Short Story (Incomplete!): The Distance

IV. The Distance Waltz
False start.
The official blows his whistle sharply. The mass of cross country runners instantly loses momentum, like a multi-colored wave hitting an underwater reef, all froth, no fury. Randy feels the effects of the recall as an unpleasant lurch, like the slamming of brakes in a ridiculously close tailgate. He almost collides into the back of the runner in front of him, his friend Cliff. His heart, nevertheless, shatters through the windshield of his ribcage, and flies off invisible into space.
“Sorry,” he says in a tight gasp.
Cliff smiles faintly back. “Relax,” he murmurs.
The two friends walk side by side back towards the other side of the starting line, along with the rest of the adrenaline-jangled runners.
Randy rubs his closed eyes with his fingers as he retakes his position. Now isn’t the time to think about it, there isn’t time to think about it, but it only just happened, everything’s all fresh and swirling and conflicted inside him, like melted sugar crystals crashing into each other, struggling to stack and precipitate out.
All around him, runners are clenching their fists, leaning forwards, eyes wide with anticipation, jaws set with determination. Cliff too; his calves tense, his left fist nears his hip, ready to swing his body into momentum. Over the silence that suddenly falls, a lone voice, the voice of a strangely familiar strange girl, calls out. Is it his imagination, or is that his name riding the winds?
Randy needs to focus. He needs to blank his mind and concentrate on the race ahead, on its capricious distance. Now is not the time to remember, to reflect, to think, to feel.
The official raises the cap gun into the air for a second time, suspending the breaths of the roughly hundred runners.
In a split second, the trigger will pull.
Randy once again tells himself, like a futile command:
“Now is simply not the time...”

1:
It was just past the season of Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Randy and Cliff and the other students in Mrs. Brown’s class had just finished reading selections from Miguel de Cervantes’s work. And although they were now moving on to the far more cerebral and complex “Hamlet,” for Randy, lonely and distant and strange, everything was still all about chivalry and windmills. If only he could find his Dulcinea amongst the red-dirt stained buildings of Mililani High, well, like the senile old coot in the story, he’d have something to die for, and live for as well.
Thus, although it may have felt to him like a serendipitous coincidence, it really wasn’t. With his eyes all rose-colored, it was inevitable that it would happen, that he would see her, and see her in that way; it was an “accident waiting to happen,” so to speak.
He was walking home from school along Meheula Parkway, towards where it intersected with the Kam Highway. The sun was hanging high in the sky for two in the afternoon, looking like a burnished golden shield. He glanced up at it for just a moment, his eyes visored by an open palm. And it was in that moment that he saw her.
She was running the other way, up on the red dirt pathway at the crest of the weedelia slope that separated the high school from the sidewalk below. She wore long black sweat pants and a large oversized white sweat top with two multicolored eyes painted across the front, the name “CYNDI” below them. Her eyes and lips were painted in colors similar to the ones on the sweat top, all metallic and ambiguously hued, sometimes blue, sometimes pink, depending on the light and the angle.
For a frozen moment, she seemed to float and hover, her figure as clear and hard-edged as ice. He could see her eyes. From their shape and shine, he sensed immense sadness, on the verge of overflowing in silver tears. She reached a hand to the center of her chest, between the vague swells of her breasts, and grasped her heart as though it were in pain and on the verge of breaking. And then, she seemed to look down upon Randy, like an angel in day-glow paint. Under that imagined scrutiny, he felt suddenly ridiculous, sweat blossoming in his armpits.
And then, as swiftly as it had come, the moment passed, and she was gone.
It was almost a full minute later before he realized that she had taken his breath with her, before he remembered to inhale...

2:
Christine hates Mililani.
It is nothing like Seattle. Here, there is nothing interesting going on, and no one interesting to do it with. Here, there are only boorish morons who can’t speak a sentence of proper English, and whose substitute language, pidgin, seems best suited for sex, violence, or insults (that’s all it seems used for, anyway). Here, there is only gossip and cars and B-movies and drinking.
Why did her father have to move? She’d just learned to love Seattle, just begun to establish roots there, just started to see a future there.
She had just learned how to love someone there.
It is so unfair.
Her only respite, the only activity that gives her any sense of continuity in this dead and ugly town, is the running. She’d loved to run in Washington, loved the way it’d made her feel at one with the rugged and breath-taking landscapes she traversed. Now, here in Mililani, running has a different purpose; it helps her to forget where she is. It allows her to drift on her strides, as though she is floating. She’s joined the girl’s cross country team specifically for this purpose, for the temporary oblivion it gives her.
Christine swipes the sweat from her forehead and lips with the sleeve of her Cyndi Lauper sweat top. It’s a souvenir from a concert she’d never wanted to attend, a souvenir that she cares absolutely nothing for. Another symbol, perhaps, of her imprisonment to circumstance. It’s the perfect thing to wear on a run, of course, because you never care to keep stainless what you never cared to have in the first place. And here in Mililani, nothing stays stainless for long. If there’s one thing she’s learned about this place, it’s the way that its red dirt inevitably stains everything. Perhaps it floats quiescent in the still air, and the simple act of walking through it (maybe even breathing it, ugh!) leaves traces like rust on steel.
Christine rounds a corner, following a red dirt path (Again with the red dirt! Kicking up a dust cloud, staining her socks and shoes!) up a steady slope. And suddenly, it hits her. It’s been a full week. A full week! Seven days.
Why hasn’t he called!?
She feels despair well up within her, so strong it almost stops her dead in her tracks.
