Claude raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

“I don’t know what they use.” I was getting tired of this conversation. But Claude was circling his hand in a gesture that meant. “Amplify.”

“You have a series of poses you go through, to emphasize the muscle groups.” I rose to give Claude a demonstration. I turned my body a little sideways to him, fisted my hands, arched my arms in pumped-up curves. I gave him the blank eyes and small smile that said, “Look how superior my body is. Don’t you wish you were me?”

Claude made a face. “What’s the point?”

“Just like a beauty contest, Claude.” I resumed my seat at the table. “Except the focus is on muscular development.”

“I saw the poster of last year’s winners. That woman was like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Claude said, wrinkling his nose.

“Marshall wanted me to enter.”

“You’d do that?” he asked, horrified. “That gal looked like a small pumped-up man with boobs slapped on.”

I shrugged. “I don’t want to spend the time training. It takes months to get ready for a competition. Plus, I’d have to camouflage all the scars, which I think would be impossible. But that was what Del wanted to do, train and compete. Develop himself to his full potential, was the way he put it.” I’d watched Del stare at one of his muscles for a good five minutes, wrapped up in his own reflection to the exclusion of the other people in the gym.

“I think I could have lifted what he had on the bar,” Claude said, a question in his voice. He rinsed off the plates and put them in the dishwasher. “It came to two hundred ninety pounds.”

I thought Claude was flattering himself, though I didn’t say so out loud. Claude seemed to have a fair body, but he did not exercise and hadn’t as long as I’d known him. “Bodybuilding isn’t exactly like competitive weight lifting,” I said. “Training for a competition, some people use somewhat lower weights and lots of reps, rather than really heavy weights and a few reps. That was probably Del’s highest weight.”