Bishop was running. His legs pistoned hard, his arms pistoned steadily. His gray T-shirt was dark with sweat. His sneakers went quickly, lightly over the university track. They made a short chuck sound every time they landed in the dirt.
The clouds boiled low in the big sky over him. The air felt heavy and wet against his face. His face was blank, his pale eyes flat, their gaze inward-turning. He hardly seemed to know that he was there.
The track was a quarter of a mile long. He’d been around it now more than twenty times. There was no one else anywhere near. The silver bleachers rising high on either side of him were empty. He was alone with the sound of his breath and the chuck, chuck, chuck of his sneakers.
He had been thinking things over when he started. He had been thinking about Honey. He had been thinking about how she’d wanted him to kill Cobra and how he had killed him, even though he had tried not to. Weiss had told him he wouldn’t have shot the outlaw if Cobra hadn’t fired first and maybe that was true. But maybe it wasn’t. He remembered how his finger had tightened on the trigger, and he remembered how he had smelled Honey’s perfume and had felt her as if she were a poison in him.
Now she was gone. He would probably never see her again. And he missed her, he wanted her, the way an addict misses and wants his hit, his drug. But he felt good, too. He felt better somehow. Because he remembered his finger tight on the trigger, and it would’ve been murder if he’d pulled it when he’d wanted to most.
He ran. Around the track again and then again. The more he ran, the more tired he got, the more his thoughts became disjointed, the more they were swept up into the chuck, chuck rhythm of his sneakers and the rhythm of his breath. He thought of the feel of the gun in his hand. Chuck, chuck. He remembered the smell of her. His harsh breath rasped. He thought how Weiss had said, “You never would’ve shot him.” He thought: Good old Weiss. Chuck, chuck. He ran.
The sky darkened. The clouds tumbled over him, low. His thoughts became rhythmic fragments. What was she? Nothing. Flesh. Chuck, chuck. Lips, tits, cunt. Like any woman. Chuck. For him: a faster pulse, a stiff dick. (His mind went in time to his harsh, hoarse breaths, to his sneakers in the dirt.) And everything else was a trick of words. Words for the pulse, for the stiff dick. Chuck, chuck. Words like “yearning,” like “passion.” Chuck, chuck. Words to change sensation into desire, to change desire into emotion. Words to change breath. Just breath. Chuck, chuck. Just words. Just breath. Chuck, chuck.
The sound of his sneakers suddenly changed. Their soles slapped hard against the track. He came to a stop under one of the empty, silent bleachers. He bent over, his hands on his knees. He panted, waiting to catch his breath.
After a few minutes, he stood upright. He inhaled deeply through his nose. He could smell damp leaves and the coming rain. A cool smell, a lush smell. Nothing else. There was no faint scent of Honey anymore. No scent of her anywhere. She was gone. She was out of his system. He was sure of it.
He had draped a towel on the railing by the stands. He yanked it off now, hung it round his neck, wiped his face with the tail of it. He looked up over the dirt and the grass and the bleachers. The brown of the dirt and the green of the grass and the silver of the bleachers were all muted in the dull light. He felt the emptiness of the track. He felt the wind through his short hair. He nodded to himself. Yes. She was gone.
He walked home slowly. Tired. Wiping his face with the towel around his neck. He thought he would call Weiss when he got home. See if there were any new assignments for him. If nothing else, he could do some background checks for the lawyers upstairs. Weiss always had something going. When he really thought about it, Weiss was a decent guy. Probably the only real friend he’d ever had.
He walked along the edge of the university, idly running his gaze over the campus buildings: stately, stone, like redroofed temples on the rolling grass and the winding paths. Beyond them, above them, the low, boiling clouds swallowed the backdrop of hills. The upper campus seemed to fade into the whiteness. The campanile rose against it as if the clock beneath its spire were the last signpost before a vast and ghostly nothing, the boiling clouds.
Bishop turned away. He went down Telegraph. He walked faster past the clothing shops and food shops and book shops. Vendors were hawking jewelry and crafts from stands on the sidewalk, and beggars were asking for spare change with upturned caps. Students wandered among them. Bishop wove his way through the crowd. He had no feeling for the street or the people. He would live here for a while and then move and live somewhere else. He didn’t care. He never stayed anywhere long.
He reached his corner and turned. He reached his building, came into the alcove.
And there she was. Honey. She was standing right there. Leaning her shoulder against the alcove wall, tilting her head against it. Waiting, sullen. As if Bishop were late for an appointment they’d made.
She was wearing a suede parka and a pink sweater over a frilly white blouse. Brand-new jeans. Rich-girl clothes: She was her father’s daughter again. Her hair was up, but silken blonde strands of it fell free as if she’d just woken from a nap or the wind had blown them. Her face looked scrubbed and fresh and beautiful, but her tousled hair looked wild and rebellious.
She stood off the wall when she saw Bishop. She broke into a bright smile. He stepped up into the alcove and came to her. She fingered his sweaty T-shirt and bit her lip and cast a mischievous glance at him. He caught the scent of her.
She was not gone. She was not out of his system. He had been wrong at the track. Now he knew better. She was not gone at all.