She reaches for the one solid reminder and remnant of him that she has, the silver pendant that she always wears around her neck. She feels it through the soft cotton of her sweatshirt, grasps it like a plum pit in her fist, wrinkles Cyndi’s forehead right between her painted eyes.
Her will restores, her stride restores. She registers her surroundings once again. Down below her, beyond a slope of waxy green leaves and ugly yellow flowers, she spies some idiot boy gazing up at her lasciviously. Yet another reason to hate this place, she concludes. And she turns her attention back to the red pathway before her, so that she can once again tune it, and everything else, out...

3:
“You want to join cross country!?”
Cliff allows the question to hang in the air above the chessboard, a storm-cloud hovering over the one-sided battlefield. But Randy seems as oblivious of it as he is of his imminent doom, a checkmate in four moves or less.
The two friends are meeting in Mr. Shinseki’s room during lunch recess for Randy’s daily “chess-whupping” session. Cliff is a veritable chess guru, whom, it is rumored, once checkmated his own Atari home computer playing Sargon. Randy, meanwhile, is in the running for the worst chess player of all time. Originally, these lunchtime sessions were intended as a sort of chess tutorial for Randy. But since he’s demonstrated himself to be incorrigible and just plain “dense,” repeating futile moves over and over again, the chess has become more of a formality, an excuse for two friends to just meet and talk.
“You want to join cross country?” Cliff repeats, absently moving his knight. “Why?”
Randy shrugs. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. “I just need something to do.” He squints at the gibberish of Cliff’s formation, and then carelessly advances a pawn.
“Something to do?” Cliff says. “Homework’s something to do.” He peers at Randy suspiciously. “Why cross country?”
Randy looks up, looks away, laughing shakily. “Why not?”
Cliff glances down at the board, moves his knight to trounce Randy’s pawn. “No incentive,” he says flatly. “Just like in the move you just made. No reason for it. A sacrifice that yields no gain.” He folds his palms before himself, looks Randy in the eye. “Cross country won’t help your rep, for one thing. It’s the sport of Nerds.”
Randy raises one eyebrow in curiosity.
Cliff clears his throat, preparing himself for a lengthy explanation. “Okay,” he begins. “One, you don’t see a lot of muscle bound cross country runners. No jocks. Not that there aren’t any, it’s just that they’re the exception. It’s just too much trouble to carry around all that extra weight for long distances; it’s too much stress on the joints. Not worth it. Two, cross country requires a certain intelligence. Not that other sports don’t, or don’t require it more. But, compared to, say, running the 100 meter dash, cross country does require strategy. Let’s call it the tactical management of resources. It’s not possible to go all out, 100%, full speed for three miles; if you can, well, that just means you’re not really going all out. See, for cross country, you need to pace yourself, and that requires always being aware of how close you are to death, and to the end, which aren’t always the same thing.” Cliff leans back to reiterate. “So. Cross country is a sport populated mainly by Nerds.”
Randy rolls his eyes, bored. “I don’t care about any of that,” he says flatly. “Rep? Please.” And, apathetically, he drives another pawn forwards.
Cliff nods slowly, ignores the completely useless move, his eyes instead studying its maker. “Cross country might be for Nerds, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” he continues discouragingly. “It definitely isn’t for wimps. And, no offense, but you’re a softie. Bubble gum. Horace, he’s going to step on you and run a marathon on your ass.” Cliff casually moves his Bishop across the board. “Oh, by the way, check.”
“Horace?” Randy asks, carelessly noting and just as carelessly dismissing the threat on the board. “Who’s Horace?”
“Horace is the God of track and cross country,” Cliff whispers almost reverentially. “The coach for the boy’s team.”
Randy smirks, shakes his head. “Cross country Gods,” he says dismissively, a smirk on his lips. “If cross country’s so awful, if, as you say, there’s no incentive, then why do you do it?”
Cliff half-smiles. “I have my reasons,” he says simply, mysteriously. “Besides, I like to run. And unlike some people, I’m in pretty decent shape.”
Randy stares at the chessboard for a moment, then moves a pawn to obstruct the Bishop’s path.
Cliff shakes his head in disgust. His Queen moves diagonally across the board, sealing Randy’s fate. “Checkmate,” he says. “Or should I say, Scholar’s Mate? Dude, this is one of the oldest tricks in the book! I’ve beat you with variations of this, what, I’ve lost count how many times already!”
“Alas,” Randy murmurs simply, in mock dejection.
Cliff is quiet for a thoughtful moment. Finally, he repeats Randy’s remark, but with an introduced gap: “A lass. Yeah, you can say that again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Randy asks, his eyes narrowing.
“Oh, nothing,” Cliff answers, with upturned eyes. And quickly, he begins to reset the board.
Cliff finds no end of frustration in Randy’s disinterest and incompetence in chess. The one thing that he considers so vital to his own identity can never be shared or appreciated by his closest friend. Randy isn’t a thinker, a strategist. He’s more of a feeler. In fact, Cliff knows Randy has strong passions, a whole mile long roller coaster of them, churning through its ups and downs. It’s just that the roller coaster inside of him is so far far away from everyone else that its lone rider’s screams sound like the soothing squeaks of mice. But in the few years that he’s known Randy, Cliff has seen the symptoms of that ride manifest countless times: the initial quiet denial, the nausea of disorientation, the giddy white-knuckled fear, the inevitable crashing depression at the end. Cliff’s an expert; he recognizes the symptoms, and their associated poor prognosis, almost instantly.
