Liam also sensed that pushing himself out of his shell through attending these workouts would be good for facing the insecurities he had about his body, his talent, and his wardrobe. Though he had run in high school and college, Liam had always felt as though he were going through the motions, flying under the radar. In high school, he ran so that he would have a solid extracurricular for his college applications—and he kept it up in college out of habit more than a burning desire to compete. But now after a few years off, Liam felt he was rediscovering something special about the sport, the therapeutic feeling of mental clarity that could be achieved on a run. Liam knew now that this would be the time to push himself.
Liam made it to the team’s meeting area on the side of the track about ten minutes late but was relieved to see that the evening’s roll call had only just begun. A short black man in impeccably tailored pants and a lavish turtleneck read off a list of names. About twenty Fast Trackers had signed up for the program, and it sounded as though everyone had arrived for the debut session. As the man with the clipboard, whom Liam soon reasoned was the coach, spelled out a series of safety procedures and explained his theories about improving racing performance, Liam’s mind drifted off into the surroundings. Thick-legged sprinters pounded down the banked curves of the track as a female coach with a stopwatch shouted out times. Names of local colleges—Hunter, Fordham, C.W. Post—breezed across the chests of skinny athletes who ran in huddled packs. The seating around the track was limited and everything inside the amphitheater was utilitarian. There were the large digital displays of time ticking by and the storage rooms for the javelin, high jump, and shot put equipment. Each field event had its own little station on the interior of the elliptical track, but Liam couldn’t believe that collisions between runners and field athletes didn’t happen regularly given the confined space. The track itself looked teeny and manageable, which Liam found comforting. He had overheard the coach noting that eight rotations around the track equaled one mile.
“So what did I say to convince you?” Zane whispered to Liam as the coach said something about easing everyone into the 200-meter track with forty-five minutes of “hut-hut” running.
“I think I just needed a change of pace,” Liam answered. “And, no pun intended there.”
Liam had not been able to distill the reason when mulling over the decision in recent days and surprised himself now with such an apt response. Nothing had changed in his life in the past five years—same job, same apartment, same body. The only thing he cycled through was boyfriends. And even that was a tired, old pattern that he wished he could change. Or at least he wanted to believe that he did. His entire sexual life lately involved going out with Monroe and other friends to the bars until last call and seeing who wanted to sleep with him. At times, it could amusingly bolster his self-esteem to see a parade of guys scope him out from the corners of the bar. Occasionally, he’d even find someone who provided a hot night and a satisfying release but no one that Liam ever wanted to latch on to, or build something with. Mixing things up definitely couldn’t hurt.
“Well, good. We need a change of pace here in the club too, and something tells me that you’re going to move us in that direction.”
“Okay now, boys. Save some of that energy for the hut-huts.” The coach pointed directly at Zane as he spoke and then ushered everyone into the interior of the track to start the workout.
“So what’s with this hut-hut business?” Liam sensed Zane taking him under his wing and decided that someone as well connected and central to the club as Zane would be beneficial as an ally.
“It’s politically correct speak for Indian relays. We all run single file and when the leader raises his hand the person in the back has to sprint to the front and then set the pace for the run until he lifts his arm and then the person in the back flies up and on and on. It sounds easy but after doing it for a few miles, it can be a real bitch. You’re lucky in that you’ll be one of the fastest guys. The slowpokes suck major wind—choke on our exhaust—in this type of group workout.”
A little dismayed by the fact that his one strong finish in a 5K led to such great expectations, Liam nervously bundled himself into the middle of the pack and hoped for the best. The track was a-rumble with fast runners. As the group of Fast Trackers strode around at a pace faster than Liam had ever run on his own, sinewy men from other teams pressed by without showing the slightest bit of effort. After a half mile, Liam realized he was the last in line, and when the guy in front waved his arm up high, it would be his turn to sprint. He felt both severe anxiety and a nascent swell of pride. And when the hand went up, Liam focused on making his body as efficient as possible, on looking only at the person at the head of the line and propelling himself toward that position—and beyond—to capture the lead spot. It took all of about twelve seconds, but the force and power lit Liam with a thrill and left him with the deep desire for more.
About fifteen minutes into the workout, six of the ten runners in Liam’s group had quit in hunched-over dry heaves and spells of light-headedness. With only three other runners battling it out, the sprint portion of this exercise came around with increasing frequency. Liam knew he could complete the second half of the workout; he embraced the pain that now tested him over and over again. Gene suddenly raised his hand—for the only other runners left were Gene, Zane, and Marvin, whose thick calves were rife with batches of bright red hair—and Liam edged into the outer lane and revved up his leg turnover. He straightened his back and leaned forward just slightly, mimicking the suggested running form that all the magazines touted for optimal performance. As he passed Marvin and Zane, Liam noticed that Gene only grew farther ahead in the distance. The coach had specifically stated that everyone should run at a consistently hard pace throughout the workout and should only pick up speed when sprinting to the front of the line. Liam turned his head to silently question Gene’s motives with Zane, but Zane had trained his gaze toward the track. And so Liam strained to increase the rate of his foot turnover until he was shoulder to shoulder with Gene, who had begun to squint with pain and wheeze as he thrust his arms faster and faster. Despite the silliness of this battle of wills, Liam had to see this test to the end. He imagined the tips of his toes just barely touching the track before they kicked back in more forceful and definitive strides. As he passed Gene, Liam made sure to glide rather than gallop, unequivocally asserting his dominance. And when he slid into the lead position, he only ratcheted the speed down slightly to continue to tax Gene as he struggled behind. It felt like the least he could do to return the favor. By the time that Liam decided to pull a new runner into pole position, he saw, off in the corner of his field of vision, near the bleachers, Gene leaning by a trash can with his hands cupped over his mouth.
