you must’ve been a place kicker.” In fact Brad was not just a high-school football place kicker but a punter, and could snap a football twenty yards. “We can work on that. But what bugs me the most about what you just did was your lousy stinking give-a-shit attitude.”
“Sir?”
“You were dogging it on the treadmill, Dexter,” Ratel said. “I get you’re a bike rider and in pretty good shape aerobics-wise, but it looked like you were just taking it easy on the treadmill. You set a lousy nine-minute-mile pace—that’s not even an ‘average’ score in basic training. I said I wanted your best time on a two-mile run, not your lackadaisical time. What’s your excuse?”
“I needed to rest my arms before finishing the tests,” Brad said. “I thought a nine-minute mile was pretty good for starters.” With every word he spoke, the little man’s tiny little eyes got angrier and angrier until they looked as if they were going to pop right out of his head. Brad knew there was only one allowable response: “Sorry, Chief. No excuse.”
“You’re damned right there’s no excuse, Dexter,” Ratel snarled. “I told you about respect. There’s nothing respectful about only doing things half-assed. You don’t show respect for me, and you sure as hell don’t show it for yourself either. It’s your first day here, and you haven’t showed me one damned thing I can respect you for. You came late, you were not ready to work out, and you took it easy on yourself. You’re not showing me squat, Dexter. One more session like this, and we might as well call this thing off. Get your stuff and get out of my sight.” Brad retrieved his gym bag by the bathroom, and by the time he came back, Ratel was gone.
Brad felt like crap as he mounted his bike and pedaled back to Cal Poly, and he was still in a somber mood as he made his way to Poly Canyon and Jodie Cavendish’s apartment. She gave him a big hug at the door, which he failed to return. “Uh-oh, someone’s cranky,” she observed. “C’mon in, have a glass of wine, and yabber at me.”
“Thanks, Jodie,” Brad said. “Sorry I smell like the bottom of my feet. I didn’t shower or change after I left the gym.”
“You’re welcome to use the shower here if you’d like, mate,” Jodie said with a wink. Brad didn’t notice the obvious suggestion. He made his way to one of the bar stools at the counter surrounding the kitchen, and she poured a glass of Chardonnay and set it before him. “But it doesn’t bother me. I like a bloke who smells like a bloke and not like a trough lollie.” She waited a few seconds, but Brad said nothing. “You’re not even going to ask what that is? Wow, you must’ve really come a gutser today. Tell me about it, love.”
“It’s not really that big a deal,” Brad said. “I show up for this workout session, a little late, but he said the first time was excusable. The instructor is this retired hard-core chief master sergeant. He has me do this fitness test. I thought I did okay, but he harangues me for holding back and being lazy. I thought I did okay. I guess I didn’t.”
“Well, there’s always next time,” Jodie said. “Fitness instructors are trained to shock and awe their students, and I think he was putting a Clayton’s on you. No worries, Brad—we both know you’re in good shape, except for that bruise on your head. How do you feel? Your bruise still looks spewin.’ Maybe you should skip these workouts until that goes away.”
Brad shrugged. “I told them I’d do it, so I guess I’ll keep on going until I pass out or my head explodes,” he said. The last thing he wanted to do was incur Wohl’s wrath for quitting right after day one. He sat back in his seat and directly looked at Jodie for the first time. “I’m sorry, Jodie. Enough about my new fitness instructor. How was your day?”
“Apples, mate,” Jodie replied. She leaned toward him across the kitchen counter and said in the usual conspiratorial whisper she used when she had something unexpected to say: “I did it, Brad.”
“Did what?” Brad asked. Then, studying her face and body language, he knew. “The inorganic nanotube structure . . . ?”
“Synthesized,” Jodie said in a low voice, almost a whisper but a very excited one. “Right in our own lab at Cal Poly. Not just a few nanotubes, but millions. We were even able to create the first nantenna.”