“Cross country practice starts right after school by the way,” he says flatly, as his fingers busy themselves placing pieces precisely, all facing imminent conflict. “Come dressed to die.”
Randy chuckles at his friend’s ominous words, and then grows silent for a long moment. “Speaking of dressing to die, what’s the deal with your partner? You know, for the Hamlet assignment?”
Cliff feels a slight quickening in his pulse, and lays his hands firmly on his knees to conceal any trembling. “Oh, you mean Erica?” he says flatly, perhaps too flatly. “She’s cool.”
“Why does she always dress like that?”
Cliff’s lips curl in disbelief. “She’s a Goth. You know, that group on the front lawn?”
Randy shakes his head. “Whatever,” he mutters. “If it weren’t for the whole black and white thing, I’d say she was kind of cute. Big eyes, pouty lips. Kind of reminds me of a goldfish.” And he makes squelchy kissing noises.
Cliff nearly reaches across the table to slap Randy one, but he stops himself, surprised at his reaction.
What does he care what Randy says about her?
What does he care about her?
And then, suddenly, he realizes the truth, the reason why she unsettles him so much. It’s the lips, Erica’s lips. They remind him, not of a goldfish, but of the person who first taught him chess, the person who once locked his heart up on its checkered board.
“What, am I supposed to move first?” Randy asks from beyond the board.
Cliff takes a deep breath, struggling to find distance from his sudden revelation, distance to assess, to strategize.
After a long pause, he nods.
“Make your move,” he taunts casually.
***
Later that day, at cross country practice, Cliff remembers.
As the team runs the length and breadth of Mililani, today plummeting into — valley, then up the long hill that stretches towards the beginning of the fences of Wheeler Air Force Base, as his footsteps blur the distances around him into a painful gasping watercolor dream, Cliff remembers.
He remembers another air force base, in another corner of the world: Iwakuni, Japan. He remembers it because of Erica’s lips, or rather, because Erica’s lips are not her own. He remembers it because of the words that passed through those lips earlier that week, the questions they had asked during the practice for the Hamlet assignment in Kipapa Gulch. And he remembers it because of the lies he had spoken in defensive response.
“Never fallen in love,” he’d said.
“It’s not about love,” he’d said.
“After that, well, I knew better,” he’d said.
All lies.
He remembers the first day that brought him to her, that brought her to him. He was only eleven years old then, just on the cusp of puberty. And he had gotten lost on purpose. Or tried to. Oh, he’d had full faith that he would find his way back again. But in the meantime, he’d wanted to just once stray off the path between home and school, the path that had worn the soles of his old American shoes flat. He wanted to taste this foreign land that he lived in, but didn’t really live in, this country that floated around him like a dream.
When he came to a long bridge across a shallow river, he found old worn stairs cut into the stone embankments, and made his way down to the water. The sand below was coarse and oily (no doubt from nearby refineries), broad flattened islands between streams ankle high. He made a game of trying to keep his shoes dry as long as possible, but inevitably gave in as the streams grew wider, too far to jump. About midway across, he passed an old man digging for clams near a concrete bridge support pillar with nothing but a shovel and a pail. Butter clams, he noted, as he glanced in to see his catch. Then, he continued to make his way over to the other side. He walked along the far river bank for a time, then found another set of stairs. He climbed it, his shoes sloshing like soaked sponges with each step. The stairs emerged into a narrow street, barely wide enough for a single car. It curved blindly about in both directions, wrapping itself around the contours of the folded landscape.
If there was one thing that fascinated Cliff about Japan (in truth, there were countless many), it was the way that the houses and streets of old sections of towns seemed to twist and fold like a ball of small intestines, or like the spaghetti texture of a learned and secret-holding cerebellum. In other countries, and in the Westernized and modernized sections of big cities (Tokyo for instance), land was razed flat, or at least graded into manageable slopes. Houses, buildings could then be placed precisely like checkers on a board.
Or like chess pieces.
But not there.
As Cliff meandered through this maze, between tall roofed fences and gated entrances, between glimpses of cramped gardens and hanging panties, through vapors of curry and rice, and eavesdrops of inscrutable foreign conversations, he gradually noticed that the ground was rising. It was subtle, but as he rounded a hairpin bend, he glimpsed houses he’d passed only recently below him, and beyond, the wide river.
He was so absorbed with the downward view that he almost didn’t see it, almost passed it by: an old torii with fat ropes and hanging paper streamers. And through it, a crooked rising path of log-steps, bordered by twisted pine and cypress trees. Boulders pushing upwards, ever upwards, interrupting the path, forcing it to weave and circle around. Boulders enveloped by the same ropes and streamers that hung from the faded red torii.
For some reason, he was scared. It was still high afternoon, no one would miss him at home for an hour at least, but the path through the torii was dark, shadowed. Still, he was curious. He was about to take a step when a voice called him.
“Hey!”
He turned around. Directly across the street, was a two storied building with a display window on its first story front, so plain he’d completely missed it. Sex comics, porn magazines, adult videos gleamed shiny and seductive in the display case. And from a wide panoramic window on the second floor, a Japanese girl in an oversized T-shirt leaned out, waved. “Hey!” she repeated. “So you do speak English?”
Cliff nodded slowly. It was unusual to hear English spoken outside of his American school, particularly with no accent or hesitation.
“Great!” shouted the girl. “Come on up! Don’t mind my grandma. Or the merchandise!”
Before Cliff could object, the girl popped her head back inside.
Odd.
