“Gimme a break. I see her every day. It will break her heart to lose. But I’d rather have that happen than she have a heart attack. Your blood is like fire in her veins. An extra ounce might push her over the edge. And for what? A stupid gold medal?”
I smile at him. “You have a crush on her, don’t you?”
He shakes his head and reaches for a cigarette. He smokes—he never used to smoke, not in my stories, at least. “That’s bullshit,” he mutters.
“You love her because she’s the closest thing you’ve found to me.”
“I just found you and I don’t love you.”
“Liar.”
“What are you trying to do, set me up with her?”
“You think she’d want you after being with Matt?”
He lights up and blows smoke in my face. “That’s what I love about you. The way you make me feel so special.”
“I need your help.”
“I know.”
“What do you know?”
“You need me to get Matt out of the way while you give her your blood.”
“Can you do it?”
“Sure. But don’t you think it’s weird how he clings to her when you’re around? I mean, I haven’t known him long, but it’s like he doesn’t trust you with her.”
“It started in Eugene, Oregon.”
“Oh, yeah, you carried her back to her bed. Maybe he saw you.”
“He was sound asleep, I know that for a fact. But the sudden change in her mile times, I think that shook him up. The guy’s more sensitive than he acts.”
“You have a crush on him, don’t you?”
“Please, let’s not start that again.”
“You don’t do a very good job hiding it. Teri’s looking to you for moral support right now, but one of these days she’s going to take your head off.”
“Teri knows I would never betray our friendship.”
“Not unless you could get away with it without her knowing.”
“Christ, you’re a pain in the ass. You’re not at all like the Seymour Dorsten in your books. Now, there was a sweet guy.”
“There was a loser, you mean.” He pauses. “When do you want to do it?”
“Tonight. The longer she has to adjust to my blood the better.”
“You should have given it to her before we left the States.”
“That would have been too soon. Some of the effect would have worn off by now. How are you going to get Matt out of the way?”
“I have a better idea. Wait until Teri returns to the Olympic Village this evening, then sneak in. I assume you can get past their security. This way you won’t have to worry about Matt. Also, if you’re going to give Teri an extra dose of blood, it’s better if she stays in bed and doesn’t move for the next twelve hours.”
“That’s clever. How’d you get so smart?”
Seymour puffs his cigarette. “If I was so smart, I’d figure out a way to talk you out of this crazy scheme.”
Breaking into the Olympic Village proves to be a snap. I steal a badge from a blond pole-vaulter who looks like me and give the guard at the gate a hard stare when he checks my ID. I could have been a guy with a beard and he would have let me in.
Teri’s awake when I reach her room, although it’s after midnight. The girl’s normally an earlier riser—she must be tense. She wants to know how I got into the Village, but I just wave my hand.
“I have that kind of face. Guards trust me.”
Teri doesn’t dwell on the mystery. She shows me a list of the intervals she ran this morning. “I did ten quarters. I didn’t break sixty-five seconds in one of them.”
“Good. You should be tapering. The first heat’s Tuesday.”
Teri rips the page in half. “You don’t understand. My legs felt heavy. I was struggling when Coach told me to cruise. I couldn’t find my rhythm. I was breathing hard the whole time.”
“That’s okay. In fact, it might be a good thing. Do you remember that interview you read with Frank Shorter where he said that your average runner will have a great day only one third of the time?”
“Yeah.”
“Your body’s going through a bad cycle right now. That’s all. You should be grateful. It means you’re going to slip into a good cycle when it counts.”
Teri stares at me, then smiles. “That’s the most pathetic logic I’ve ever heard. The weird thing is, coming from you, it makes me feel better. Why is that, Alisa?”
“Because I know you’re going to win.”
“How do you know?” she asks, serious.
“I operate more on intuition than you might realize. It works better for me than logic, or else it’s a higher form of logic I can’t explain. Just accept that when I see you in the finals, I see you winning. That’s the way it’s going to be.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
“It goes beyond confidence. It’s faith.”
“Faith,” Teri whispers, then shakes her head. “They say the first thing a medical student loses is any belief in God. Do you know why?”
“Of course. Gross Anatomy 101. You dissect a human cadaver, and no matter how close you look, you can’t find a soul. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”
“But where’s the proof? Please, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not trying to attack your faith. I envy it, especially when I hear you talking to Shanti about Krishna.”
“I never chose to believe in Krishna.”
“Then how come you worship him?”
“I don’t worship him. It’s more like I feel he’s near.”
“Why? Talking to you, reading your work, I know you have a vast scientific background. How can you obey a deity that almost surely never existed?”
“Oh, he existed.”
“There’s no proof Krishna or Christ or Buddha ever walked the earth. You’ve read the arguments. All these god men—their lives are like carbon copies of each other. That’s because they were born of the same mythologies. You’re too smart not to see the pattern.”
“Krishna came first, five thousand years ago. Is it possible the other god men might have copied his life story?”
“Is that what you think?”
“It’s just an idea. I never met Christ or Buddha. I’m in no position to judge them.”
“But you feel Krishna’s just around the corner?”
I think of Paula and her son, John.
“He might be a little farther away than that. But I suspect if he was here, he’d tell you that you need to get into bed.” Lowering my voice, I catch her eye. Now is not the time for lengthy philosophical discussions. “Look at me, Teri, let me see your eyes. You look exhausted, you need to sleep. Lie down, let your head hit the pillow. That’s good, close your eyes and relax.”
