MILE 21
T
he summer felt like an afterthought, a rushed intermission between spring and fall. It was only mid-August, but Liam had never been able to wean himself of a school day's sense that Labor Day was a rain cloud at the edge of the bright blue morning. The 8
A.M.
sky matched his mood, as a gray blanket rolled out slowly over the city. The humidity hovered over Central Park, and the runners peeled off layers of clothing to get as comfortable as possible before the race. Soon everyone was covered in a thin sheath of perspiration. Not a branch on a tree, not even a leaf, moved in the eerie stillness of the muggy morning.
As he jogged through the fields that zigzagged behind the tennis courts, Liam saw Didier's figure bent over the lazy drip of a broken water fountain. In all the heightened drama since their last rendezvous, Liam had neglected to return a few of Didier's phone calls. Liam sensed there would be trouble now. Once they made eye contact, Didier started jogging backward, away from Liam. The yellow and black of Didier's Urban Bobcats singlet stung Liam's eyes. No promise of switching teams was ever formally made, but Liam saw this as a bad sign.
“Look who's playing hard to get now.” Didier shadowboxed playfully at a distance as he spoke.
“It's been a wild two weeks, Didier. Believe me when I tell you that you've got to trust me there.”
“It's always something. Not that you careâor even askedâbut I have had a rough couple of weeks as well. Oh, you know, with my life as I had known it dismantled and some other minor shit, but nothing for you to lose any sleep over.”
Liam was mildly aroused by Didier's petulance but dared not smile.
“Finish your warm-up. We'll talk after the race.” Liam was trying to be diplomatic without sounding dismissive. “Use whatever anger you have right now to your advantage out there on the course.”
“Don't worry, I will. My whole team will.” A demonic look lurked in Didier's eyes.
As Liam turned toward the rustle of footsteps at his back, Didier sped off. Zane and Marvin were jogging toward Liam; they had come to escort him to the race start. There were only three more races in which Fast Trackers were going head-to-head with the Bobcats so the team had to get the best start possible today. Zane tried to pump up Marvin and Liam with high school track visualization techniques, methods of knocking off runner after runner by breaking the race down into small segments and never thinking beyond what you could see before you.
“You need to get out from under this crush,” Zane whispered in Liam's ear as they inched through the crowds to position themselves at the head of the starting line. “And then you crush him.”
“This isn't a soap opera.” Liam looked around as he spoke, embarrassed that a runner from another team might overhear their conversation.
“Isn't it? Look, we've got one minute until they start singing âOh, say can you see' and the gun goes off. Just remember that you've spent months killing yourself at workouts. You can beat
any
one.”
There was an awkward pause, and some runners pushed to angle ahead of Liam and Zane.
“That's right,” said Zane said, as if in answer to himself. “Anyone.”
After completely blocking out all the runners around him for the first three miles of the five-mile course, Liam brightened to see that he managed to maintain an exactly 5:40 pace. The clock read 17 minutes flat. There were 12 minutes left in this race if he allowed the tired feeling in his legs to slow him, and only 11 minutes if he swung his arms with more determination and forced his legs to pick up the pace. Through the canopy of trees by the Central Park Boathouse, Liam saw a yellow and black singlet and focused solely on bringing himself closer to this runner. As they edged up Cat Hillâthe deceptively long rise on the east side where the black statue of a lioness pounces out from a rocky lookoutâLiam confidently passed the runner, whom he had never seen before. Maintaining his concentration on what lay ahead, Liam accelerated through the peak of the hill so that his momentum carried him through the downhill that ran behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a burning pain edged up his torso, Liam glanced at the pavement and studied the white painted cutouts of bikers outlining the cyclist lane. He began counting the strides between the figures to take his mind off the pain and the awful thoughts of defeat that flickered through his mind, the creeping knowledge of how good it would feel to slow down, to stop.