Now that the group was whittled down to three, the rotations went more smoothly, with Zane, Liam, and Marvin running efficiently and respectfully. But in the final minutes of the workout, Liam heard the pounding of a new set of footsteps come up on his right shoulder out of nowhere. There was no breathing audible—just the pounce of a sprinter. Liam looked quickly to his right and saw the angular jawbone and those unmistakable brown eyes, steeped in concentration and loaded with determination. The workout had been going so well that Liam did not want to cave in now and ruin his last set due to silly competition. He kept his pace strong but consistent and Didier followed suit. While the gamesmanship exhibited by certain Fast Trackers that evening had intrigued Liam and stoked his competitive fire, he preferred working out for himself and not others.
In the final lap of the workout, Didier ran stride for stride with Liam, and Liam never looked over his shoulder. Instead he focused all his mental reserves, which were now running low, on maintaining perfect form. As they crossed through the finish line, Didier thrust his bony chest out as though he were trying to edge out Liam in the photo finish of some race. With a solid forty-five minutes of hard running behind him, Liam crouched over on the side of the track and collected h
is breath. Didier swiped his hand quickly over the curve of Liam’s spine and thanked him for the hard aerobic run. His teammates from the Urban Bobcats had apparently left for the night already and he needed a reliable fast pacer for his last mile. Liam lifted his head in a gesture meant to connote “not a problem,” but Didier had already begun to jog out of the facility. Liam stared longingly at the lithe outline of Didier’s shoulders as he faded out of view.
As Liam changed out of his sweat-heavy T-shirt, Marvin came over to thank him for a good and steady workout. Liam had noticed Marvin’s strong and prominent legs when they ran in the park but still could not stop looking at his calves. They were not the massive, bulbous calves of gym mavens who bench pressed hundreds of pounds. Not at all. They were taut and tapered down to his vein-strewn ankles, which somehow supported his overly large feet. Liam pegged them as a size 14. But his eyes lingered over all the wild and prickly hair that sprouted from Marvin’s legs, in all manner and direction. The beauty of his legs made up for the more workaday aspects of his face and his forgettable upper body.
“It’s always this bullshit warfare out on the track with Fast Trackers,” Marvin said and patted Liam consolingly on the shoulder. “Don’t let it bring you down. You’ve got a much better running instinct than all these queens who can’t help but shoot their loads prematurely.”
Liam looked more closely at Marvin and imagined he might be slightly attractive if his eyes were a little larger and set a bit farther apart. They were a strange dark blue, but their beauty was lost to their smallness, to the compact economy that guided every feature of his face.
“It was a bit intense for a first day. And yet it’s always like this, you say?”
“Please, don’t let it scare you off,” Marvin said. “In time, you’ll find it amusing. You’ll be able to predict which ego will get crushed on the track first. There’s a lot of … well … a lot of personality in this club. I swear if it hasn’t driven you away yet, you’ll be good to go around here for quite some time.”
“My heart hasn’t raced like that in quite some time.” Liam realized he batted his eyelashes in a flirtatious reflex. He thought of the arc of Marvin’s engorged shaft from the shower the other week. “And I guess that’s a good thing.”
“So come to the restaurant with us now. It’s just around the corner. You’ll get a bigger peek into the club psyche.”
Liam smiled in acquiescence. He did have to eat dinner after all.
A badly conceived cocktail of Washington Heights locals and post-workout runners, the restaurant wore the unsavory scent of cheap musk and drying sweat. As the group entered the pub, a jovial black man greeted Zane with a televangelist’s hallelujah smile and an immense hug. He waved the Fast Trackers toward a back room that was somewhat shielded from the off-key wails of the bar’s karaoke Tuesday. As he sat down at the table of twelve, Liam could hear the reverberation of the screaming chorus: “I only WANNA see you, baby, in the purple rain!”
Some of the faces around the table looked familiar. Directly across from him sat Zane and next to him Gary, the leader in the park whom Liam learned was lovingly called G-Lo by the team, a moniker that apparently substituted for the clumsier Gary Loblonicki. A few cute young guys dotted the perimeter of the oblong table, and Gene and Marvin were there too. In fact, Marvin plunked down right next to Liam and began nervously tapping his foot so that his hairy leg brushed up against Liam ever so slightly. Marvin had mentioned his partner when they first met, but Liam had met enough couples with special “arrangements” to know that did not guarantee exclusivity or fidelity. As Liam leaned into conversation with Zane to avoid Marvin’s coy advance, Liam felt the press of his penis against the threadbare cotton of his boxer shorts.
