the runner

A guy sitting two tables over hasn’t stopped talking for the entire time I’ve been here.  He’s talking into his cell phone about running, saying stuff about flat tracks, certified courses, and LSDs.  I have no idea what any of this means, but I can tell he knows what he’s talking about because of his shiny shorts, sinewy leg muscles, and impeccable posture.  He alternates sips from a travel coffee mug and a plastic bottle of water.  He has a system.

Me, I’m working my way through a book of crossword puzzles and sipping coffee from a paper cup, the plastic lid sharp on my bottom lip.  I bite the lid with my front teeth when I’m trying to think of an answer, causing the plastic to become thinner and slightly jagged.  It helps, I think, this gnawing.  I used to do the same thing in school, but with my pens and pencils.  More than once, I had to sneak away to the washroom with ink in my mouth.  I can still remember the taste.

The runner two tables over, he mentions something about black toenails.  I’m almost sure of it.  He takes a quick sip of his water before continuing, at length, about overuse injuries and orthotics.  I see him check a second cell phone while he’s talking on the first.  He’s amused; I can see it in the slight crinkling at the corner of his eye.  He systematically takes two more sips from both the coffee and the water.

I’m trying to think of an eight-letter word for ‘lacuna.’  ‘Omission’ doesn’t work.  Not at all.  I chew on the plastic lid of my cup a little more.  At the table to my other side, a girl sits reading a book.  Everything about her seems sad: her weeping willow hair, her charcoal skirt, the shooting star tattoo above her ankle.  Occasionally, I catch a glimpse of her book’s cover; it’s about travelling alone.  It says something about breaks.  The girl at the table, she catches me looking over at her and meets me with a look that makes me feel like a creature existing somewhere between a sexual predator and an orphan.  I count the letters in ‘break’ but there aren’t enough for the answer I need.

Jiggling one leg up and down the way ectomorphs do, the runner’s table vibrates, creating a storm in his clear plastic water bottle.  He talks excitedly about carb-loading, and as he does, his eyes drift over to a glass display case filled with donuts, Danishes, and chocolate-covered croissants.  The word ‘glycogen’ drips from his lips as though he might be saying something erotic.  The phrase ‘side stitches’ is spit out of his mouth as though he can’t stand the taste.

Where we live, winter seems to have forgotten us.  It does a half-assed job, only snowing occasionally, with the temperatures rarely dropping too far below freezing.  I suppose, if one should want to badly enough, running outdoors could still happen.  Past the window, the December sky is grey, and the ground is an ocean of dry, dormant grass with dirty snow islands.  Winter is on hiatus.  I count the numbers in ‘hiatus.’  There are not enough to fill the spaces in 14-across.

The runner, he’s on a tangent about training, leaning forward now, jiggling both legs furiously under the table.  Overtraining, this he rushes past as you might rush past a beckoning stranger on the street when you’re late for an appointment with your bank.  The volume of his voice drops a little when he begins talking about altitude training.  I can tell he’s proud of himself to know the word ‘hypoxia.’  Then he says it, just like that.  This runner, this guy two tables over says exactly what my ears need to hear.  He starts talking about interval training, and my eyes get wide as I look down at my puzzle.

I look down at 14-across, and see that I already have the ‘t’ and the ‘a.’  I air-write the word ‘interval’ across the remaining spaces.  It fits perfectly.  I can’t contain my glee.