Running from Love: A Story for Runners and Lovers (34 page)

“I’ve lived here for ten years. This is as much my town as it is yours.”

“Close, but no cigar. You live here but you’re not a player. I live here, and I am.”

He felt the bile rise at the back of his throat. “What a relief to know I’m not in your club.”

“But you want to be, Jude. Too bad, you’re not.”

“Who says I want to be?” he roared back. Who the hell did she think she was?

“Why else would you be writing a book on
How to Marry Money?”

“Who said that was the title?”

“It got around.” She laughed. Apparently his secret had leaked out all over town.

“It’s a job, alright? I write what my boss tells me to. It pays the bills.”

“Why write on such a topic just to pay some lousy bills?”

“Because I need to work for a living.”

“Dear boy. You don’t think big, do you? Maybe you should move back to wherever you came from. A small town, no?”

“None of your damn business.”

“You know it’s a lot more satisfying to find a job you’re really passionate about.”

“You’d know a lot about that, I’m sure.”

“I do,” she said blithely. “I love my job.”

He couldn’t win with her. And he had to admit, it was clear she loved her job, or whatever one might call what she did for a living: Attract power, then use it well.

“Too bad you don’t love your husband.”

Missy’s face whitened just the tiniest bit.

“Who says I don’t?”

“Do you even know what love is?” He was skating on thin ice now, not having a clear idea what it was himself.

“Do you?” she shot back.

The ice cracked, and he fell through.

“I wish I did.” He shook his head sadly.

“Then go after it.”

He was startled. Her response was surprisingly fresh, devoid of malice. Out of the mouths of sharks, come pearls of wisdom.

“What are
you
going after?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Nothing. I’ve already got it.”

“As long as you’re sure about that.” He hoped she did. God knew he didn’t.

She said nothing, but smiled serenely, except for the tiny tight lines around her mouth. Then she got into her silver BMW and drove off. This time, Jude didn’t check out the lines of the car as it peeled out of the driveway. Who cared what money could buy? He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but one thing was certain—money couldn’t buy it.

T
WO DAYS BEFORE
Christmas, Jude sat at the bar at Ryan’s, nursing a Guinness. Missy’s words still rankled. Why had he cared whether the crowd at The Millbrook Club had frozen him out? Just as she’d pointed out, he wasn’t in their club or anyone else’s club in Greenwich either. When he went home he hadn’t been able to sleep. He was thirty-six years old, living over the garage of someone else’s house. Not a lot of progress from his childhood days. When he thought about it, he didn’t care much whether he owned his own place or not. It wasn’t about owning things. It was about owning his own soul.

He’d gone down to Riverdale in the hopes he’d bump into Farrah. To be dead honest, he’d gone over to her apartment building to see if he could find her, but she hadn’t been home. The doorman had said she was away for the holidays and not expected back until after Christmas. Another plan gone awry.

Still, he’d handed the modest bouquet of orange sweetheart roses to the doorman and summoned his courage to address his friend of the month before.

“So tell me, buddy. You seen my competition around lately?”

“No, mate. I haven’t.”

“Think he’s out of the picture?”

The doorman shrugged. “I thought you were out of the picture.”

“So did I. Because he’s still in it.”

“I don’t think so, friend. You’d better step up your game.”

“Thanks, bud. Have a Merry one.”

“You, too.” The doorman touched his cap and winked.

Jude walked away, light on his feet. Was he still in the game? He hoped like crazy he was.

As he contemplated the foam on his Guinness, he puzzled over why Farrah hadn’t responded to any of his communications over the past three weeks. If she’d broken it off with the other guy, why hadn’t she returned his calls? To get his mind off her, he pulled the notebook out of his pocket that he always carried. Maybe he could come up with a few new ideas for the finishing touches to his manuscript.

He was on the final chapter, How to Close, and feeling about as clueless as Anne had pegged him. Not only did he not know how to close, he hadn’t even come close. Writer’s notebook on counter, the blank page stared up at him, a
tabula rasa
reflecting the state of his sorry soul—the one that wanted to write about things that mattered to him, not things that didn’t: such as moving between two worlds and belonging to neither; or about those who lacked the wound; and even more importantly, those who didn’t.