Cliff knocked, opened the front door. His entrance was accompanied by an electronic ring, followed a moment later by a somewhat tired “Irrashyaimasee.” Beyond rows of wooden shelves laden with flesh-toned media, all eyes and lips and breasts and mosaic censors, an old hunchbacked woman leaned over a counter and nodded.
Cliff nodded back.
Behind the old woman and her counter was a near hidden set of steps rising up into shadows. The girl appeared at the top of the stairs. “Come on up!” she called.
The old woman looked up at the girl. “Riyu-chan,” she admonished, “Muri-shinai hoo ga yoroshii desu yo.”
“Shimpai shinai yo, baa-chan,” the girl said. And then, pointing to Cliff, she said, “Kore, tomodachi.”
Cliff could barely understand the exchange. What was clear to him was that the girl was a non-native speaker. Her Japanese had a distinctive squareness to it, as though she were taking special pains to articulate each individual sound.
Cliff wandered through the aisle, afraid to look to either side at the beckoning female figures, girls who looked not much older than himself. Finally, he reached the counter. The old woman bowed, a gentle smile on her face, then shuffled out of the way so that Cliff could pass to the stairs.
He climbed them, his footsteps making dull thuds on the wooden stairs. At the top was a small hallway opening out into three doorways. The girl led him into the first, to the room with the broad window. Its tatami floor was dominated by a large messy futon that smelled of stale air and floating dust. On the center of it was a chess board made of wood, checkered squares done in two subtly different shades of the same tree. Some of the pieces were arranged on the board, others were scattered prone around its borders. Most of the pieces were made of the same wood as the board, but a few of them were- odd, unrecognizable as pawn or bishop or rook. One of them was made out of a quartz crystal, for instance, barely able to stand. Another was a small wood carving of a crow. There was also a small plastic pack of tissue papers near the board, and just off the futon, a small plastic wastebasket nearly filled with crumpled tissue balls.
Other than that, there was only a small desk, unused, and a shelf with a few books. And, of course, the girl standing beside him. She was dressed only in a long white T-shirt, loose around the collar and arms, almost long enough to cover her knees. Her skin was pale, her skin almost translucent. Her eyes were bright, vivacious, almost crazy in their intensity. But the thing that drew his attention most acutely were her lips. They were the only fleshly thing about her, moist, full, perpetually kissing the air.
The lips spoke. “What’s your name?”
“Cliff.”
“My name’s Riyu. Nice to meet you.”
A handshake. Awkward silence.
And then the lips ran. “Don’t mind me,” she said, her arms sweeping out to indicate her dress, or the state of her room perhaps. “Or I hope you don’t mind. I’m recovering from an illness.” She laughed, somewhat nervously. “Don’t worry though. I’m not contagious.”
“Do you go to the base school?” Cliff asked quietly. “You’re not from around here.”
Riyu shook her head. “No, I don’t go to school right now.” No elaboration.
“Where are you from, originally?” Cliff asked.
“I don’t really know. I’ve lived in so many places.” Again, no elaboration.
Silence.
Then, as though this were the whole point, she said, “Listen, do you know how to play chess?”
Cliff looked embarrassed, shook his head no. “I think I know how the pieces move,” he explained sheepishly. “But I don’t- can’t play.”
Riyu looked vastly disappointed, biting her thick lower lip. But then she cautiously turned an eye up. “Would you like to learn?” And before Cliff could answer, she continued. “I’m a great teacher! Please, you have to learn. It’s a- a- basic skill, playing chess. It’s all I live for, nowadays.”
Cliff looked out the window. The sun was still high. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I really should be heading back.”
Riyu looked down at the board, her shoulders drooping beneath the shapeless shirt. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a near whisper. Her voice took on a husky quality. “Did I come off too strong? It’s just- I’ve been stuck here a while. No one to talk to. No one to play a good game with, you know? I can run scenarios in my head all day, but in the end, the right hand always knows what the left is doing.” And she looked at Cliff, her eyes pleading. “Please don’t go yet.”
And without warning, she began to cough, first in an itchy throat kind of way, but progressively deeper, until chest hacks crumpled her body, forced her to crouch, then sit. During the episode, Cliff couldn’t help but glimpse something through the collar of her shirt, a small rounded shape, with a pink nubbin. And he also noticed that she wasn’t wearing any panties. When she came up again, her palm was flecked with blood.
Cliff looked away, his face flushing for some reason.
“It’s nothing, really,” Riyu muttered, as she wiped her hand carefully on a tissue. “Not contagious you know.”
Cliff looked out the window once again, to the view across the street, the torii, the path rising up into the darkness.
“You’re not going, are you?” Riyu asked once again. Her voice neared breaking, her eyes seemed on the verge of tears.
Cliff made a decision.
“No,” he said, taking a seat across from her, the wooden board between them. “But just one game.”
***
As the pace suddenly slows, as his surroundings coalesce into a stable background, Cliff realizes that the team has completed its run, has cycled back from its distant trajectory, and returned to the front courtyard of Mililani High School. He feels the consequence of the journey suddenly, as though the gravity of the earth increased tenfold in an instant. His joints ache, his muscles burn, his lungs rasp and gasp, and his heart thunders.
But the trace of the memory remains, as though it only happened a moment ago. “Just one game,” he had said.
He thinks of Erica, and realizes:
He’s still playing.

1:
“Let’s pick it up, panties!” Horace isn’t talking to the girls, of course. “And new kid, unless you want to try out for the girl’s team, I suggest you keep your eyes on the track!”
The rest of the boys laugh breathlessly (so do most of the girls), and Randy feels his face burn from more than just his exertions.
