We wind down my street and then up Underhill, facing away from the river. His hair blows into the wind heavily, and his body stays tight while he walks. There�s some animal that does the same thing, if I recall correctly. Some kind of big cat, like a panther. But he moves so quickly that I can barely keep up. Loping long legged, he stops every now and then to turn and laugh at me.
We wind through the town, me angry and struggling to keep up and him taking deep draughts of the air, which is starting to warm. He seems to be too one with nature for my comfort level-I get cranky even on the swiftest and most pointless of hikes.
We move higher, up through to the top edge of the town, and then we�re off the streets and sidewalks and going through people�s backyards. Soon we are much farther away from the town center than I could expect myself to run, even at this odd pace. I feel myself beginning to smooth out, like when the ups and downs of a heart attack patient flatten and curve gently towards the horizontal. That�s me.
I hop over a tall fence with him, and we are in woods. Sunlight plays through the branches gently, and the lush pine needles on the ground soften our footsteps. If anything, he moves faster in the pines, speeding as though he�s afraid of something after him. I have to work hard to keep up, my heart feeling like a hindrance, a stone in my ribcage. Visualization says my brain, in a mantra that hasn�t worked since about the fourth grade, but I try it anyway. I visualize pulling my skin gently apart and reaching through the ribs to my heart. I visualize it thwacking gently, and then I visualize putting it in my coat pocket, carefully, and then closing up the skin again, just so it will stop holding my running back.
Strangely, it seems to work. Of course, my heart is still there, but the frenetic beat slows, evens out. I feel as calm and selfless as after a yoga session with someone who�s really good at yoga. The trees seem to bend from my path, and I find myself catching up to my leader through this wild town chase. I�m still not within ten feet or so, but I have gotten to the point where I�m not terrified that he�s going to pull so far ahead that I will lose sight of him. He turns, a barely there half turn, and smiles mysteriously, and then turns his face to the wind and continues to run.
I try not to think of how many miles we�ve gone, but I can�t help noticing the terrain around here. It looks unusually like Alison�s backyard�in fact, through the trees I catch sight of something that could be the black ground left behind from the playhouse fire. But we�ve been going too far, too fast to have not hit her house yet, right?
He doesn�t stop. We don�t stop, rather. Just keep running through these woods that don�t have a finish line or an end. We move onward, silently, until our paces are matched and we run side by side.
When this happens, he looks over and down his cheekbones at me. �I wondered when you�d catch up.� And I think about the knife in my pocket, and also about the heart that I imagined leaving inside the same pocket, and my hand sneaks down and close to my body, looking for the opening while running. But then I stop, realizing with sudden gravity that I could very easily kill myself by reaching into a pocket which contains a knife while running (�Don�t run with scissors� has always been a fairly accurate maxim to live by, in my opinion.). Instead, I continue to run, feeling this time my lungs begin to feel stretched, strained. So I do the sensible thing and visualize removing my lungs, carefully so that they don�t deflate, and I visualize tucking them under my coat, over where they used to go, like the Visible Man, and I visualize closing up the skin again and zipping up my jacket again. What I don�t visualize is what might actually result from my visualizing, which is a pocket full of blood and a lymph-stained t-shirt.
My breathing slows and becomes more regular. I feel fitter than a thousand fiddles. The sweat is flying down my shoulder blades, but the wind cools it off and I find myself liking this. Again he turns and smiles, mysteriously as is his wont. �We�re almost there,� he says.
I don�t know where �there� is, until the sun breaks on my face full-force, and I see we�re staring at a brick wall. It�s a big brick wall.
Leaning against it, wearing her best languorous smile and a bitter cloth headband. She gestures towards my companion, and says, �Who�s Scarface?� and laughs, slightly. I realize now that I honestly don�t know, but he grins his split-face grin and says, �Andrew. What about you, Miss Fashion Puppet?� and she curtsies and says, �Alison� like the daughter of Queen Anne. Not the legitimate Anne, though, the daughter who wound up a bastard. Who was that again?
I could swear I hear someone say, �Elizabeth� but the air doesn�t have that tiny ring that it has after someone speaks. Usually I can tell when someone has said something. Alison gives Andrew some flirtatious eyes and they walk around the corner. I think briefly about following, and then decide against it. She can have him.
The door kind of comes upon me by surprise. It�s huge, and heavy brushed steel, and opening it proves to be a slightly off adventure. But I manage to squeak its hinges to the point where I can slip through, and then it bangs shut again and I�m in the gloom of a huge room.