The four-mile marker was right in front of himâ22:29 blinked into 22:30 and Liam forced his body past the clock as it switched over to 22:31. His stomach clenched and he couldn't control his breathing. He heard the wretched wails coming from him as he attempted to move his mind off the pain and onto something else. Anything else. By the reservoir, he could see not one but two blue and orange singlets about one hundred yards ahead. Liam bit the inside of his mouth to wake himself up; it had felt for a moment as though his mind had left his body and was watching over him haplessly. Snapping out of this daze, Liam could tell that he was gaining ground on the runners ahead of him. There was less than five minutes left in the race. Liam kept telling himself that. Even if his body staged a mutiny on him, he could surely churn out four and a half minutes more of solid running. A sign directly ahead announced that there were 800 meters to go. How many times had Liam run a half mile at the end of a long track practice and finished it faster than any of the intervals he had run while fresh? Countless. He lengthened his posture into sprinting form and passed the first Fast Tracker ahead of him. Liam did not turn his head toward Marvin; he wanted to remain strong and feared that Marvin might shake his confidence. A second sign noted that only 400 meters remained in the race, and Liam knew he could finish and that he would be crossing the line in under 28 minutes. The only question was whether he could pass Zane with just over one minute left.
Liam watched the orange star in the center of Zane's singlet grow nearer and nearer. As they approached the 102nd Street transverse, Liam came shoulder-to-shoulder with Zane and out of nowhere Zane slipped into another gear and sprinted madly toward the finish line just yards ahead of them. Liam flew through the finish line and immediately crouched over along the side of the chute. Everything in his field of vision turned a whitish blue. Was he going to vomit? The uncontrollable gulp of his breathing felt deep enough to vacuum out his insides. He hoped that if he just dry heaved something would come out, and he would feel human again. Liam stood up and walked for a bit. He drank two cups of the orange Gatorade being dispensed by the baggage claim, but the sugar didn't return him to his senses. Damp sweat beaded across his face and down his neck, and a chill ran along the length of his spine. Something was wrong.
“You need to eat something quick,” Zane said. He appeared from behind Liam and already had his backpack over his shoulder, looking eager to leave. “You're a ghost. We need to get some color back into your face.”
Zane ripped open an orange and stuck two sections right into Liam's mouth, as though he were a diabetic in need of an insulin boost. The tart flesh of the fruit shot through his mouth, and Liam licked his lips to remove the sticky remnants of the orange. Next Zane forced him to scarf down half a cinnamon raisin bagel. A feeling of equilibrium began to resurface but then a different drama rose up around them.
“Where have you guys been? I was looking for help out on the course and no one came. No one. He was just lying there, and I couldn't get anyone to stop racing this fucking five-miler. Zombies. Fucking racing zombies.”
Matthew had become teary as he spoke, and it was still unclear what had him so upset. Woozy from race exhaustion, Liam tried to piece together what had happened but left Zane to ask the questions.
“Who was in trouble during the race, Matthew? Come on, you've got to spell this one out for us.” Zane spoke calmly and placed his hand in Matthew's hand for reassurance. “We didn't see what happened and we don't have ESP. Just breathe in deep and start from the beginning.”
Through some fragments and asides and an occasional welling into tears, Matthew managed to cobble together a crime scene of sorts. As he was accelerating past the reservoir and imagining the finish line before him, Matthew noticed a bodyâa tangle of bones in a modified fetal positionâover by the brush that lined the eastern edge of the park drive. He veered off course to examine what had happened, to see who was in distress. As soon as he saw the knobby knees and spindly thighs, he knew it was Riser who had been injured. He called out to the runners who flew past, looking nowhere but straight ahead and hearing nothing of his shouts for help. Even men in Fast Tracker singlets just cruised along on autopilot. Riser moaned plaintively but could not elaborate on what had happened to him, which only heightened Matthew's anxiety.
