“Trust me, you’re already ready. But this is something different. There’s gotta be some other reason you come in here every other day and hurt yourself the way you do.”

Feeling a little recovered, Carter puffed out a breath and straightened up. “I dunno,” he said with a shrug, “I guess I just like it.”

“What, the pain?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Jimmy tilted his head and gave his friend a look of incredulity. “Let me tell you something, Quinnie,” he said, wagging his finger. “Nobody in their right mind likes pain. I don’t care what the psychologists tell you.”

“It’s not so much that I like it,” explained Carter. “I just like what it does for me.”

“What does pain do for you?”

“It makes me forget things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“I don’t know,” said Carter, mocking his friend’s expression. “I can’t remember.”

“You’re such a loser,” Jimmy needled him, shaking his head. “You know, if you want to forget things, drinking would be a lot easier.”

Carter laughed, and tossed the towel back at his friend. Satisfied that he had stressed his leg muscles to the fullest possible extent on this particular occasion, he picked himself up and went into the adjacent room to see how well he might torture his upper body.

Later, after he had finished his workout, Carter threw on a dry T-shirt, stuffed his gear into his gym bag, and walked out with Jimmy. It was a warm, pleasant evening—a soft breeze was puffing out of the south—and the two stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes, contemplating how to make the best of what remained of it. Carter let out a contented sigh as he watched the cars zooming back and forth, many with their tops down, radios blaring. Summer was in the air; it wouldn’t be long in coming.

Jimmy nudged him and nodded to the establishment across the street. “What do you say, a couple of beers before you go home?”

A couple of beers later, the two were still sitting at the bar, watching the Red Sox play on the television overhead. An empty bowl of bar mix sat on the bar between them. Jimmy reached into it, scratching the bottom for the last few crumbs.

“You know,” he said, stuffing the bits into his mouth, “it speaks well of you that despite your four years of higher education, you still lower yourself to hang around with your knucklehead friends who barely made it out of high school.”

Carter took a sip of his beer and chuckled.

“What can I say?” he said with a smile. “I like the feeling of superiority it gives me hanging around with mental midgets.”