Serge and Coleman had stopped talking and were now staring slack-jawed at the man like they were watching someone prepare shrunken heads. Then, just when they thought the protracted ritual was over, a whole new set of gyrations on another muscle group.
Coleman angled his head toward Serge. “Should we be stretching?”
“Absolutely not,” said Serge. “I’m naturally limber and you’re drinking beer, which is a form of stretching.” He looked down. “I can’t feel my feet.”
“Maybe your shoelaces are too tight.”
Serge sat on the ground.
The man finally completed his pre-race routine with a series of ankle and wrist bends. He reached back in his car and came out with a blood-pressure kit. He wrapped it around his left arm and timed himself on a stopwatch.
Serge rolled his eyes.
The man finished and smirked again at Serge and Coleman. Something under his breath that sounded like
“Hey,” said Serge. “For your information, we’re going to win this race.”
The man laughed.
“And you know why we’re going to win? Because we don’t care about winning! That’s the big mistake you guys make….” Serge waved toward the thousands of runners near the starting line. “This thing today is about more than winning. It’s about something much bigger.”
“What’s that?”
“A souvenir T-shirt. You should see my collection.”
The man gave a final look of disdain and trotted off.
“We better get going,” said Serge. “It’s almost post time.”
The pair walked over to the assembling runners. “…Excuse me… excuse me…” Pushing their way through the pack, people running in place, thousands of independently bobbing heads. Men, women, children, a rainbow of brightly colored shirts, pieces of paper pinned to the fronts with four-digit numbers, except for the shirtless triathletes, who had numbers in grease pencil on shaved chests. “…Excuse me… excuse me…”
“Watch it!”
“Sorry,” said Coleman. He took a sip from his sportster bottle and tapped Serge on the shoulder. “Why do we have to be in the front row, anyway?”
“Because of my strategy to win this race. Most people make the mistake of trying to pace themselves. The key is to go all out from the starting gun and open up an insane lead, completely demoralizing the rest of the field, which will be flooded with confusing emotions of worthlessness and suicide. Then, before the end of the first mile, they’ll all stop running and go home.”
Serge and Coleman finally made the front row, wedging themselves between entrants who gave them dirty looks.
The official starter stood by the side of the bridge. “On your marks…”
The runners stopped jogging in place and leaned forward in anticipation. Except Serge. He was down on the pavement in a four-point sprinter’s stance, grinding the toes of his sneakers into the cement for traction.
“Get set…”
The starter raised his pistol.
Bang.
Serge took off running as hard as he could, making an intense, teeth-clenched face like James Caan in
A few minutes later, Coleman walked up sipping his bottle and leaned over the railing next to Serge. “How’s the race going?”
“That’s enough running for today.”
Two hours later, the road was opened back up to traffic. A ’71 Buick Riviera crossed the bridge.
Thousands of runners milled around the post-race celebration area full of corporate sponsor tents. Paper cups of sports drinks covered folding tables. Big banners with the Nike swish, wireless sign-up booths. People formed lines at blue Porta-Johns. More lines of late-finishers snaked up to the race organizer’s table, where chest numbers were matched against printouts of official completion times. Then handshakes, certificates and souvenir T-shirts.
There was rustling down in the mangroves behind the Porta-Johns. Moaning and pleading.
“Oh, please! Stop! Dear God!…”
The owner of a silver Infiniti was pinned to the ground by Serge’s knees. Another punch in the face. “Gimme the fuckin’ T-shirt!”
18
SERGE STARED IN the bathroom mirror, admiring his torn and bloody race T-shirt.
Coleman stared in the open fridge. “Only bottled water.”
Serge returned to the sofa and opened a notebook.
Coleman plopped next to him and turned on the TV with the remote. The Style Channel,
“Now that I’m completely physically fit, we move on to Phase Two.” Serge flipped notebook pages to a freehand schematic. “I’ve chopped the islands up into grids, just like when they do population counts of the endangered deer. If Miss Right is within these quadrants, she won’t get away.”
Coleman hit the remote again. “You know, most of my married friends, it was a chance meeting. They were simply going about their lives, and one day true love just fell in their laps.”
