Treadmill by Warren Adler

months. He decided that he must get back to that place of calm between yesterday and tomorrow. He berated himself for falling into the trap of anxiety and partly blamed Parrish. Also, Beth Davis.
    Letting himself into his apartment, he went to the refrigerator, took out a Healthy Choice packet from the freezer and put it in the microwave. Then he opened a drawer and took out a rolled-up paper napkin that contained a plastic fork, knife, and spoon. Except for the frozen dinners, eating utensils, a few plastic glasses, a coffee mug, and a large jar of instant coffee, there was nothing in the refrigerator or in the drawers and cabinets. He used the hot water from the sink to make coffee in the morning before he left for the club.
    In the closet, he had five gray gym sweatpants, two dark blue suits still wrapped in plastic from the dry cleaners, and a pair of blue jeans. On the shelf above the suits were two blue laundered and folded dress shirts. Two ties dangled from a hook. On the floor of the closet was a pair of tasseled loafers, once shined but now a bit dusty, and three pairs of Reeboks, one of them already worn down and barely usable from his effort on the treadmill.
    He had tried hard to think of the treadmill as a perfect metaphor for his life, making movement but standing still, going nowhere, locked in place. It was getting increasingly difficult to live that metaphor. Reality had started to intrude.
    Cooper had carefully organized his small apartment for bare utility. He had even contemplated not having a telephone, but that seemed too extreme. A telephone was necessary even though it would be a connection outside the orbit of his circumscribed world. He had totally rejected the idea of a cell phone.
    It had required a great deal of thought to eliminate all superfluous possessions from his life. He had seven pairs of boxer briefs, seven T-shirts, seven pairs of casual socks and two pairs of black dress socks. He had three pairs of pyjamas. When he went to the club, he carried a little tote bag containing a change of underwear, socks, a jogging outfit, and his toiletries. Three times a week he would wash his dirty clothes in the basement laundry room. In his linen closet he had two queen-sized fitted sheets, and two extra pillowcases. On his bed was a comforter and two pillows stacked one on top of the other, since he slept better with his head much higher than his body.
    When Cooper opened his kitchen drawer, he was surprised to find that the eating utensils weren’t as neatly stacked as he imagined them to be the night before. At first, he attributed that to his own carelessness, but he had finally reached a point when he could do these things by rote. Perhaps the break in his usual routine was affecting his sense of organization. This thing with Parrish at the gym had taken its toll, but even thinking that brought back a level of anxiety in Cooper.
    Even his closet, the way his clothes were hanging, suggested that he had been less than alert that morning when he changed into his jogging outfit. A pair of his gray sweatpants had actually slipped off its hanger and was in a heap on top of his Reeboks.
    Cooper ate his Healthy Choice meal without relish, which he took to be a good sign since he ate only for sustenance these days, and no longer for enjoyment. It had been increasingly difficult to enjoy this diet on a daily basis. Mostly, every meal in the box, whether it was meat, fish, or vegetarian, tasted exactly the same; he even accepted this sameness as yet another good thing.
    After dinner, Cooper turned on the reading light above his one upholstered chair and went to his stacks of books piled against the wall. He was determined to get back into Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain . The books were usually alphabetized, but today he couldn’t find The Magic Mountain . He looked everywhere in the apartment in vain. He looked under the bed, tore off the pillows and blankets, upended the upholstered chair, looked in