She was milling around with maybe a couple hundred other spectators — or sadists, he guessed you’d have to call them — waiting to watch the crazies do their thing. “Thanks,” she breathed, after he’d leaned in close to touch the tip of his smoke to hers. Her eyes were big wet pools, and she was no freak, no bone woman. Her lips were wet too, or maybe it was his imagination. “So,” she said, the voice caught low in her throat, a real smoker’s rasp, “here for the big event?”
He just nodded.
There was a pause. They sucked at their cigarettes. A pair of gulls flailed sharply at the air behind them and then settled down to poke through the sand for anything that looked edible. “My name’s Sandra,” she offered, but he wasn’t listening, not really, because it was then that it came to him, his inspiration, his moment of grace and redemption: suddenly he knew how he was going to make it up to Paula. He cut his eyes away from the woman and through the crowd to where Paula bent over her equipment, the take-no-prisoners look ironed into her face. And what does she want more than anything? he asked himself, his excitement so intense he almost spoke the words aloud. What would make her happy, glad to see him, ready to party, celebrate, dance till dawn and let bygones be bygones?
To win. That was all. To beat Zinny Bauer. And in that moment, even as Paula caught his eye and glowered at him, he had a vision of Zinny Bauer, the Amazing Bone Woman, coming into the final stretch with her legs and arms pumping, in command, no problem, and the bright green cup of Gatorade held out for her by the smiling volunteer in the official volunteer’s cap and T-shirt — yes — and Zinny Bauer refreshing herself, drinking it down in midstride, running on and on until she hit the wall he was already constructing.
—
Paula pulled the red bathing cap down over her ears, adjusted her swim goggles and strode across the beach, her heartbeat as slow and steady as a lizard’s. She was focused, as clearheaded and certain as she’d ever been in her life. Nothing mattered now except leaving all the hotshots and loudmouths and macho types behind in the dust — and Zinny Bauer too. There were a couple of pros competing in the men’s division and she had no illusions about beating them, but she was going to teach the rest of them a hard lesson, a lesson about toughness and endurance and will. If anything, what had happened with Jason last night was something she could use, the kind of thing that made her angry, that made her wonder what she’d seen in him in the first place. He didn’t care about her. He didn’t care about anybody. That was what she was thinking when the gun went off and she hit the water with the great thundering herd of them, the image of his bleary apologetic face burning into her brain — date rape, that’s what they called it — and she came out of the surf just behind Zinny Bauer, Jill Eisen, and Tommy Roe, one of the men’s pros.
All right. Okay. She was on her bike now, through the gate in a flash and driving down the flat wide concourse of Cabrillo Boulevard in perfect rhythm, effortless, as if the blood were flowing through her legs and into the bike itself. Before she’d gone half a mile she knew she was going to catch Zinny Bauer and pass her to ride with the men’s leaders and get off first on the run. It was preordained, she could feel it, feel it pounding in her temples and in the perfect engine of her heart. The anger had settled in her legs now, a bitter, hot-burning fuel. She fed on the air, tucked herself into the handlebars, and flew. If all this time she’d raced for herself, for something uncontainable inside her, now she was racing for Jason, to show him up, to show him what she was, what she really was. There was no excuse for him. None. And she was going to win this event, she was going to beat Zinny Bauer and all those hundreds of soft, winded, undertrained, crowing, chest-thumping jocks too, and she was going to accept her trophy and stride right by him as if he didn’t exist, because she wasn’t soft, she wasn’t, and he was going to find that out once and for all.
—
By the time he got back to the beach Jason thought he’d run some sort of race himself. He was breathing hard — got to quit smoking — and his tequila headache was heating up to the point where he was seriously considering ducking into Clubber’s and slamming a shot or two, though it was only half past nine and all the tourists would be there buttering their French toast and would you pass the syrup please and thank you very much. He’d had to go all the way out to Drake’s place and shake him awake to get the Tuinal — one of Drake’s mother’s six thousand and one prescriptions to fight off the withering aches of her seventy-odd years. Tuinal, Nembutal, Dalmane, Darvocet: Jason didn’t care, just so long as there was enough of it. He didn’t do barbiturates anymore — probably hadn’t swallowed a Tooey in ten years — but he remembered the sweet numb glow they gave him and the way they made his legs feel like tree trunks planted deep in the ground.
The sun had burned off the fog by now, and the day was clear and glittering on the water. They’d started the race at seven-thirty, so that gave him a while yet — the first men would be crossing the finish line in just under three hours, and the women would be coming in at three-ten, three-twelve, something like that. All he needed to do now was finesse himself into the inner sanctum, pick up a stray T-shirt and cap, find the Gatorade and plant himself about two miles from the finish. Of course there was a chance the Amazing Bone Woman wouldn’t take the cup from him, especially if she recognized him from the other night, but he was going to pull his cap down low and hide behind his Ray-Bans and show her a face of devotion. One second, that’s all it would take. A hand coming out of the crowd, the cup beaded with moisture and moving right along beside her so she didn’t even have to break stride — and what was there to think about? She drinks and hits the wall. And if she didn’t go for it the first time, he’d hop in the car and catch her a mile farther on.
He’d been watching one of the security volunteers stationed outside the trailer that served as a command center. A kid of eighteen maybe, greasy hair, an oversized cross dangling from one ear, a scurf of residual acne. He was a carbon copy of the kids he sold wetsuits and Killer Beeswax to — maybe he was even one of them. Jason reminded himself to tread carefully. He was a businessman, after all, one of the pillars of the downtown community, and somebody might recognize him. But then so what if they did? He was volunteering his time, that was all, a committed citizen doing his civic best to promote tourism and everything else that was right in the world. He ducked under the rope. “Hey, bro,” he said to the kid, extending his hand for the high five — which the kid gave him. “Sorry I’m late. Jeff around?”
The kid’s face opened up in a big beaming half-witted grin. “Yeah, sure — I think he went up the beach a ways with Everardo and Linda and some of the press people, but I could maybe look if you want—”
Jeff. It was a safe bet — no crowd of that size, especially one consisting of whippets, bone people and guppies, would be without a Jeff. Jason gave the kid a shrug. “Nah, that’s all right. But hey, where’s the T-shirts and caps at?”