Running Into Trouble

by Mina McShady

  He turned on the halogen lamps in the living room and the bedroom cubby. Their anemic light, he thought, made the apartment look even more forlorn. Holding a change of clothing in his arms, he entered the bathroom, dropped his things on the toilet seat, and pulled back a mold-green shower curtain. He stepped into the bathtub, and he immediately knew something wasn’t right. His foot did not, as he’d expected, come to rest on slightly gritty porcelain. Instead, his toes squelched against something warm and viscous. Eli looked down and groaned. Wretch had puked in the bathtub, and Eli had stepped right into it.

  Although Eli was thoroughly disgusted, he didn’t leap out of the tub and cry for help. Jennifer wasn’t home—she’d left early in the morning and didn’t say where she was going—and, besides, he couldn’t envision her really caring about cat vomit in the bathtub. “It’s in the shower, right?” he could imagine her saying with that distracted air she had, “Can’t you just turn on the water? Rinse it down the drain?” That is, in fact, what he did. But as the hot water massaged his aching shoulders, he thought of Hell. She would have come running, knelt on the bathroom floor, and wiped the nasty vomit from the sole of his foot with a moistened towelette.

  He knew it was foolish to think of such things. He couldn’t get back together with Hell. And, anyway, it wasn’t like she would ever own something as hairy and unpredictable as a cat. Eli sighed and stepped out of the tub. As he was drying himself, Wretch nosed his way past the broken bathroom door and rubbed himself against his wet calf, leaving a patch of damp fur clinging to his leg. It was surprising how much fur a cat could shed and still appear to have a full, luxurious coat.

  After he finished dressing, Eli paced around the apartment, looking for something to do. Jennifer still wasn’t home yet, he hated the slow speed of her dial up connection, and he had no interest in the books and magazines stacked in random piles throughout the dwelling. He watched the clock. One minute passed. Then thirty seconds. He found his running shoes, located Jennifer’s extra keys, and hit the street. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, I’ll go to Hell.

  -Helen Kale-

  When she arrived home from what had become a five-hour run through some of the roughest trails greater Crawford Notch has to offer, Helen was tired but not the least bit sleepy. She didn’t like this one bit, because, as on every day since the incident with Eli and Jennifer, her greatest goal was oblivion. But sleep, or even relaxation, was shy and fleeting. Helen was possessed of an unstable, anxious energy that kept her continuously on edge, building and deconstructing elaborate scenarios involving Eli, Jennifer, and a variety of supporting players from the R&M club.

  And nothing but running could relieve the deafening roar of hysterical thought. She was too preoccupied to cook, clean, or even mindlessly search the Internet. Her kitchen, once so pristine, was a testament to her sudden disengagement with life. Garbage stacked in the corner infused the air with the overripe aroma of decay and a whole family of dishes sat accusingly in the sink. The floor, which had once been lovingly tended, was now covered in fluffy balls of dust and enough small fragments of food to make a decent-sized, if unevenly flavored, meal.

  Without even bothering to shower, Helen began stalking around her house. It was a Saturday and, without the imperatives of Eli’s training and a battery of R&M club functions, her life had no structure, no meaning. Although she had been strangely exhilarated by her brief moment of violent connection with Jennifer, she also knew that if people found out about it, they’d recoil from her in horror and disgust, muttering things about “anger management” and “abuse.” So she decided that she’d hide from the world and allowed her voicemail to fill with messages as she retreated further and further into visions of what might be and what could have been.

  Realizing belatedly that her muddy Nikes were tracking even more dirt over her floor, Helen pulled them off, threw them in a corner, and continued pacing, trying to soothe herself with movement. But, within a few minutes, she felt chilled. Her utilitarian white cotton T-shirt and basic black and baggy running shorts were damp and limp with sweat. Rather than change clothes, Helen grabbed a blue-green afghan from her bed and wrapped it around her like a cloak. She was heading back to the kitchen when she noticed that she was trailing bloody footprints behind her.