It’s Randy’s third practice. He and the rest of the boys’ team have only just begun running warm up laps on the track, alternating between open strides on the straightaways, and tight rapid angled steps on the curves. Like a pack of wolves, their path encircles the girl’s team, stretching placidly in the center of the football field beneath the watchful eyes of the girl’s coach, sheep under the aegis of a shepherd. And watching over the boys’ team, standing somewhere near the 50 yard line, is Horace.
Horace truly is the God of cross country. He is weathered spikes, thick muscled thighs, black running shorts, white and grey windbreaker, salt and pepper hair and mustache. Most of all he is eyes. A pair of cold, skinny, one-day-before-new-moon crescents, surveying this oval-shaped field, a mere fief on his immeasurable kingdom of distances.
Over the past couple of practices, Randy has tried to avoid the scrutiny of those eyes by keeping the pace and hiding in the pack. But he is starting the sport (and, for that matter, all concerted exercise) anew, and has neither the natural speed nor conditioned endurance to remain anonymous for long. On his best day (yesterday), he managed to keep up through warm ups and maybe the first third of their “suicide hill” runs. Today, like his first disastrous practice, he quickly runs out of steam right in the middle of warm ups, tempting fate, which, out here, means Horace’s ire.
Already, Randy begins to feel telltale signs: a kind of raspy burning in his lungs, the smell of iron from the oxygen starved blood, a heaviness and a tingling sensation of the arms. And he asks himself yet again, “Why am I here?” Despite Horace’s admonition, Randy feels his eyes wander back towards the center of the football field, looking for the answer.
He rounds the bend, and there she is, appearing from around the stalk of the goal post, dressed in her lemon yellow shorts and her white sweat top, the one with the four multi-colored squares on the front, like an Andy Warhol, or like a window looking into some world of abstract possibility. She is doing a hurdle stretch, with one leg bent behind her, and the other straight as a spear.
Randy has slowly learned, from eavesdropped bits and pieces, that Christine used to live in Washington State, before her father, an officer in the Air Force, got a transfer here. He also learned that she’s a devout Catholic, a year older, and (according to some of the other girls on the cross country team) not a little stuck up. Most would consider strict morality, age, and bitchiness to be turn-offs. Most would take one look at the odd choice of eye-liner and lipstick, and just move on, no looking back. But not Randy. He comes from strange, he knows what it is to be the odd man out. And as unlike calls to unlike, as distance calls to distance, maybe he recognizes in her some of the same “outstanding” qualities in himself: the loneliness, the alienation. The yearning. Sometimes, in fact, when he stares at her long enough for his eyes to go kind of blurry, he almost gets the sensation that he and she are tall spires breaking the “crowd cover,” alone in their own rarefied stratosphere. If he could only bridge the distance across to her without falling forever.
In fact, he’s already begun to reach her, to touch her. This afternoon. A letter, a poem, carefully placed beneath the windshield wiper of her car. He put it there before practice, surreptitious and thief-like. Had she stopped by her car after school, before changing into shorts and sweat top? Had she already found it, read it? The suspense is killing him. He tries to search her face for some sign. For some hope.
“Eh!!!” Horace bellows.
Randy cringes awake, almost tripping over himself.
“That’s it,” Horace shouts. “400 meter intervals. Everyone break 65, or everyone runs again.” The boys curse under their breath. “Thank the new kid,” Horace adds, pointing to Randy.
“Gee, thanks a lot,” one of the senior runners mutters.
“Yeah, thanks,” Cliff says breathlessly, nudging Randy in the shoulder.

2:
At first, Christine thinks it’s a ticket.
She doesn’t understand why she would get a ticket. She’d left her car in the high school parking lot while she ran cross country practice. What was illegal about that? But then again, she’s only been licensed six months, and half of that in Washington State. She hasn’t experienced enough not to fear the worst.
Her heart in her throat, she gingerly pulls the neatly folded piece of white paper out from under the wiper blade. It’s folder paper, certainly doesn’t look like a ticket, and for a moment, she feels a slight relief, a slight drop in the thundering of her heart. But then, what could it be?
She unfolds the paper, sees the fine script within scrawled in neat lines across the page like an armada of spiders. For a few seconds, her eyes zip back and forth, as though following a broken metronome. Then, almost reflexively, her fingertips open, stiff and trembling, the paper slipping and falling to the asphalt. She frantically reaches into her purse for her antimicrobial wipes, tears open a packet, imbibes the fresh lemon scent, and rubs the chemical-soaked tissue between her palms like double-sided sandpaper.
A poem.
Christine hates poetry.
Why fold language up that way, unless you had something to hide? Why, unless you were trying to appear more than you were? The fact that it was stuck on her windshield, and that it was unsigned and anonymous only confirms her instant distrust, nay, disgust in the poem, and, more importantly, its sender.
Christine warily looks around her. Maybe the author of the poem is hiding somewhere, watching her reaction. She decides not to give him any satisfaction. She coolly steps on the paper, as though completely oblivious of it, unlocks her door, and casually deposits herself into the driver’s seat.
Once insulated by the car, she reaches to her chest for the one thing that comforts her in this foreign place. She feels the silver heart-shaped pendant, firm and smooth and hard- real- in her palm. And she closes her eyes tight, and imagines, as she has in every concealed and private moment, that she is in the Seattle rain again: under his umbrella, surrounded by his coat, his warmth, his smell, her ear so close to him that she can hear the rhythm of his heartbeat as clear as not-so-distant thunder...

