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Benning, Bynum, Caxton, Braithwaite were collectively filled with great joy, and not a little relief, none more so than Hartley Braithwaite.
They were in their own meeting room in their own building, and by golly, if they wanted to smoke cigars, they would smoke cigars. Bynum and Caxton actually lit up. Benning and Braithwaite merely smiled and acquiesced out of expansive good humor. Gary Lollar had won a silver medal in an individual swimming event and a gold in a relay, Cheryl Ford had just won the gold medal for the 10,000-meters, and their long shot Ana Darcy had snagged a cycling gold medal out of the blue for Barbados.
Benning, Bynum, Caxton, Braithwaite's athletes were four for three. Life was good!
Like much of the rest of the world, however, they were curious about what the enigmatic Ms. Darcy would do next.
The morning after the bicycle race, Darcy was scheduled to run in the 100-meter finals, and that afternoon the high jump event began. The day after that she was to start the long jump, and the day after that, although it seemed impossible, she was scheduled for the preliminaries of the 10-meter diving event.
The announcers at the affected venues were beginning to take increasing notice.
The next morning all four partners showed up without complaint at the unlawyerly hour of 7:30 am to gather before the wide-screen panel TV in their meeting room.
Mrs. Anderson, the office manager, had splurged on a catered breakfast without even asking Jack Benning if he wanted it. She hovered in the background with an eye on the screen, where a 400-meter women's semifinal heat was taking place.
As it ended and cut to a commercial break, the commentators dropped a teaser. "When we come back, we'll go to the finals of the women's 100-meter race in Dublin's Olympic stadium. We'll see if the favored American, DeShawn Williams, and the other favorite, Miriam Mkeba from Kenya, can be challenged by the Barbadian Ana Darcy, who just won gold in the cycling road race. It seems unlikely that a cyclist could stay in there with the fastest women in the world, especially after her grueling victory, but we'll soon find out. First, these messages."
The partners hastened to pour their coffee and select some food before the commercials ended. The men shifted restlessly, paced, and tapped apprehensively. Mrs. Anderson had never seen the lawyers this nervous before. "Cool" was their normal professional demeanor.
Right now, they were not cool.
When the commercials ended, all talk in the room ceased. The screen showed the eight runners, Darcy in a middle lane, by far the shortest and lightest. Because of her size, the banner she wore with her four-digit number on it was wrapped so far around her chest that only three of the numbers could be seen at a time.
The camera panned across the group slowly as the announcers identified the runners and provided a couple details about each for the audience.
The expert commentator mentioned Darcy's gold medal of the previous day.
"Darcy's favored position in one of the middle lanes was earned from her fast time in the qualifying heat, but that was run before the bicycle race. It remains to be seen if she has anything left for this all-out sprint. And now, the runners get set...."
At some signal inaudible to the partners in the room, the runners stopped jumping and quivering. They began to set themselves in their starting blocks, placing their hands with exaggerated care on the track.
Darcy backed into her blocks and kneeled with little fuss, setting her spread fingers down easily.
Another inaudible signal, and all the women raised up off their knees, put their rears in the air, and their heads down.
Then there was a sharp crack, and they took off—except Darcy, who stood up calmly and glanced to one side.
Before anyone could register surprise there was another bang.
The runners broke stride and slowed to a stop.
"A false start!" hollered the announcer. "One of the runners left too soon! But Ana Darcy, in lane 4, didn't leave the blocks at all, Art! Let's see the slow-motion replay of that.
“Yes, there it is—the Kenyan, Miriam Mkeba, in lane 5, left a fraction of a second too soon. But note that Darcy, next to her, never left the blocks at all. She stood up just as the starting gun went off. Does that mean that she wasn't going to try to run, that she used up everything she had on the bicycle? Or maybe she has a pulled muscle...? Darcy is looking very serious right now. Maybe she’s hurt. We'll have to see if she takes her place for the restart of this race, or if she simply leaves the track."
The runners repeated their elaborate positioning and tensed for the gun once again.
When it went off, everyone shot out of the blocks, Darcy included. At the ten-meter point she was a step ahead of the American next to her.
At twenty-five meters she was two steps ahead and visibly accelerating.
At the finish line she was a good eight meters ahead of the second place American, her legs a blur.
At the finish, the race clock showed a time of 9.6 seconds.
At first, the crowd and even the announcers sat in stunned silence. They had just seen a new world record set by a full six tenths of a second, an unbelievably huge margin in such a short race.
Darcy was congratulating the American silver medalist and the other runners around her, but as the magnitude of what they had seen sank in, the crowd finally began shouting and applauding.
The announcers were shouting too, to be heard over the crowd.
"That's amazing, Art! Let's see the replay, with the clock superimposed."
They ran the tape of the race again, in slow motion, twice, from different angles.
When they finished the crowd was still standing and applauding. Someone pressed a Barbadian flag into Darcy's hands. She looked as though she didn't know what to do with it. The American runner pushed her into a victory lap and accompanied her all the way around the track.
Benning, Bynum, Caxton, Braithwaite looked at each other with solemn faces, then back at the screen, as if that might explain something.
Finally, Jack Benning stood up.
After about ten seconds, he sat back down. He swiveled his chair to face the plate glass overlooking the bay. Then he swiveled to face the table. Bynum was looking at his coffee, Caxton at the television. Only Braithwaite met Benning’s gaze.
"What the hell was that, Hartley?" he asked.
Braithwaite's stunned expression didn't change.