  In the bathroom under bright white light, Helen rinsed and then inspected her feet. They were covered with so many blisters that it looked as though her skin had tried to slough itself off without fully accomplishing the job. She washed her feet some more and went hunting for a pair of socks in the hamper. Laundry was one of the many things that Helen had let go since Eli’s departure. Unable to quickly find a matching pair, she pulled on the two cleanest socks she could find—one thick white athletic sock and one delicate pink anklet.

  She thought about eating. The idea of a big plate of rich, warm food appealed to her. But the effort required to make it materialize seemed gargantuan. First, she would have to decide between cooking and ordering in. Actually, in recent days, she only pretended to make this choice. Her mind was too scattered to follow the linear instructions so essential to the successful execution of a recipe. But ordering in was daunting as well.

  There were only three restaurants in Crawford’s Notch that offered takeout—China Chang’s, Curry Express, and Pizza Momentito. Already, the staff at each joint had come to know Helen’s voice and dining preferences. This disturbed her deeply. To Helen, dining alone on takeout food was a secret, shameful thing. It was the kind of activity that reeked of advancing age and a fusty resignation to loneliness, a mid-level step on a ladder that led to hoarding pets and Internet pornography.

  To avoid the horror of becoming known as a takeout food regular, Helen tended to rotate her takeout orders according to a few simple rules. First, she would never order from the same establishment on consecutive evenings. Second, she would order enough food for two or even three people to give the impression that she was hosting a festive get together in her dark, increasingly unkempt house. By ordering extra, she could make the leftovers last for a day or two, letting her skip ordering in altogether for a day or two. Third, she tipped excessively, hoping that bribing the delivery people would somehow stop them joking about that sad, single woman who doesn't like to cook.

  As she looked at the menus, Helen sighed. She couldn’t remember her last order. Maybe she’d just skip dinner. She did feel sort of lightheaded. Perhaps, she thought, if I just lie down, I’ll pass out. Still unconvinced, Helen continued to stare at the menus. She recalled eating Kung Pao chicken and lo mein with Eli once. They had sat on the floor with the cartons, sharing salty rice and noodles over mismatched plates because Eli had accidentally knocked over an entire drying rack full of dishes.

  Abruptly, Helen dropped the menus, letting them flutter to floor. Someone had rung the doorbell. And it wasn’t takeout.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  Jennifer opened the trunk of her rented Ford Tempo—the insurance check for her totaled Hyundai was taking forever to arrive—and hauled out a brand new 25-inch television. At the mall, she’d seen televisions the size of God, minor deities, kings, and national politicians. Her T.V. was a member of the local school board—upright and functional but not too powerful. She was exhausted from the hours she spent with Nasty, installing her new drapes and performing triage cleaning, so that the cleaning service she’d finally browbeaten Nasty into accepting wouldn’t flee at the sight and smell of the house.

  Jennifer looked down at the T.V. box and then glanced towards her apartment door. Objectively, it was a tiny distance, no more than 50 yards. But tonight Jennifer had all the energy of overcooked linguini. The prospect of dragging the T.V. box all the way to her apartment and then going back to the car to retrieve her groceries somehow seemed like an insurmountable effort. All Jennifer wanted to do was drop to the ground and take a nap. The only thing stopping her from lying down where she stood was her expectation that Eli would react to the new T.V. with transparent joy.

 
She knew her sudden enthusiasm for pleasing Eli was a little foolish. As she’d told Nasty, she didn’t think she was in love with him. But he was living with her, just the same, despite the fact that they’d never really talked about their relationship, not even once. Jennifer realized she was becoming accustomed to Eli’s presence in her small apartment. Whenever she came home from a run or some other activity, Eli was there, waiting for her. And, unlike Wretch, he usually was prepared with some cheerful, trivial conversation usually involving some crazy escapade from his early days in Crawford’s Notch when he was considered a bad boy and a fixture at the Uvula.

