My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie My heart donor was a homeless guy who literally lived at the gym. I never knew his name until afterward. No one did. He simply hovered around the treadmills by day, eating some sort of bagel that had probably been stale and free from the local café, before retiring to one of the locker room benches at night. Why none of the workers hadn't kicked him out was beyond me. And the one time he had stepped out of the gym, he had been bowled over by a motorcyclist who was still high from the adrenaline kick after thirty minutes on the elliptical. His heart seemed to be the only thing that had avoided skidmarks or road rash. I had never been to Riley's gym. It wasn't your standard chain gym - it had endured the YMCA's and the 24 Hour Fitness's and the Equinox's. In fact, it had been going for over fifty years now. Riley Samson IV - spry and balding and barely thirty years old - had recently become the owner and was the one to break the news about t

They told me I had to watch my weight, but I sat and stared and slept and ate as much as I could and as much as I wanted, not gaining an ounce, and I went out and flaunted my beautiful curves and my beautiful bends, my beautiful beginnings and my beautiful ends, my bumps and my lumps and my rises and falls, my fleshy domain with its own private walls. Got a bag of cheetos and a beer to spare? I'll eat the whole town's food - I don't even care.