On the train ride downtown after dinner, Liam sat purposefully alone, choosing a spot across the train car and several feet from the bench that the other Fast Trackers had occupied. A young guy (he had to be around Liam’s age) with features that were round, though not quite fat, stood up and scooted down the car to sit next to Liam. Feeling burdened by the prospect of small talk, Liam avoided eye contact and handed the fellow a section of The New York Times.
“Come on, you can do better than that. You’re new. It’s your duty to endear yourself to people like me.” The guy threaded each syllable with just enough comic edge to disable Liam from both acting put out and from taking him seriously. But it was also far too late at night for Liam to manufacture any biting repartee.
“I’ll try to improve on that next time,” he said and returned to the paper.
“I get it. I get it. The whole cultivating an air of mystery.” The guy, who still hadn’t volunteered his name, now slid his Elvis Costello eyeglasses down and then up his nose. “A sense of the forbidden unknown … the loner mystique.”
“Just reading the newspaper—nothing mysterious or forbidden about that.” Immediately after he spoke, Liam regretted the now-go-shoo! tone of his statement, although he still wanted more than anything to be left alone.
“Look, do me a favor and just chat with me already. I’m tired as anything of all their talk about mile splits from the results from the last 10K or which half marathon they plan to race next. I have a rule that you can’t talk about a race for longer than it took to run it. And forget about that Gene; he’s the worst offender. He has talked about his 2:59 New York City marathon to the point where homicide would be justifiable. You’d think that no one ever broke three hours in a marathon before. About a thousand other runners also did it this year in New York City alone. Unfortunately, no one else on our team did—with the notable exception of Marvin. Thank God that Marvin is racing under the Fast Tracker name. Now here I go blathering on about running. I guess it’s contagious. Ugh, I feel like I need to take a shower—I feel oily just being within earshot of that Gene.”
“Okay, do me a favor, because it seems I have no choice but to converse with you now.” A smile began to inch up Liam’s face. “Tell me what your name is. That circle of introductions at the track just whirred on by me.”
“You tell me your name first.” He took off his thick eyeglasses and cleaned the lenses on his shirt.
“You don’t know my name?” Liam did not care if his vexation was showing.
“You don’t know mine. Don’t be so self-involved!”
“Fine, it’s Liam … Liam Walker.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Liam.” Pause. “Liam Walker. Funny name for a fast runner.”
Unimpressed by the lack of originality, Liam looked down again at his newspaper.
“I’m Ben. Ben Cargenstein. And don’t forget my name again. That isn’t allowed. Pay attention to me, kid, and I’ll give you the lowdown on all these bozos. You’d better pack some prophylactics and a tube of fungicide, it’s going to be a filthy ride.”
MILE 4
The same guy as always took Liam’s name and cockily announced a thirty-minute wait. Liam was tempted to reach out and snap his little bow tie off, but he knew he had to suffer the wait and attitude for the reward of the burgers. It was Monroe’s neighborhood, but Liam had chosen the spot for dinner.
While he waited at the edge of the bar sipping an Anchor Steam draft, Liam admired the impossibly cute families and ensembles of friends gathered around the tables enjoying their suppers. They were borrowed from country clubs and J.Crew catalogs, all crisp cotton and wide-wale corduroy. At the bar a freckled guy in a sports coat ran his hand through waves and waves of chocolate hair, as he gabbed with a pair of drinking buddies. He did a double take when he noticed Liam. Once face-to-face, Liam recognized A. J. Ashbery. The editor of Amherst’s literary magazine PinStriped Prose, A. J. considered every conversation a piece of performance art, a stage on which he could dazzle the listener with some new interpretation of reality. In these close quarters, Liam knew he had no choice but to acknowledge his former classmate but wondered why the fuck Monroe couldn’t be on time for once.
Liam listened to A. J. pontificate about his internship h
elping edit the “Talk of the Town” section at The New Yorker and managed a smile as A. J. insincerely praised the job at Entertainment Weekly that Liam felt truly blessed to have snagged. As A. J. turned the conversation into a discussion of his future plans, including at what age he would step into Graydon Carter’s role as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, Liam let his eyes range over the dark walls that were crammed, everywhere, with images of melons. There was the pastel painting of an orange honeydew sliced-open and readied for breakfast, the flat wooden likeness of a slab of watermelon, and the drawing of cantaloupes fresh off the tree. Liam did not like to admit how much he loved the homogeneity of all this privilege and perfection; being around the rich made him feel tranquil, as though there were a sense of order to the world.
“Oops, I hate to interrupt your plotline, A. J., but I think I see the friend I’m meeting for dinner. I’d better jet.”
“Who, that shriveled old prune who just walked in? God, Liam, if you’re going to do this gay thing, you’ve really got to live large. You’re too hot for these old trolls; you ought to be cavorting with some heroin addict from a Calvin Klein ad.”
The Miles Page 3
