Once a Runner (27 page)

When he finally heard the one about how "I couldn't
drive
as far as you
run"
he thought:
death on a plate.
Fleeing to the kitchen he was fishing around in the ice tub for a non-diet beer when he noticed that the dark-haired girl had followed him in. She stood with one fist on her hip, watching him with faint amusement, but in a nice way, her head cocked curiously, and this: a flash of white carnivorous teeth against her dark face. I'm not up to this, he told himself.

He was fumbling around in the tub a little more than was called for and since he figured she was waiting for him to get his ass out of the way, he dived in with both hands and finally speared a normal beer. His hands were stiff and numb from the ice.

"Good old fattening kind," he said lamely (oh aren't we just the conversationalist?). He heh-hehed good naturedly, wondering when he had become a total moron, and was about to make his hasty escape when she laughed. It was a remarkably unaffected laugh, throaty-real. It stopped him pretty quick.

"You were
not
having much fun out there," she said. It was a statement, not a question. Then he noticed she already had a drink in her hand.

"I suppose not. Shows, huh?" He cracked the beer, dropped the tab into the ice, took a manly slug and stuck his left hand into his back pocket to get it warm. He rocked back on his heels, looking about the kitchen as if truly absorbed by its contents. Maybe she's never seen anyone talk to the cookware, he thought.

"Would you like to see the orchids in the back yard?" she asked.

"Orchids? There are orchids in the back yard?"

"No," she laughed, "not a one. Come on." She took him by the hand and led him back through the living room and out the sliding glass doors. There were no orchids. They sat on the far side of the pool on a child's swing set and listened to the noise of the party, that now seemed somehow distant, faindy ludicrous. Cassidy wondered at first why it seemed so nostalgic, but then remembered: There were grownup parties long ago, and I sat in swing sets and listened to them.

She was a psychology instructor, working on her PhD and she did not in the least want to talk about it. He judged her to be 24 or 25, not as pretty as Andrea, but with her irony-ridden eyes and the amusement obvious in her forehead and eyebrows she might at any moment-he figured-have him sitting back on his haunches more or less barking like a seal. Maybe I'm too easy, he thought.

She was clearly a woman who could take care of herself and for some reason that rattled him.

"You must not go to parties much. At least I've never seen you around before," she said. Cassidy was drawing designs in the frost on his beer can.

"No, I suppose not. When you get right down to it, I don't really do much of anything."

"Except your running."

"Yes, except that."

"Doesn't sound very interesting."

"Oh hey," he sat up straight, "it's not. Take my word for it." Deftly he watched her reaction and then in almost perfect sync repeated her next question right along with her:

"Then why do you (I) do it?"

She remained unflustered however, laughed, and waited politely for his response.

"I wish there were some very clever, eminently acceptable answer to that. It's like when people ask me what I think about when I'm running. I usually say something like 'quantum mechanics.' Sometimes I say music."

"Music?"

"It's as good as any. Sometimes I
do
think about music. Actually when you're training you can think about anything you want, just about. But in a race, everyone thinks about the same thing." "Which is?"

"The race, oddly enough."

"And what do you tell people who keep insisting on knowing why you do it?"

"I say it keeps me regular. Or I say Fm going out for the Olympics; they can sort of understand that since it's on the teevee."

"You say it as if it were a joke."

"Oh it's no joke, it's just that it's such a hard thing, such a slim chance; you have got to be so
lucky
even after you are
so good.
The odds are just against you, that's all. It's like a little kid landing the part of the carrot in his school play on nutrition, and having it go so well that his mother goes around telling everyone someday he'll win an Oscar. I mean, he might very well do it, but..."

"Bruce Denton did it," she offered.

"Bruce Denton got an Oscar?"

She gave him one of those one-knuckle female jobs to the deltoid that brought real tears to his eyes.