3:
400 meters in 65 seconds is definitely doable once, twice, maybe even three times consecutively. But if everyone doesn’t manage to run it on the first go (and, unfortunately, thanks to Randy and a few other stragglers, they don’t), then it becomes progressively less likely that it will ever happen. After a few repetitions, no one, not Cliff nor any of the Varsity runners, clears the bar Horace has set. After a few repetitions, it simply becomes a matter of survival, of running laps until Horace feels the sentence has been served.
Although the pace is more intense than he’s used to, Cliff uses the intervaled run the same way he uses all runs. He uses it to think, to remember. As the red dirt of the track blurs, clouds and motion, beneath his oxygen-starved legs, as his lungs burn for a drink of dusty air, he experiences a clarity that he never feels in still or pedantic existence.
He can’t fully explain why it happens. He has heard that in conditions of extreme hypoxia, the brain hallucinates, and sometimes even has revelatory spiritual visions. Maybe that accounts for it. In any case, Cliff has come to expect this almost crystalline lucidity whenever he runs. It is a feeling like no other. He imagines it is like the breaking down of the barriers of space and time; like escape velocity; like a whole other dimension, within which he can perceive the true forms of the universe, and hear the harmonious music of the spheres.
This is why Cliff runs cross country. This is why he runs the distances.
Cliff rarely sets the agenda for his mental ruminations while running. Thoughts, feelings, memories, seem to arise spontaneously, like unconnected dots, like the fragmented stars of a constellation. It is only subsequently that things connect, that patterns and significance become apparent.
Today, he recalls his chess “match” (or mismatch) with Randy earlier in the day.
He recalls his friend’s mental agitation; he was as jumpy as his chess “strategy” (if it could be called such). For some reason, Randy had decided to play a game using only his knights. They jumped about the board in useless L’s, while Cliff steadily ate away at his frozen formations, exposing the immobile king.
“What the hell were you trying to do?” Cliff asked, as he reset the board.
“I was just using my knights,” Randy answered, with a giddy smile.
“Yes, but why?”
Randy bent forward, his eyes narrowing, as though he were about to share a secret. “I’ve written something,” he said, in a near whisper. “I’m going to deliver it today.”
Instead of asking what that had to do with his chessplay, Cliff shifted gears along with his friend. “Let me guess,” he said. “A love note.”
Randy looked honestly shocked. “How did you know?”
Cliff smiled knowingly. “Randy, you go through this cycle every few months,” he said. “You think it’s a big secret, but it’s not. It’s written all over your face, your behavior, everything. It’s like the way you play chess. You repeat the same futile doomed moves over and over again, as though, I don’t know, you could change things by pushing it at a different time, or when you’re in a different mood.” He paused briefly, thinking. “Although, I never expected today’s gameplay. Today, you failed creatively.”
Randy leaned back, inhaled, a stupid grin on his face. “Cool, huh? I played the knights because, well, I believe in them. I think I understand them.”
“Understand?”
“Knights like Don Quixote,” Randy began, “can never be direct. Courtly love, and all of that. It’s invisible deeds. Hell, you could even die for a maiden, and she might not even know you were alive.”
Cliff sighed impatiently. “And this has to do with knights, how?”
“Chess knights are indirect,” Randy continued. “They don’t move in a line. Not straight forward, not even diagonally. They can’t. See, that’s why they ‘jump.’ They have to jump, because they never have a straight path.” And he looked away, tapping his fingers against his chin, thinking. “Just like I have to, all invisible-like.”
Cliff was silent for a moment, wondering at the seeming profundity of his friend’s statement. His friend, who didn’t understand a thing about strategy. Finally, frustrated, he shook his head. “What’s the deal with you and Don Quixote anyway?” he asked. “We moved on to Hamlet a whole week ago.”
“Not into Hamlet,” Randy said, shrugging dismissively. “I’d rather have ‘To Dream the Impossible Dream’ than ‘To Be or Not to Be’ any day of the week. It’s far less boring. Far less- stuck.”
Cliff raised a brow in puzzlement, his mouth curled into a thinking smile. He carefully adjusted one of the knights so that it faced precisely forward. “Can I ask whom your fair Dulcinea is this time?” he asked.
Randy leaned in close, uncomfortably close, like a schoolgirl whispering a secret. “Her name’s Christine,” he began.
“The junior Christine?” Cliff retorted, loud on purpose. Randy cringed, winced, a finger to his lips. Cliff smiled, continued. “The one on the cross country team?”
“You know her?”
“Sure I know her,” Cliff answered calmly. “She started coming to my church a few months ago. She runs the Sunday School classes sometimes.”
“You know her?” Randy repeated.
Cliff rolled his eyes. Then, he looked his friend right in the eyes. “I don’t think she’s right for you,” he said quietly.
Randy looked wounded. “Why?”
Cliff said nothing. He just smiled, shook his head.
Randy was quiet for a long moment, his expression muddled. And then suddenly, unexpectedly, he exploded into one his stupidly enthusiastic grins. “Well, it’s too late for that now,” he said. “I’ve already written something.” And then he asked, “So, where’s your church? And what time is service?” He rubbed his hands together, as though to warm them. “I suddenly feel a need for religion.”
***
Horace finally calls a stop.
The world is restored to insipid solidity, and Cliff returns to dry throat, wheezing lungs, burning legs. He sees Randy, near tears, crumpled on the grass beside the track. Maybe he’s throwing up, Cliff thinks. Serves him right.
Need religion?
No, Don Randy. You need endurance.