Silently, he asked Farrah to come back from wherever she was and write on him. All over him. Whatever she wanted to say, starting with “I couldn’t forget you either.”

Shutting his eyes, his mother’s face from the photo his father kept on his bureau came to mind. She’d had a fairy’s soul—ethereal, otherworldly, aside from an occasional touch of temper. Whenever his father had told him she’d been high maintenance, he’d said it with reverence in his voice.

“Well worth it, son. I only wish I’d understood her better.”

“You will, Dad. One day you’ll get to heaven, and you’ll have all the time in the world to figure her out.”

Farrah’s featherlike floatiness reminded him of her. She wasn’t an easy read. He’d found his feather then lost it. The thought was unbearable.

“Like I said, you’ve got to take the final lap fast,” a sharp female voice cut through the bar area’s background buzz.

“You can only do that with a base. You’ve got to build up to that—twenty miles a week, minimum,” another female voice answered.

“Twenty is nothing. Patterson runs eighty a week.”

“That’s why his wife is leaving him.”

“You are kidding,
chica.
No way.”

“Shhh. Are we doing a table or the bar?”

He looked around to spot two women heading his way. They weren’t bad looking, perhaps in their forties. Faces flushed, cheeks rosy, they both wore purple sweatshirts with VCTC printed on the front. He’d seen that acronym somewhere before.

He peered closer. The one with wavy thick brown hair tangled in large, gold, hoop earrings seemed familiar.

“Hey, are you Jules Farnsword? From Headless Horseman?” she asked, her eyes sweeping over him.

“Jude Farnsworth, yes. Are you—were you—at breakfast that day after the race?” It was all he could do to hold her gaze.

“Yes! You’re the guy who helped Farrah when she tripped. I remember you!” she exclaimed then looked at her friend with one of those female-type significant glances.

“You’re an Ironman finisher, aren’t you?” Jude said.

Blanca nodded, her smile widening. “I’m Blanca. And this is Ana.” The second one came forward, smiling at Jude.

“Join me for a drink?” What good luck to bump into Farrah’s friends from her track club.

The women leaned their heads together. Some junior-high-school-type whispering ensued then Ana spoke up.

“Sure.” They sat on the two barstools next to Jude, depositing their bags at their feet.

“Ladies, what’ll it be?” the bartender asked.

“An Irish coffee and a glass of water,” Ana ordered.

“Make it two,” Blanca added.

Jude smiled to himself. The ladies would warm themselves and relax. Then maybe they’d let him in on what Farrah was up to.

“You run with Greenwich Track Club, right?” Ana asked.

“That’s right.”

“What’s it like up there?”

“You mean where we run?’

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes we train on Tod’s Point, near the water.”

“It sounds familiar.”

“That’s where they run “Cook Your Buns,” Blanca cut in, referring to the annual three-mile race held at Greenwich Point, also known as Tod’s Point, on the beach each June.

“Awesome. I love that race,” Ana said enthusiastically.

“I love the burgers they serve afterwards,” Blanca added.

“What other races do they have up there?” Ana asked.

“There’s the Jingle Bell Trot. Farrah and I ran it last weekend,” Blanca said.

“You did?” Jude wanted to kick himself. He’d almost run it himself, but it had been raining and he’d been busy with the book, finishing up the penultimate chapter. He still didn’t have the final one figured out.

“It rained like hell,” Blanca said. “But my girl ran it well. She leaned into her downhills and didn’t wuss out this time.”

“Your girl?” Jude asked.

“Fairfoe. I’m training her to stop slowing down on the downhills. She finally got it last weekend.”

“So your Saturday morning sessions worked,” Ana observed.

“That’s not all,” Blanca replied. “She told me she had some sort of breakthrough with Ballet Boy the week before.”

“You mean that jerk who dumped her?” Ana looked astonished.

“The same.”

“Don’t tell me he’s back in the picture.” Ana’s mouth turned down at both corners.

Jude strained his ears, praying Farrah found Ballet Boy as pathetic as his name sounded.

“He resurfaced a few months ago and started making noises about getting back together.”

“Why would she get back together with him? He was so lame.”

“She told me in the car she hadn’t planned to get back with him, but things got confusing.”