"Bruce Denton doesn't seem abnormal to you," he grunted, rubbing the spot painfully, "because he's walking around this very house munching pretzels and telling off-color jokes. But he's probably the only Olympic distance runner for a thousand miles. It is not a ... normal thing to have one at your party, you know? It is not normal to ... ah, never mind. It lacks perspective. And that hurt, by the way."

"Hmmm. So you spend all your time doing something admittedly boring that you have no good explanation for, and then when you go out to have a good time, you sit around looking like someone just shot your dog. Interesting."

"Think I'm a head case?"

"No doubt about it. Welcome to Rubber City." She motioned in the general direction of the party, and as if on cue there was a wild burst of laughter and suddenly a man with his shirt tails out went crawling on all fours by the sliding glass door at a startling clip. He was looking back over his shoulder and kind of slinking along. Cassidy recognized him as an opthamologist named Caldwell something who had earlier told him to "hang right on in there."

"Dr. Hodge," she said. "Coyote imitation. It's not too bad, actually. This is what's known as middle-class stoned."

Cassidy turned back, looked at her for several seconds and really couldn't think of a thing to say. It occurred to him that he was a pretty dull guy. She reached over and touched his beard. The intimacy of the gesture was incredibly soothing to him.

"I like the new look. Very Nordic. Much different from those awful crewcut pictures in the
Sun.
They must have been taken when you were a freshman. When did this come about?"

"Last few weeks. Something to do with Bruce's hair-brained scheme to get me into the Relays in two weeks. That was one of the reasons he didn't want me to come tonight. Supposedly everyone here is sworn to secrecy. Actually I think it's all a crock."

"Someone said something about it but I didn't pay much attention."

"I have been banned from competing on Southeastern University's tartan trail, now and forevermore." He held up his hands, a preacher pronouncing benediction; then he burped politely behind his hand. Four beers was about his limit now. But he was beginning to feel pretty good about the evening after all. "Dangerous rabble-rouser that I am," he added, "rabble, rabble, rabble."

"Let me ask you something," she said softly.

"Sure," he finished the can with a flourish, "anything. Anything at all." She put her hand on his knee and ran a fingernail along the ridges on the outside of his thigh. It felt to her like nothing so much as a bunch of tightly bound bridge support cables.

"Did you think I was being brash in there, about the orchids and all?" softly still.

"Uh."

"Well did you?"

His Adam's apple felt like a soggy tennis ball.

"Does it surprise you?" She leaned over to capture his downcast eyes, led him back up to look at her. "Well?"

He hated his idiotic awkwardness, his painful lack of any kind of grace. He was a cloistered monk turned loose among Manhattanites, flap-flapping around in his scrungy sandals high up in the carpeted sky, nervously sipping some strange heady cocktail, preoccupied with his own alarming armpits and responding to the simplest inquiry like this: buh dee buh dee buh dee.

"You have to try to understand," he said miserably, still watching her dark serpentine hand, "I have no moves left. You have got to try to understand how it is ... *

"Oh," she smiled that carnivorous smile, "I will."

34. Pause.

For me? You shouldn't have!" Cassidy said when Denton handed over the cardboard box. It was getdng close and Denton had announced it was time for brass tacks. "You don't know how unfunny that may be. No telling what kind of fiery crap will fill the air," Denton said. But his smile indicated his real degree of concern. As Cassidy opened the box Denton thought:
He really doesn't know what he's done; his lightest day was eight miles when he sprained his ankle that time.

"Finnish national team sweats! They're beautiful," Cassidy held up the robin's egg blue top. The blue and white flag of Finland was in miniature over the left breast.

"I'd like them back in good condition please, Seppo, as I had to trade them straight up for a pair of USA's."

"Zeppo? Zeppo?"

"Seppo, ninny. Here is your contestant's entrance pass and your number. You are listed as Seppo Kaitainen, a miler from Finland currently competing for Central Ohio Tech. Nobody knows about it but you and me and the guy I got to send in the application and fee from Ohio. Cornwall snapped you right up, Seppo! It appears you have run yourself some outstanding times this year."