1:
Randy tries to time his arrival to be as close to the start of the service as possible. That way, he won’t have to sit in awkward silence next to strangers, waiting for things to begin. Even so, he discovers to his dismay that, at 8:58, crowds of really well-dressed men and women are still milling about, socializing. And what’s more, he realizes that his version of Sunday Best doesn’t cut the mustard. Miami Vice blue apparently isn’t a very religious color.
He creeps into what looks a safe haven, the right rear corner of the room. From this vantage point, he tries to scan the crowd for Cliff, and more importantly, Christine. Unfortunately, there are too many people standing up to get a really clear view of anything; the room’s like a forest of suits and dresses. And then, as he decide to give up for the time being, and just crumple into a seat in the pews, he feels someone watching him. From the corner of his eye, he glimpses a man in a crisp suit and tie, holding a bible at his waist. His innards twist as he senses the man make a decision and act upon it, striding confidently towards him.
“Hello, my name is Richard,” he announces with a clarion voice. “I’ve never seen you here before. Are you new to the church?” His large meaty hand is outstretched.
Randy rises awkwardly, briefly allows the man to envelope his thin clammy hand in his, smiles shakily. “Uh yes, new to this church.”
Richard grins broadly, nods. “I see, and what church do you normally go to?”
Randy looks away, feels his brow suddenly sweat profusely. “Oh, um, well, it’s in down town. I just- happened to be in the area- today- and-“ His voice fades to unintelligibility.
Richard waits. When it’s clear that no further words are forthcoming, he nods curtly, and says, ”Well, I hope you enjoy our service here today.”
“Thanks,” Randy mutters shakily.
Then, there’s an announcement that the service is about to start. Randy gives a near audible sigh of relief as everyone (including Richard) takes their seats.
Randy would have been happy to just sit there in complete silence, observing this strange and archaic ritual. But apparently the Catholic service involves a lot of audience participation. Every now and then, quite unexpectedly, the congregation calls out things like, “And also with you,” or “Thanks be to God,” or even, “Praise to you, Lord Jesus.” At first, he conceals himself by lip-synching soundlessly. But as the service proceeds, he gradually feels more confident, as though he is getting the hang of the ceremony and its rhythms. Finally, at one point, he practically shouts, “Thanks be to God!” His own voice echoes hollowly back. As he glances furtively around himself, he finds everyone else mouthing soft “Amens” in reflective quiet. Randy bows his flushed face, trying to conceal humiliation with an appearance of deep reverence.
The sermon that follows deals with the topic of “constancy in prayer,” about how it is easy to pray to God in moments of crisis, but “when the sun comes out, how we suffer amnesia, how we forget that it is the very hand of God that guides the sunlight in its course across our oblivious skies!” Randy listens intently despite himself, despite coming here on false pretenses. For some reason, he thinks of cross country.
Then comes something called the Liturgy of the Eucharist. A donation plate is passed around. Randy ashamedly empties the contents of his jeans pockets, a couple of crumpled one dollar bills and a handful of rattling change. Then, the congregants rise row by row, forming a line towards the altar. Not knowing any better, Randy rises as well and follows, occasionally leaning this way and that to get a better view of what he’s heading for. On the way, he sees Cliff, standing in the third row with his family. Cliff glares at him, rolls his eyes, mouths something largely, silently. Randy doesn’t quite get the message, smiles helplessly, and advances closer and closer towards the altar, like a cat on a boat drifting towards the Niagra Falls.
When it’s Randy’s turn, he bows awkwardly before the priest. The priest offers him what looks like a thin white circle of styrofoam with a “+” symbol on it. Randy nods as he accepts it, then puts it straightaway into his front pocket. The priest seems dismayed, but glancing at the long line of waiting congregants behind him, decides to simply continue with the ritual. He offers Randy a small paper cup filled with a dark liquid. Randy nods once again, accepts the cup, and quaffs the contents in a single gulp, wincing slightly at the odd taste. And then he walks away, pretending to not notice the quizzical eyes of the priest.
***
“You idiot!” Cliff hisses as soon as he pulls Randy aside.
The service is over. Everyone is standing around in the lawn surrounding the church proper, partaking of refreshments, talking in small groups, like little clouds floating above a green sea of manicured nitrogen. Randy hardly registers Cliff, his eyes still looking for Christine.
Cliff waves a hand in front of his friend’s face. “Hello? Anybody there?” he calls out.
“What?” Randy murmurs absently, his eyes momentarily registering him.
“You’re not even baptized!” Cliff whispers. “You’re not supposed to partake of the Feast of the Eucharist!”
“The feast of the what?”
Cliff sighs. “Oh, give me a break!” Suddenly, he spies someone nearby. He glances at Randy, smiles wickedly. Then, he grabs his friend by the arm, insuring that he can’t escape. “Hey! Christine!” he hollers.
Randy flinches when he sees who is approaching.
She is dressed in a pastel pink dress, a simple affair that is at once both casual and alluring. She is holding a small leather bound bible at her waist. Her make-up is still the same strange metallic hue. “Hi Cliff!” she says, smiling, waving, as she walks over.
“Hey,” Cliff says, “This is my friend Randy.”
Randy’s throat suddenly feels too tight. “Hey,” he squeaks stiffly. He raises a palm in greeting, inwardly winces as he sees that it looks like he’s saluting the Fuhrer.
“Hi,” Christine says, her eyes squinting slightly as she tries to recall something. “Randy. You look familiar.”
“He’s on the cross country team,” Cliff says.
