“I was thinking about this the other day. You know I’ve known you longer than I’ve known almost anyone in my life?”
He was prepared to argue the point—they’d known each other over a long time, but not continuously—but then he was pulling into the camp’s parking lot, and Rachel was looking around, wide-eyed, at the gyms, the tracks (there were three), and the people. A group of women ran by them, sleek as whippets in their briefs and singlets. “I think between the six of them they’ve got a breast and a half,” she said. She held her purse against her midriff. Andy gently tugged it away.
“You look fine,” he said. He wanted to tell her that she looked better than fine, that she was so pretty, that her body looked as lush as a bowl of fruit, all juiciness and curves. He had been to bed with a few of the women runners. Their legs were limber but all sinew and bone, and they were indeed flat-chested. Worse, some of them treated sex like it was a bonus workout their coach had assigned, pumping their hips like they were trying to get their heart rates up instead of having fun.
He drove her to the residences, which were nothing special, a ten-year-old collection of two-story brick buildings, with a freshly paved parking lot and a few extremely fit people carrying groceries out of their cars or laundry bags into them.
“Hey, Landis, you coming?”
Andy waved at Mitch. “I’ve got to go,” he told Rachel. He pointed out the hiking trail at the base of the mountain, handed her the keys to his place, and kissed her, the kind of kiss a husband might give his wife of ten years as she dropped him off at the train station. “Have fun,” he said.
“Hurry home,” she told him . . . and then she said, “I’ll want to see those feet later.” She turned toward the steps of his building, walking with an extra sway to her hips, the heels of her boots thrusting her bottom out in a provocative way. I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave, he thought—a lyric from one of the rap songs Mitch liked to play. He watched her and found himself enjoying the image of Rachel in his kitchen, Rachel in his bedroom, Rachel at the mirror, holding up shirts, putting on lipstick, playing with her hair.
Andy jogged from the lot to meet the rest of his team. “You just get laid?” Mitch asked, and when Andy shook his head no he said, “I hope you’re going to, because you’re grinning like a fool.”
Andy only smiled more widely, gave his laces a tug, and stepped onto the pebbled-rubber surface of Track 3, where he started to run.
•••
“What happened to us?” Rachel asked. They were having dinner at a French place that she’d picked, after grilling a few of his teammates for recommendations and then asking, in a half-serious, half-teasing way whether Andy’s training diet permitted something as wild and decadent as roast chicken. “Do they have salmon?” he’d asked, and she’d rolled her eyes, but then hugged him and said, “Never change.” He was remembering how they’d gone out when they were in college. He’d order grilled fish or a salad while Rachel would request a burger or pasta, and the servers would always bring her his food. “No, he’s got the dainty plate,” she’d say. Daintyplate, like it was all one word. “He has to watch his girlish figure.”
That night, she ordered roast chicken, and he had a turkey burger, not salmon, but still, and she laughed when he asked for steamed spinach instead of fries. “I’m not letting you have any of my mashed potatoes,” she said. “Just FYI.”
“I’m fine,” he said . . . but, of course, she tried to feed him a bite of her potatoes, which were creamy in the way that only a few sticks of butter could account for. They decided to share a bottle of wine. He had a single glass, and she had two, a glass more than usual, he thought—because of her heart she’d always had to be careful about alcohol. After a few lurches and stumbles, or instances where they’d both ask a question at the same time, they were talking as easily as they had back when he would visit her in college and they’d stay up all night. She’d told him about Alice, and how she thought she would never get the smell of the hospital out of her nose, and he’d tell her about how one of the ladies at an antiques shop in Voorhees thought that Mr. Sills was his father, and he’d never bothered to correct her. Rachel was a wonderful storyteller. With her voice and her face she could turn into anyone—Brenda, the truculent single-mom client who gave her little boy her yeast infection medication even though there was nothing wrong with his plumbing; Amy, her brassy-sounding boss; Jonah, who was, as she put it, limping through law school after obtaining his college degree on the six-year plan.