Chubcheckers

The locker room at the YMCA smelled of tile soap, old steam, damp wool, and cedar. Arthur stood just inside, his canvas bag slung over one shoulder, his heart fluttering like a trapped bird. The sign on the door—“No Swimsuits Allowed”—was simple, yet it seemed to tower over him now. He hadn’t entered a communal changing room since college, and back then everything had been more discreet. Here, in this welcoming Midwestern town, he was literally expected to shed his clothes among strangers. He edged toward an empty bench and began to unbutton his shirt, fingers both practiced and hesitant. All around him, the room was in motion. At the far end, Ronny Blake, the high school auto shop teacher, laughed as he slapped his towel against the bench. He was a bear of a man—broad through the shoulders, soft at the middle, with dark chest hair curling like ivy. He stretched confidently in the nude, chatting about carburetors as if he were picking produce in a grocery aisle. Nearby, Walt—a wiry man...

The late morning sun beat down with a flat, unforgiving glare as Gary Matheson maneuvered his dented Econoline van into the back lot behind Starline Storage. The blacktop shimmered with heat, already soft beneath the tires. He shifted his bulk in the seat—belly pressing into the steering wheel, the mesh of his cargo shorts bunched uncomfortably between his thick thighs—and muttered under his breath about the heat. At fifty-four, Gary moved like a man who’d learned to make peace with gravity. He was built wide and heavy, with the doughy softness of someone who’d long ago stopped squeezing into spaces he didn’t fit. His chest sagged beneath the sweat-damp cotton of his flannel shirt, which hung open over a stretched-out tank top. His beard, once gingerish, was now a coarse gray flecked with tobacco stains, and the dome of his head, mostly bald, shone like a patch of wet clay beneath the ballcap he tugged lower. But Gary didn’t mind discomfort. It was part of the job. And discomfort somet...