Thursday, March 30, 2006
Fixer [Interim Title] Chapter 3 Part 2
The next thing on my mind was the question of who donated a car to
me, complete with a load of rotten meat in the trunk. That, and the
state of my pantry, where two lonely packets of ramen noodles were
keeping each other company.
***
Anybody who might have seen my mystery car donor park his load in
my parking lot wasn't going to be around at 9AM in the morning. Most
of the men worked from dawn until dusk, doing construction, gardening,
or other menial chores that the rich needed to keep their glistening
glass cubes operating. The men whose business was selling substances
that busybodies didn't want sold were in bed asleep. And the women
rarely ventured out at night. This wasn't some country club
suburb. Things could get rough here at night. So investigation at this
end wouldn't happen until evening.
That left the remainder of the morning free for a workout and some
grocery shopping. The day was warm for March, sixty degrees, and it
was a running day, so I traded the sweats I'd put on early that
morning for running shorts and sports bra, which I didn't mind at all
because I'm still built like an athlete even though my competitive
days are long behind me, and don't mind the looks of admiration. I
locked Buddy into the apartment -- German Shepherds are fast, but
they're not built to run continuously for miles at a time -- and
patted Connie on the head as she smacked her gum and read some vacuous
romance novel where a knight in shining armor saved the girl. I hate
to tell her, but there is no such thing. She would get used and abused
and dumped on the streets in the end, because men were liars. Only one
man ever told me the truth, the whole truth, and he was a child
molester. The counsellor at the group home had told me I had trust
issues. I'd call that the understatement of the century. There is one
person on this planet that I trust, and that's myself. Nothing in
the last ten years of my life gives me any reason to feel otherwise.
I am not at the peak of physical perfection that I'd reached under
Coach Davis's tutelage in high school, but I'm still within 5% of my best
times on the track. As short as I am, I have to run a lot of miles in a week
to keep weight from accumulating on my frame. I average about twenty miles
a week, plus speed work to keep my speed up. It's the speed
work that hurts, but it's necessary. I don't push myself with the
self-punishing fanatic intensity of the angry and hurt teenage girl who'd
relished Coach Davis's attention, but I approach my running workouts with a
serious attitude nevertheless. In my business, being able to outrun the
security goons, the cops, and random bad guys is a big advantage, considering
that I'm not genetically set up to beat the crap out of them.
I try not to get into those situations, but shit happens. As
long as I can get a little bit of head start to make up for the fact that my
legs simply aren't long enough for a high top speed -- and mace generally
suffices for that -- I can outrun almost anybody by simply
out-toughing them. Even young guys at their physical peek generally
can't run more than forty yards at full speed without running out of
gas. Granted, any guy on the track team could run me down within a
hundred yards. But those guys are generally too busy being jocks to be
muggers, rapists, or murderers. And they certainly aren't cops.
But that ability doesn't come free, which is why I spend three days a week
running three miles at a fast pace, spend some time flinging myself up a
hill at my top speed then slowly jogging back down it over and over again
until it felt like I was about to die when I wheezed to a stop at the top,
then run three miles back home at a slightly slower pace. The man in the
red BMW, whoever he was, got a good show today. I waved to him as I went by.
I had no idea whether he was a random pervert or was following me for a
reason, either way, all he was doing was looking, so I didn't care. Much,
anyhow. I cared enough to pull a notepad out of my fannypack and write
his license plate number and description on it while trying to catch my
breath at the top of the hill.
By the time I got home, I felt like I'd been through a wringer, but I'm
still young enough that I knew it'd pass quickly. A bit of veg'ing out in
the bathtub, a quick snack of ramen noodles, and I was ready to tackle the
next things on my agenda: stocking my pantry with something to keep the
one lonely remaining packet of ramen noodles company, then finding out what
exactly was the deal with the car I'd had towed and the dead meat therein.
Posted by: BadTux / 3/30/2006 10:37:00 PM
Comments:
<< Home
|
-
- Name: BadTux
- Location: Some iceberg, South Pacific, Antarctica
I am a black and white and yellow multicolored penguin making his way as best he can in a world of monochromic monkeys. View my complete profile
Archives
April 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / February 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 / April 2007 / May 2007 / June 2007 / July 2007 / August 2007 /
Bill Richardson: Because what America needs is a competent fat man with bad hair as President (haven't we had enough incompetent pretty faces?)
Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
Links
Honor Roll
Technorati embed?
Liberated Iraqis
|