Jude frowned, unhappy with Farrah then with himself. He’d also been recently confused, thanks to Missy.

“Yeah? Well I hope she found out why he broke it off with no explanation. She went through hell trying to figure that one out.”

“She never really got over it, so maybe she needed some closure. When he started calling, she told him she needed to know why he left.”

Jude’s heart sank.

“Wasn’t it like some phone conversation where he said they didn’t understand each other? Then, poof! He disappeared?”

“Exactly,” Blanca said. “Very weird.”

“So what was the real reason?” Ana asked excitedly.

“He dumped her to find a rich girl.”

“You mean he didn’t think she was good enough?”

“Nope. He didn’t think
he
was. He didn’t make any money. Did you know that?”

“I thought he was some sort of fancy ballet composer,” Ana said.

“He was. He’d won some big award. But there was no money in it. He tuned pianos to get by.”

“Wow. She went for that?” Ana asked.

“She was in love. She didn’t care about the money.”

Jude silently blessed Farrah.

“I still don’t get why he dumped her,” Ana said, looking confused.

“He
did
care about money, okay? She was teaching back then. School teacher plus piano tuner didn’t add up to what he was looking for, see?”

“What’s wrong with being a teacher? It’s a good job,” Ana huffed, fluffing her hair out. Her husband taught high school science in the Bronx.

“It wasn’t going to get him where he wanted to go,” Blanca explained.

“So where did he end up?” Ana asked.

“He hooked up with some rich woman in Connecticut, but it ended.” Blanca turned to Jude. “From Darien. Do you know where that is?”

“Yup. It’s up the coast a few towns north of Greenwich,” he said. It was one of Fairfield County’s most affluent towns, smaller and less diverse than Greenwich. Darien’s ethnic composition made Greenwich look like the Bronx by comparison.

“How’d you find out all this?”

“He called her while we were driving back from the race.”

“Ohh. How did she sound with him?”

“Sharp, baby. Not so fluffy and gentle the way she usually is. Our pussy cat girl flexed some claws.”

“Woo-hoo! What did she say to him?”

“I don’t know how it started out, but whatever he was saying, she kept saying no.”

Jude saluted Farrah inside.

“Has she been seeing him?”

“She told me she met his mother recently,” Blanca said, not exactly answering.

“How’d that go? Was his mother as mean as the way Farrah described him? He sounded all prissy and wussy. Like he turned up his nose at everything.” Ana crinkled hers and made a face.

“No. She liked the mom. Said they got along like a house on fire. It’s just that his mother told her she’s got her work cut out for her if she wants him back, and she realized she doesn’t want to have to work that hard. She said she used the same thinking when she raced, and it worked.”

“What do you mean?” Jude cut in.

“She realized she was working harder to pull back on the downhill slopes than when she just let herself go and leaned into her stride.”

“And she did, huh?”

“Yes. She said it was all because she realized she was trying too hard to make something happen that wasn’t meant to. When she just let it go, the right thing to do came naturally.”

Ana nodded.

Jude wasn’t sure if Blanca was referring to the race or Ballet Man, but he hoped it was both. His buddy Tom’s words about the comfort factor leapt to mind.

“What was he asking her?” Ana asked.

“Who knows? All I know is her answers to him were sharp. Like I’ve never heard her before.”

“Like what, exactly?”

Jude strained his ears to catch every word.

“She said something like ‘I told you before. We don’t fit together. There’s no point in seeing each other again.’ She was clear as a bell.”

“Wow. That’s telling him.” Ana asked.

“Then he said some more stuff and she said something like, “I’ve figured out what I really want and it’s not with you.”

Jude prayed it might be with him instead.

“Then guess what he told her?” Blanca continued.

“He said, ‘Okay. Just don’t make the same mistake I did’.”

“What mistake?” Ana asked.

“He said, ‘Follow your heart, not your bank account’.”

“How do you know he said that?” Ana asked incredulously.

“She had this set-up in her car where you hit a button and the call goes on speaker phone.”

“She put him on speaker phone so you could hear?” Ana looked shocked.

Blanca smiled slyly. “No. I was driving and the button was right on the steering wheel. She’d shown it to me before.”