  It was true that, over the past few days, his volubility had begun to flag. He’d even managed to repeat the same story—something about getting drunk and peeing in a fish tank—twice, although Jennifer had been too courteous to mention it. But he was trying so hard to entertain her. Jennifer thought that the T.V. would give him a little boost, and it would give him something to occupy his days until he figured out what he—or they?—were going to do.

  Twilight was rapidly turning into night. Jennifer, to whom the idea of running inside to ask Eli for help never occurred, squatted down and put her arms around the box. She gradually raised herself up and, realizing that her grip was only just barely stable, she began walking briskly towards her apartment door. Just as she was approaching the end of her trek and feeling the muscles in her arms begin to burn, she placed her left foot on a small rock. Even this minor incident was enough to tip Jennifer’s overstressed kinesthetic system into disarray. She wobbled and struggled, seeming to hang in the air. And although her television was not the size of God, it was plenty large enough to break her foot.

  -Helen Kale-

  Helen’s first thought when the doorbell rang was, “Oh my God, it’s Eli.” She suddenly felt warm and alert as adrenaline coursed through her body. She wondered if glimpsing her on the trail had cracked the carapace of stubborn resolve that was keeping him from coming home. Of course, Helen couldn’t actually see anyone right now. Her house was cluttered and her body was encrusted in sweat and mud.

  She left the lights off—why not let Eli think she was out doing something exciting—and crept into the living room, dodging newspaper and pizza boxes. When she pushed her face to the windowpane, all she could see with any clarity was a pale Honda, an anonymous, unremarkable car that told her nothing about its owner. An indistinct figure on the doorstep, impatiently shifting its weight from one foot to another, was awfully short to be Eli. Perhaps, she thought, the sharp angle and incline of her vantage point was distorting her view.

  Helen would have watched until the figure—which did seem to be fidgeting quite a lot—eventually left. Her observations of its height, width, and characteristic movements would have all been fuel for an obsessive, all-encompassing analysis of why Eli might have decided to stop by. But now the phone was ringing.

  Energized with hope for the first time in days, Helen stumbled into the kitchen and answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Ha! I knew you were home.”

  -Eli Hawthorne-

  Eli liked running at night. It was like being outside of standard reality. Usually, there were almost no other runners on the roads or the trails. Most so-called sensible people stayed indoors or cowered in the comfort of their cars. They never saw how the moonlight could turn a long stretch of cloned suburban architecture into a surreal moonscape of dark shadows and soft gray light, like something out of a video game. And on woody trails, nighttime brought a new collection of sounds, the chirps and squeaks and growls of nocturnal creatures waking up.

  With flashlight in hand, Eli was running along a trail that would take him to a small ridge above Steepclimb Road, where he could hide in the darkness, contemplate his and Hell’s old house, and weigh the pros and cons of stopping by to see Hell for what he told himself was no particular reason. As he jogged along, the gently bouncing beam from his flashlight startled deer, revealing their eye shine and causing them to freeze into place like deer sculptures. Although the trail was covered with its usual assortment of rocks, roots, and foot-sized divots, Eli skimmed along with little difficulty. Training at night had long been part of Eli’s usual routine, because a large portion of the Death March was run in the dark.

  As he exited the trail and approached Hell’s house, Eli began to sweat. He was simultaneously excited, nervous, and wary. It would be great, he thought, if he could just embrace Hell, apologize for his small misstep, and slide back into his old, comfortable life, the one with the predictable daily schedule and the clean furniture. The only problem was that he couldn’t quite imagine how things would work with Hell after the happy reunion. He figured that Hell would probably want to go to bed with him, and he wasn’t sure if he could manage that without closing his eyes and picturing Jennifer and one or more porn stars. A perfect situation would be living with Hell and sleeping with Jennifer, say, two or three times a week.

