I’M IN LOVE with her, I tell you,” Cassidy said.
“You don’t even know her.”
“I don’t care. If I knew her it might spoil it. Did you see her little forehead, how it was all wrinkled and sweaty?”
“Come on…”
“She was concentrating on her pace fer chrissakes…”
“Awww…”
This was how it all began, back at the very start of the school year. The scrap of red yarn she carelessly tied her hair up with might have had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was the very sincere look on her face as they trundled by her on the warm-up course that day. Even Mizner commented on how pretty she was.
The typical fetching Southeastern University coed was a lovely pharmacist’s daughter with a hard little body, dairymaid complexion, and the soul of a robber baron. Cassidy had no idea what made Andrea so different, but he could sense that she had somehow survived twenty years as an attractive female in the republic without having had her mind reamed out by mama, the Junior League, or Helen Gurley Brown.
Several days later on the three-mile warm-up they saw her again.
“Try to smooth it out a little,” Cassidy suggested as they passed. He demonstrated with an exaggerated version of the classical running stride (a stride that he did not use himself when the chips were down).
She looked up, her damp forehead wrinkled with concentration, and stared at Cassidy as if he were some aquatic parasite that had attached itself to her ankle while she was wading in a creek. Cassidy nearly swooned.
“You’re crazy,” Mizner told him.
“She appreciated the advice,” Cassidy decided.
“She thinks you’re crazy too.”
“How do you figure?”
“What would you do if some guy out of the blue just up and starts critiquing your stride?”
“Challenge him to a race.”
“If his T-shirt said PITTSBURGH HOLY ROLLERS and he started prancing around like this…you’d think he was crazy too. And you’d be right.”
“Mize, the girl was clearly grateful. She appreciated the advice,” Cassidy repeated, troubled.
“The girl,”—Mizner was annoyed—“has a gimpy leg. I saw it yesterday when she was stretching up at the track. She probably not only didn’t appreciate the advice, she probably thinks you’re an asshole.”
“Oh.”
BUT GIVING UP QUICKLY was not in Quenton Cassidy’s nature. A week later he saw her at the Gay Nineties, a rather unfortunately named and remarkably heterosexual tavern. Her blond hair was down, but there was no mistaking her. Her white cotton blouse made her thin arms look very tanned and for some reason that sight of her made his heart hurt. He waited around until her two girlfriends got up to play foosball, then made his slew-footed entrance. She saw him coming.
“Well, well. The coach,” she said. It was only faintly sarcastic. She even smiled a little, he thought.
“Ah yes, well, I…” He spilled a trickle of beer as he started to make some expansive gesture. Idiotically, he began licking foam off his wrist.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Right. Uh, look, I’m sorry if I—”
“That’s all right. I was a little annoyed, but then I figured you might have taken a class or something and maybe even knew what you were talking about.”
“Not really,” he said happily, sliding into the booth across from her. “But I know a bunch of guys who are really good.”
“Are you on the track team or something?”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, feeling slightly loony watching her green flame eyes in the pale tavern light.
“Oh my. What event do you do?”
“Decathlon,” he said.
“Really?” she asked. “How far do you throw it?”
THEY DRIFTED. Dappled by the hard cypress shadows, out into the burning September sun, they drifted. In one of those pleasant cool eddies life sometimes affords the young in fall or spring, they drifted, quite unaware of the not-so-far-off rattle of bones…
“I didn’t ask to go see the movie,” she said. “I thought the book was sophomoric. Baroque and sophomoric. The movie was your idea.”
“It was my fault. But your friends were just asking—”
“My friends think Love Story is the finest literature to come down the pike since…The Prophet. You should have eased up on them. Someday they will be producing babies and not causing anyone any trouble at all.”
“All I meant was that such cornpone has a way of co-opting real life. I mean, it’s fun to talk snazzy and run around and play in the snow with yur girl, for chrissakes, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to throw a dog a Frisbee without thinking I should be in slow motion or something.”
“Tear ducts raped. ‘I resent having my tear ducts raped’ I believe is what you said.”
“Awww.”
“And were following up with something about the teensy-weensy sexual members of dope-crazed screenwriters or something…”
“Well…”
“Mary Ellen Conastee was close to having a stroke. She’s a harmless girl, Quenton. You’re going to have to break in a little slower with some people.”
He looked over and gave her what he thought of as his pixie grin.
“Don’t give me that pixie-grin crap,” she told him.
They drifted. Cassidy was plopped without grace in his inner tube, his white bottom now thoroughly chilled by the icy waters of the Ichetucknee River. Andrea somehow accomplished a similar position without the same loss of dignity: on her it looked sultry. When she leaned back to take the sun he looked carefully at the two brown legs draped over the edge of her tube, but could hardly detect the difference between them that would forever put a little catch in her walk.
Of course there would be something like that; he lacked interest in the perfect item. Quenton Cassidy, unmoved by kittens, sonnets, and sunsets, was nonetheless given to tragic flaws.
IN ORDER TO ARRANGE THIS DAY of perfect drifting, an entirely traditional local pastime, he and Mizner—now floating up ahead with his date—had arisen at 7:30 and run seventeen miles. It was the only way they could spend their day in the sweet haze of Boone’s Farm apple wine and still appease the great white Calendar God whose slighted or empty squares would surely turn up someday to torment the guilt-ridden runner. They went through such contortions occasionally to prove to themselves that their lives didn’t have to be so abnormal, but the process usually just ended up accentuating the fact. There were several ways it could be done. If they were going to the beach, they might put it off and run when they got there, but contrary to popular opinion, beach running is only jolly fun for the first five miles or so. After that, the cute little waves become redundant, the sand reflects the sun up into the eyes blindingly, grains of sand slip annoyingly into the heel of the shoe or flip up on the back of the leg. Fifteen hot miles on a long, flat beach sounds like good sport only to those who haven’t actually done it. Also, the ocean is too infinite; the run seems as if it will never end.
They could always put training off until they got back in the evening, but that just made things worse. No beer! None of the sticky wine! Their friends would slyly try to tempt them, see if they really took all that training stuff seriously. It was too much to ask. Better to get it all over with and then be able to enjoy the day like any other citizen.
Though he hated running long in the morning more than anything he could think of, Cassidy was ecstatic to have his whole day’s training behind him. The oversized tubes floated along on the gin-clear river, meandering slowly under the spooky cypress stands and pleasantly out into splotches of sun. Even though it was Florida, it was north Florida and, as winter approached, tubing would be forgotten until spring.
Cassidy paddled over awkwardly to Andrea’s tube and invited her to double up. Flirting with disaster for several seconds, she finally accomplished the maneuver.
“Next time you do the transfer at sea, please,” she said. Her warmth beside him was searing; she smelled of summer, youth, Sea & Ski, and moist, slightly sweet sex. Clearly edible. His head spun from the wine and sun. Muscles along the top of his thighs trembled from his morning exertion. In a month or so he knew they would carry him screaming around the track. He had the power.
“Ouch!” she said. “What’s that all about?”