"Hey!" Brad shouted over the blaring music.
Hank kept working. He didn't even flinch.
Clink. Clink.
Brad stood up, his face flushing a deep, angry red. He marched aggressively across the gym floor. As he moved, the crowd of fighters and spectators naturally parted for him. Everyone knew Brad’s temper. Everyone knew he was actively looking for an excuse to explode, and nobody wanted to be the target. Sam, who was wiping down a bench press nearby, paused with his towel in his hand. A cold knot formed in Sam's stomach. He hated this part of gym culture. The endless, toxic meathead posturing.
Brad stomped to a halt right behind Hank. The old man was still kneeling, his back completely exposed to the fighter.
"I said hey, old man. Are you deaf?" Brad roared.
Hank calmly lowered the rubber mallet. He placed the flathead screwdriver back into the red toolbox. He took a slow, deep breath, put his heavy hands on his knees, and pushed himself up. He turned around, his expression as unreadable and solid as a concrete wall.
"The locker is jammed," Hank said simply, as if stating a fact about the weather.
"I don't give a damn about the locker," Brad spat, stepping into Hank’s personal space. He was a full head taller than the janitor, casting a wide shadow over him. "I'm trying to train over there, and you're making a racket. Pack up your little toy box and get out of here until we're closed. You work for us, remember?"
Hank looked at Brad. He looked at the fighter's flushed face, the veins bulging in his neck, the angry, erratic rise and fall of his chest. Hank had seen a thousand men exactly like Brad. Men who let their anger drive the vehicle while their brain was locked in the trunk.
"Gym closes at ten. Maintenance happens at nine," Hank said, his voice flat. "I have a job to do, son."
Son.
The word hit Brad like a physical slap to the face. The disrespect was unbearable.
"Who the hell do you think you're talking to?" Brad snarled, aggressively shoving Hank’s shoulder with his good arm.
It wasn't a soft push. It was meant to knock the older man off balance, to send him stumbling backward to the floor in front of the entire gym. But Hank didn't fall. He didn't even stumble. When Brad’s heavy hand collided with Hank's shoulder, it felt to Brad as if he had just shoved a load-bearing pillar. Hank merely shifted his weight slightly, absorbing the kinetic energy perfectly down through his hips and into the floor.
The music in the gym suddenly cut out. Someone at the front desk had seen the altercation and pulled the plug on the stereo. The sudden silence in the massive room was deafening. Every pair of eyes in the facility was locked onto the space between the undefeated fighter and the crippled janitor.
"Don't touch me again," Hank said softly. The gravel in his voice had hardened into jagged flint.
Brad laughed, a high, strained, hysterical sound. He looked around at the silent crowd, throwing his arms out wide. "Are you guys hearing this? The mop boy is giving me orders! What are you gonna do about it, old man? You gonna hit me with your broom?"
Hank stared at him. The old man's eyes slowly tracked up and down Brad's physique. He noted the slight sag in Brad's right shoulder, the over-reliance on the left leg, the tension in the jaw. Hank wasn't looking at Brad like a threat. He was looking at him like a math problem that had a very simple, albeit painful, solution.
"I'm not going to fight you, boy," Hank said, turning around to pick up his toolbox. "You're not worth the paperwork."
Brad saw red. The final shreds of his self-control disintegrated. He reached out, grabbed the back of Hank’s gray T-shirt, and violently yanked the old man backward.
"You don't turn your back on me!" Brad screamed. "You want to disrespect me in my gym? Let's go. Right now. You and me on the mats. Unless you're too much of a coward."