  Eli also worried that Hell was the sort to hold a grudge, to use his one mistake as a cudgel, forcing him to live every moment of his life in line with her plans or face a constant stream of tearful recriminations. He imagined an ordinary scenario, with Hell lying on the couch reading, and him itching for a long run through the dark. Wearing his usual uniform of T-shirt, shorts, and shoes, he called out something innocuous, like, “I’m going out for a run, I’ll see you later.” He almost reached the door until he made the mistake of turning to wave goodbye and seeing Hell’s rounded, earnest face redden and shine with righteous anger. “You’re not running at ten o’clock at night. Where are you going? Where are you really going?”

  Just standing on the little ridge, about 400 yards uphill from the house, Eli felt peaceful and pleasantly tired. It occurred to him that he didn’t want to visit Hell after all. He noticed the anonymous Honda Acura in front of her house, and was suddenly awash in relief. She’s not alone, driving herself crazy, he thought, turning around and running off into the night, thinking warmly of Jennifer and her mellow, laid back ways.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  Jennifer stood on one leg, staring out her window at the television box she’d had to abandon in the parking lot after dropping it on her right foot. Her injured foot, wrapped in ice, was now precariously balanced on the windowsill. She was annoyed with herself for having bought the stupid idiot screen to impress Eli. She’d wanted to deliver her oh-so-heavy gift into his waiting arms and spend the evening nestled in front of its warm electronic glow, relieved of the need to think of amusing conversation for the fifteenth night in a row.

  Instead, she was in pain, brought low by a self-inflicted injury that just might cost her any chance she’d had—even with her recent spotty training—to win the Death March. And Eli had left without even bothering to leave a note, as if her apartment were a hotel. Her refrigerator was full of frozen pizzas she’d bought with Eli in mind, as well as beer and cheap white wine. (She’d bought some salad greens and a giant jug of mineral water for herself. The nights of eating and drinking with Eli were causing her to add pounds at an alarming rate.) She couldn’t stop thinking about how much money she’d been spending on her impromptu guest. It occurred to her that he might not be there for the sex, which he seemed to enjoy, but rather for the convenience of a free crash pad and an undemanding woman who bought him food, drink, and gifts.

  And the longer Jennifer waited at the dark window, watching cars come and go and neighbors give chary glances to the television box, which the smattering of streetlamps in the parking lot threw into high relief, the more she convinced herself that Eli just had to be using her. Because he and Helen had lived in a nice, upper middle class house on Steepclimb Road, Jennifer had just assumed that he had some sort of career. But the integrity of this assumption quickly crumbled when she noticed that he never went to work. At first, Jennifer figured that he was on the familial dole, just like she was. But, she wondered, what if he has no source of income at all?

  Sure, he’d won $50,000
from last year’s Death March. But, then again, so had she. And after paying $10,000 in back tuition and housing for her younger sister Sherry (whose interest in a music education major had inspired their parents to cut her off), $9,000 to various student loan providers and credit card companies, $5,000 to a passel of friends who’d helped her during the “lean years,” $2,000 in car repairs, and a whopping $23,000 in federal, state, and local taxes, Jennifer understood just how quickly money could evaporate.

  Of course, Jennifer had no objection to poor guys, but she didn’t want to be some guy’s human ATM. Although her trust fund provided a regular income, it was a regular modest income sufficient only to support a bare subsistence lifestyle, which was tolerable to Jennifer because she loved to run and hated to work. And she knew that any guy whose primary interest was free meals and a sybaritic environment wasn’t going to stick with her for very long for the simple reason that she was a bad cook. Yes, she thought, twisting her mouth into a rueful smile, this is so much better than all of the nicely ordered and civilized friends with benefits that had seemed so boring just a few weeks ago.

  Merrow, merrow.

  Jennifer looked down and saw Wretch staring up at her with hungry eyes that said feed me feed me feed me. She sighed. She hated to leave the window. After all, someone might try to take the television while she wasn’t poised to hop outside and defend it. But Wretch did have to eat, and he still had that bony, slightly unkempt stray cat look about him that made his hungry cries so convincing. So Jennifer hopped as fast as she could into the kitchen, periodically hissing at Wretch to keep him out of her path.