“Eventually a race official heard me caterwaul like a sissy and came over. A medic took Riser to Cornell Hospital. He had the nerve to blame the collapse on Riser ... said something about people needing to eat to survive. Fucking fat medic bastard. If he knew what he was talking about, he would have become a doctor instead of riding around in an ambulette.”
“So he's alone at the hospital?” Zane shifted his bag on his shoulders to punctuate the accusation that Matthew had neglected his friendship duties.
“You've seen enough sad gay movies to know that they never let the friend or lover stick around for moral support. They thought it was just heat exhaustion and that some fluid replacement would do the trick, so I promised to stop by in two hours to check up on him.”
“And you think that'll make him right as rain?” Zane's eyes bulged with incredulity. “I know you guys are BFFs but wake up.”
“He's fine. Everyone is just jealous because he looks like a model now and is faster than ever.”
“Matthew, I realize that you are worked up right now and very emotional,” Liam said, placing his hand on Matthew's shoulder. “And maybe you are too close to this situation to see clearly, but Riser has not been well for some time. I know that I have tried to speak to him. We can't make him well, but if we speak to him with a unified message, there's a greater chance that one of us will get through to him.”
“Exactly, Matthewâthese are cries for help!” Zane shook Matthew as he spoke. “Don't mistake these clues, princess. Riser is in sad, sad shape.”
“Zane, go easy now,” Liam said, knowing the last thing Riser needed right now was for his friends to be fighting over this.
“Riser was right about the whole lot of you,” Matthew said in a flat tone. “Nothing but a bunch of mean, little bitches.”
After Matthew stormed off, Marvin jogged over to congratulate Liam on beating him in the race. After having dreamt about this accomplishment for months, Liam had almost forgotten about it in a matter of minutes. The personal challenge seemed so silly and unimportant given the situation that Riser now faced. Liam still had a strong belief that Riser would snap out of the anorexia that now had so firm a grip on him. While he knew that any literature on the subject would say the exact opposite, Liam felt that his friend had just pushed himself to an extreme and would now see that he needed to reexamine his life and return to center.
Liam reflected for a moment on the pushing of limits. In sports, being able to tear down any semblance of a limitation or barrier to performance led to excellence, achievement, and recognition. He himself had pressed against the inner walls of self-doubt to make a breakthrough at the race today. People need to dig deep and face their inner demons to grow. But it was such a fine line not to go too far and overdo it. Liam always hoped that he might learn from the pain and teach himself how to move within those awful sensations that came late in a race, but the truth was that as soon as he crossed the finish line, he could scarcely recall the struggle. He imagined that the forgetting was part of self-preservation. No one would ever run a race twice if they had even partial remembrance of the agony that came at the end. Liam guessed that the same amnesia afforded women the ability to have second and third babies. Riser had pushed himself to the brink for beauty and speed and the aesthetic trappings of young gay life in New York Cityâand that long, hard journey landed him in a hospital bed somewhere across town. Maybe he had learned nothing from the struggle. It was impossible for an outsider to guess. Liam felt empty inside.
Marvin was surprisingly gracious in his praise of Liam. While countless other racers would have made excuses for why they had not run their best that day (it was the racer's prerogative, after all, to manufacture reasons, even before beginning a race, as to how illness, lack of sleep, or bad preparation would excuse a poor showing), Marvin spoke only of Liam's success. Marvin commended Liam on his smarter racing and on “looking more like a runner.” Liam thought to ask Marvin what it meant to look more like a runner but realized that Marvin was referring to the seven pounds he had shed since training more seriously. The intense focus on weight today had already depressed Liam more than he could express, and he now wanted to shift gears.
Enough time had elapsed that the race results had been posted by the baggage check. Though Zane had been ready to leave for the last half hour, he could not help but corral every Fast Tracker within earshot to come and see how the team fared. It took a few minutes of mental calculation for Zane, Liam, and a few other team members to collectively realize that the Urban Bobcats had eked out a depressingly narrow victory over the Fast Trackers that day. Zane slapped his arms hard against his sides and stomped back and forth in protest.