“Oh yeah!” Christine says, smiling. “New kid, right?”
Cliff and Christine share brief laughter at Randy’s expense.
“Anyway,” Cliff interjects, “Randy here, he’s a newcomer to the church. Doesn’t know a thing about Catholicism. I’m ashamed to say it, but he took Communion today, even though he hasn’t even been properly baptized!”
Christine inhales sharply, apparently shocked. So does Randy, but for an entirely different reason. He has never felt so betrayed in his whole life.
“So I’ve got a favor to ask,” Cliff continues. “My family’s leaving right now, and I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind, I don’t know, talking to Randy, you know, introducing him to the church and everything.”
“Proselytizing?” Christine smirks.
“No, I wouldn’t go that far,” Cliff says. “More like Sunday School, you know, teaching little five year olds? Just basic stuff, about what it means to be Catholic.”
Christine glances at Randy, as though appraising his spiritual worth. “Alright,” she says finally, shrugging. “Although I can’t stay here long either.” She looks over her shoulder, then leans in close, as though she were sharing some scandalous secret. “My father’s really suspicious lately. The other day, I got this really creepy note on my windshield. He thinks I’m being stalked.”
Randy feels his chest tighten up, like a fist wrapped around his heart.
“Besides,” Christine continues, fingering a pendant that she wears around her neck, a silver heart. “I’m expecting a call. Long distance.”
“Well, thanks and sorry, Christine. Gotta go!” Cliff says swift and smooth, waving as he backpedals away.
Christine waves goodbye.
“See you around, Cliff,” Randy rumbles under his breath.
And suddenly, he is all alone with Christine. He glances up at Christine, flashes a smile. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
Christine gives him a puzzled look. “About what?”
“About making you stay to, you know, explain stuff.”
Christine laughs. It’s a beautiful sound to Randy, a mix between bells and running water. “It’s my pleasure,” she says. And then, her voice steadies with solemnity. “And it’s my duty, as a good Catholic.” She turns to face him, her eyes steely, her metallic colored lips set. “What you did today,” she says slowly, “don’t ever do again.”
Randy drops his head beneath that look. “I’m sorry,” he says, low and repentant.
Christine taps Randy gently on the shoulder. “Don’t fret over it,” she says. “Jesus forgives. But there are rules, and they should be followed. The sacraments, for example, are supposed to be done in order, from baptism at birth, to the last rites at death. It’s- unbecoming- to do them out of order, for whatever reason. In fact,” and here, she looks up, deep in thought, “I’m not sure about this, but I think it’s a sin, what you did. The Holy Eucharist is supposed to only be partaken of by Catholics- baptized Catholics- who are clean of heart.” She taps a finger on her chin, deciding Randy’s eternal fate. Finally, she shrugs, says, “I’ll have to get back to you on that. The point is, we must approach God on His terms.”
Randy nods slowly. “But- what are the sacraments anyway?”
“Sacraments are-“ she struggles for the right words, finally shakes her head and smiles. “Sacraments are sacraments! They’re what make us Catholics. There are seven of them: Baptism, Confirmation, Communion, Penance, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Last Rites. It’s not like you have to do all of them. In fact, I don’t think you can do all of them. You can’t become a priest and marry, for instance. But in any case, baptism is the most fundamental sacrament of them all. If you’re not baptized, then you’re not considered to be part of God’s kingdom.”
Randy pauses in thought. “So, I have to get baptized, then,” he says quietly.
Christine suddenly seems uncertain. “You know, I don’t think I’m- qualified- to talk to you about this. Baptism’s a serious decision. I think you should talk it over with our pastor. Have you read the Bible?”
Randy shakes his head. “Parts of it,” he says. “Genesis. In English class.”
“No, no,” Christine says. “Not as literature. As truth.”
Then she looks away, towards the end of the lawn nearest the parking lot. There is a sharply dressed Japanese man with thinning grey hair waiting there. “Listen, I think I have to go.” She pauses. “But I feel like I’m letting you down.” She seems to have an internal debate for a moment, her fingers fondling the silver pendant, rolling it this way and that. Finally, she says, “Come with me.”
Christine guides Randy into the church, into a room filled with large posters and boxes of toys. There is a shelf full of identical leather bound bibles in one corner. She removes one of them from the shelf. She is about to hand it to Randy when a voice calls from the doorway.
“Christine,” calls the Japanese man. “We have to go.”
Christine nods, her fist wrapped around the pendant. She hands Randy a bible. “Sorry,” she whispers. “See you at practice.” And with that, she leaves the room with her father.
Randy stands motionless in the center of the room for many moments. The air around him feels tingly and still at the same time, like lightning has just struck the earth an inch from his feet. The bible, meanwhile, the last thing to taste her fingertips, feels cool to the touch, as though it had fallen from the sky.
Randy cradles the bible in his hands, feels the texture of the leather. He gingerly opens the cover. He is shocked to see her handwriting, careful and precise, done in bright pink ink with metallic glitter: her name, address, and phone number. This is her bible, he realizes, his heart thundering. Somehow, in the midst of trying to give Randy a new bible, she’d accidentally given him her own.
Randy riffles through the thin pages with electric fingertips, imbibes the smell of paper, imagines that he inhales a trace of her mystery, her presence. He finds a bookmark, a laminate rectangle with a short poem of sorts entitled “Footprints in the Sand.” As if by fate, the first words he reads in the bible below the border of the bookmark, words neatly underscored by that same pink pen, are: “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Randy closes the bible suddenly, feeling his heart thunder...