“The Sandwich Emporium?”
“Great idea! I haven’t been there in months!” she exclaims with a smile. “I’ll meet you at eleven forty-five.”
The walk light comes on, and Pat trots across the street with me in her wake. She eventually stops in the parking lot outside the Boat Pavilion and looks back at me with abject pity. Having lost my forward momentum waiting to cross the street, I can’t coax my legs back into action. I stagger up and stop with my hands on my knees. My head sinks almost as low while I struggle to inhale a thimbleful of precious air.
“Poor Valenti,” she says in a sing-song voice as she runs in place.
I sink to my haunches and look up. Her eyes are tracking a pair of Spandex-clad mothers who breeze by, chattering away while they effortlessly push tank-sized baby strollers with a single hand each. Pat’s eyes drop to mine, then cut away to the running mommies as a grin spreads across her face. “I’ve got a stroller like that at the house to push my niece around when she visits. I could nip home for it and push you around for a bit if you feel up to it?”
She’s lucky that she’s a girl… and that I can’t catch her.
I’m a sopping bucket of sweat when we arrive outside Pat’s house ten minutes later. I’d originally planned to make a pit stop at home to shower and shave before going to the office, but no way am I going to soil the leather seat of my Porsche Panamera with the river of sweat currently streaming off me. “I’ve got a set of sweats in the car. Mind if I change here?”
Pat wrinkles her nose. “All right. Try not to drip all over the house.”
I grab a gym bag out of the back seat and follow her inside.
She points toward the main-floor bathroom. “Knock yourself out, Valenti. I’m gonna run upstairs and check my email.”
More running?
The bathroom is off an alcove between the kitchen and living room. I push the door most of the way closed behind me and start to strip by pushing my shorts down around my ankles. While I try to kick them off, I attempt to multitask by pulling my shirt over my head, where it promptly gets stuck around my shoulders. I hate it when this happens, yet never seem to learn that a thoroughly soaked shirt doesn’t come off easily. Shouldn’t garments slide right off when a person is slick with sweat? Oh shit, I think as my feet get hopelessly tangled and I begin to topple sideways, unable to free a hand to break my fall. My head glances off the corner of the sink vanity as I crash to the floor in a pathetic heap of tangled limbs.
“Are you okay?” Pat asks anxiously when she rushes in a moment later.
“Yeah,” I mutter in embarrassment as she works the shirt the rest of the way over my head. With my arms free, I quickly yank the shorts over my feet and squirm into my waiting sweatpants. In addition to being found in my jockey shorts helpless as a baby, it occurs to me that I probably smell like rancid locker room socks. Pat grabs the hand towel off the rack and starts running it under cold water. When I touch above my eye, my finger comes away with a smear of blood.
“Stay down there where I can reach you,” she says when I start to stand, putting a hand on my shoulder and dabbing the cold cloth to my forehead. Her eyes go wide when they settle on the shoulder her hand is resting upon. “What happened here?”
She’s staring at a patch of puckered red scar tissue running across the back of my shoulder and down to the shoulder blade. It’s a couple of inches wide and five inches long.
“Just a little cooking incident,” I reply.
She narrows her eyes. “On your back?”
In a fit of temper during our marriage, my ex-wife, Michelle, had clobbered me upside the head with a frying pan full of bacon grease. The grease spilled down my shoulder and back, scalding me before we could rip off my shirt. Thankfully, I emerged with my love of bacon intact. “Long story,” I mutter without elaborating.
When it’s clear that I’ve said all I’m going to, Pat mutters, “Okay,” drawing the word out while handing me the top of my sweat suit.
I quickly pull it on and zip up. She’s uncharacteristically quiet while I gather up my running clothes and stuff them into a plastic Jewel shopping bag. “See you at lunch,” I say as I steal away with my secret.
I’m the first to arrive at The Sandwich Emporium a couple of hours later, where six or seven people are already tucking into their lunches. Maiko Campbell, who runs the joint with her husband, Brian, looks up when I push the door open and the bell above it tinkles. As I do every visit, I inhale deeply and savor the yeasty air. Deano would suffer olfactory overload here… and love every minute.
“Tony-san!” Maiko exclaims happily as her round face bursts into an enormous smile. Maiko’s short body is as rotund as her face, which is framed by a jet-black pixie haircut. It’s a face and smile that could light up even the darkest dungeon.
“Hello, Maiko,” I reply with an answering smile. I’ve never seen anyone respond to Maiko’s greeting with anything but a smile. She’s a delightful force of nature. “Missed you when I was here a week or two ago.”
She smiles. “Of course you did!”
“Tony,” her husband, Brian, grumbles as he looks up from behind a modest sandwich-assembly table and wipes a hand on his