"I might have known it would be good and kinky."

"Kinky hell! It's pure genius is what it is. You have no idea how much different you look from the old close-eropped anarchist of yore. You get yourself some wire rims, garble up your English a little more than usual, ask for some pickled herring, and by god the sunbitches will think you're Paavo Nurmi."

Cassidy was holding the sweat top up to himself and trying to see himself in the window reflection.

"You honest to god think it'll work?"

"Fish tread water? Queen gotta snatch? Frog waterproof? Wild dog bay at the ..."

"All right, all right. I sense a little pride of authorship here. What happens if someone catches on? Won't your man at Central Ohio Whatchermacallit get screwed over?"

"That illustrious center of higher learning doesn't exist, to my knowledge. Even if it did, there would be no one there to whom, as my counselor friend says, liability would attach* My buddy was only passing through when he mailed in the application. He is a proud resident of Illinois.''

"All this to get into a godamned track meet."

"Not just any track meet, Seppo old buddy, not by a long shot. It's not every day a Finn attending an Ohio school gets to run the world record holder from New Zealand right here in north Florida. You ought to can the skepticism and thank your lucky stars I was able to bring the whole production off."

Cassidy smiled. "Hey. I appreciate it, I really do. But since I have apparently made the traveling squad, I'm going to expect Central Ohio to spring for my varsity letter."

"Say no more, Seppo, we treat our foreign athletes right," he said as he stood. "Right now I've got to go see if I can salvage what's left of my marriage. I'll be out early and we'll talk strategy."

"Mmmm." Cassidy was off someplace and Denton hoped it was not out on the track, thrashing himself through it yet another time.

"Hey... Hey! Leave it alone for awhile. Get some sleep; you might want to take some of that mild nerve stuff in the cabinet. Try to keep your mind offit as much as possible. You know all about this stuff." He started for the door. "Oh, there's a nondescript racing vest in the box in case you don't have one. Seppo wouldn't be racing in his national colors, it's just a plain ..."

"Bruce, is there any ...1 mean, could there be any conceivable way I might could win this thing? Seriously, I mean?"

Denton stopped. "Hells bells, Quenton. You can put the fear of god into him, I know that. But give yourself some time. You don't have to go out and trounce the best guy in the world just because you've done some great training here. Let him pull you along to a super time." He started for the door again but stopped with his hand on the knob.

"You know those demons of yours you're always talking about? Well, Walton's got armies of them. You can see them in his eyes when he warms up, scrambling around just wailing and carrying on."

"Well," Cassidy said, standing and stretching, "I guess we just let the fiery little bastards loose and
at
each other."

Denton opened the door, looked back before leaving.

"Was there ever any other way?" he said.

The next night after dinner they sat on the front porch right at dusk, sipping coffee and staring into the darkening oaks; fireflies winked in the deeper woods and a red tail hawk circled once high overhead and silently floated away to some far off haven, leaving the chilled deep blue of the sky to the earlier stars. There was an unmistakable feeling of something large having passed and something large coming: eye of hurricane.

Cassidy held his mug with both hands and moved closer to the barbecue grill, where coals glowed pale orange, and thought: the adults would sit on the porch like this while we caught fireflies and played tag on the front lawn. The older of his North Carolina cousins would grow irritable and litde Quentie would be counseled not to remain so long uncaught.

Only children and dogs, it seemed, were
supposed
to run, and they all shared the sidewalks. Perhaps that accounted for Cassidy's growing sense of unreality out in the cabin. He no longer could claim his activity was an adjunct to scholastic pursuits, a schoolboy's preoccupation. He was now beyond that, but where? A professional in a field where there was no profession? The horrendously physical nature of his days and ways occasionally caused him to stir; intellectual grist of late had been confined to mind candy of the
Lord of the Rings
variety. He had begun to wonder how much of this was really necessary.