“What are you doing in my bedroom?” Ordinarily I’d be curious as to the mode of entry. With Ranger it was a pointless question. Ranger had ways.
“I’m trying to get you out of bed,” Ranger said. “It’s late.”
“It’s five-thirty!”
“I’ll be in the living room warming up.”
I watched his back disappear through the bedroom door. Was he serious? Warm up for what? I pulled the sweats on and padded out to him. He was doing one-armed push-ups.
“We’ll start out with fifty,” he said.
I got down on the floor and made an attempt at a push-up. After about five minutes Ranger was finished, and I’d almost done one.
“Okay,” Ranger said, jogging in place. “Let’s hit the streets.”
“I want breakfast.”
“We’ll do a fast five-mile run, and then we’ll come back for breakfast.”
A five-mile run? Was he nuts? It was five-thirty in the morning. It was dark out. It was cold. I peeked out the window. It was fucking snowing!
“Great,” I said. “Piece of cake.”
I zipped myself into a down ski jacket, filled the pockets with tissues and lip balm, pulled on a knit cap, wrapped a scarf around my neck, stuffed my hands into big wool mittens and followed Ranger down the stairs.
Ranger ran effortlessly for several blocks. His stride was steady and measured. His attention directed inward. I struggled beside him…nose running, breathing labored, attention directed to surviving the next moment.
We slipped through the gate to the playing field behind the high school and swung onto the track. I dropped back to a walk and applied some lip balm. Ranger lapped me, and I picked it up to a jog. Ranger lapped me a few more times, and then he nudged me off the track, back through the gate to the street.
The sun wasn’t yet on the horizon, but the sky had begun to lighten under the snow and the cloud cover. I could see the sheen on Ranger’s face, see the sweat soaking through his shirt. His face still bore the same meditative expression. His breathing was even once again, now that he had slowed his pace to mine.
We ran in silence back to my apartment, entering the front door, jogging through the lobby. He took the stairs, and I took the elevator.
He was waiting for me when the doors opened.
“I thought you were behind me,” he said.
“I was. Way behind.”
“It’s all in the attitude,” Ranger said. “You want to be tough, you have to live healthy.”
“To begin with, I don’t want to be tough. I want to be…adequate.”
Ranger stripped off his sweatshirt. “Adequate is being able to run five miles. How are you going to catch the bad guys if you can’t outrun them?”
“Connie gives the bad guys who can run to you. I get the fat, out-of-shape bad guys.”
Ranger took a bag out of my refrigerator and dumped a load of stuff from the bag into my blender. He flipped the blender switch and the stuff in the jar turned pink.
“What are you making?” I wanted to know.
“A smoothie.” He poured half the smoothie into a big glass and handed it to me.
I took a sip. Not bad. If it was in a much smaller glass and sitting alongside a huge stack of hotcakes drenched in maple syrup, it would be just about tolerable.
“It needs something,” I said. “It needs…chocolate.”
Ranger drank the remaining smoothie. “I’m going home to take a shower and make some phone calls. I’ll be back in an hour.”
To celebrate our partnership I dressed up like Ranger. Black boots, black jeans, black turtleneck, small silver hoop earrings.
He gave me the once-over when I opened the door to him.
“Smart ass,” he said.
I sent him what I hoped was an enigmatic smile.
He was wearing a black leather jacket with fringe running the length of each sleeve. Little blue and black beads were hooked three-quarters down the fringe.
I didn’t have any fringe on my black leather jacket. And I didn’t have any beads. I had more zippers than Ranger, so I guess it all evened out. I slipped the jacket on and clapped a black Metallica ball cap over my freshly washed hair.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we look for Mo.”
It was still snowing, but it was cozy in Ranger’s Bronco. We cruised the streets, looking for the Batmobile in parking lots and middle-class neighborhoods. At my suggestion we visited some photo stores. Two of the merchants said they recognized Mo but hadn’t seen him lately. The snow was still coming down, and traffic was crawling around cars that couldn’t make grades.