Teri responds to my gaze and suggestions as fast as before, and soon she’s so deeply asleep she doesn’t feel the prick of my nail as I slice open the vein on her wrist. Seymour knows me well—I cannot help but give her an extra jolt of blood. This is, after all, the Olympics. The competition will be far stronger than it was in Oregon. Teri will need every advantage I can give her.
I’m finished in ten minutes and on the verge of leaving when she suddenly jerks in her sleep. It’s like she’s having a nightmare, which surprises me. I assumed she was too deep to dream. My surprise increases when she raises her arms over her body, as if trying to push away a rapist.
Yet I have underestimated the nature of Teri’s dream.
“Yaksha!” she cries softly, before her arms drop down by her side and she falls into a soundless slumber. I have never uttered his name around her, and yet she has just cried out to the creature who created me. I’m unable to tell if she cried out in fear or for help.
The final is scheduled for nine o’clock at night. The stadium is packed. I have spent freely on scalper tickets, and Matt, Shanti, Seymour, and I sit twenty rows from where the race will finish, at the end of the straightaway.
Unable to leave her teaching
job, Lisa has not come with us to London. Nor have Teri’s parents. They feared they would add to her pressure. The four of us watch as Teri stretches and warms up. Coach Tranton is down on the field, but he keeps a distance from his star pupil.
We sat in the identical seats during her two heats, which were spread over the previous two days. In both races Teri ran hard, but far from wisely. In the first heat, she broke to the front of the pack and stayed there for the bulk of the race. No doubt the fire of my blood was partially responsible for her haste, but the pressure was equally to blame. She was a mass of nerves, and was chased down by two Africans on the straightaway and was lucky to finish third.
In the second heat, she listened to her coach and Matt and didn’t make a move until halfway through the race. But again she ran too hard for too long and was fortunate to again finish third. Yet the experience has helped her and Coach Tranton mold a strategy for the final. She plans to hold back until the final lap, and then let it rip. It sounds good in theory, if she is able to control her emotions.
“She looks tired,” Matt complains.
“She looks fine,” Seymour says.
“She has bags under her eyes,” Matt says.
“I don’t think many of these girls slept last night,” Seymour replies.
“I don’t like it. She’s been having nightmares,” Matt says.
“How do you know?” Seymour asks. “You’re not staying with her.”
“She tells me about them,” he replies impatiently. Matt and Seymour are not the best of friends.
“Nightmares about what?” I ask.
“She doesn’t say. But whatever they are, they’re awful. They keep waking her up.”
“It’s the stress,” Seymour says.
“She looks pale. She doesn’t look like herself,” Matt adds.
“She’s running fast, that’s all that matters,” I say.
“Is it?” Matt asks me.
The starter calls the women to their lanes. Since she barely qualified for the final, Teri is assigned an outside lane. Yet the starting line is curved to make up the distance, so it hardly matters. The starter is experienced and quickly lines up the women.
The starter raises her pistol in the air. At the last instant, Teri glances in our direction. I smile and she smiles back. Then she turns her focus back on the track. The starter fires her gun. The women leap forward.
The noise of the crowd is deafening. That is one thing that is lost on TV. We have to shout at each other to be heard over the roar. At least the others have to shout. Even with all the noise, I can hear the rhythm of Teri’s breathing, the sound of her footfalls. She’s running smoothly, and I’m glad. She’s off to a good start.
Teri comes around the track and completes the first lap at the back of the pack. That doesn’t bother us. The leader of the race is running too fast and is bound to fade. Also, the pack is tightly bunched. In reality, Teri isn’t far from the leader, at most five meters behind.
Teri moves up slightly. Now she’s running in the second lane, which forces her to run farther on the curves, but none of us can blame her. The African and European women are more aggressive than their American counterparts. They don’t mind pushing and shoving their way into a more favorable position. In Oregon, in the trials, we never saw a woman use her hands or arms against another runner. Here, the only person not fighting back is Teri.
The second lap follows the pattern of the first, only Teri pulls closer to the front. It bothers me that she has run another lap in the second lane. She won’t feel the extra distance until the end, but then it could be crucial. The leader—a sacrificial Kenyan rabbit if I ever saw one—continues to push a world-record pace. I feel sorry for the woman, because I know she’s been chosen by her coach and teammates to forgo any chance of winning so the favorites on her team can win medals. The greatest burden is always on the leader of the race, especially in the metric mile. The leader breaks the air resistance for those behind her.
Going into the third lap, Teri finally manages to slip into the first lane. This is both good and bad. She is well sheltered from any stray breeze. She is running the minimum distance. But now she has entered the frenzy of skin-scraping spikes and swinging elbows. The toughest women in the world are inches apart and running almost flat out. I’m amazed no one has tripped and gone down so far. But there’s time—the last lap sometimes resembles a boxing match.
At two and a half laps the rabbit falters, and her teammates sweep past her. The Kenyans and Ethiopians make up half the field. A twenty-five-year-old Kenyan named Radhur Jamur pushes into the lead and quickly opens up a five-meter lead. Her ability to accelerate catches the others off guard. Yet they should have been wary of her. Jamur is the world-record holder at the distance and has already won a gold medal in the 800-meter race.
Jamur is still in the lead when they swing around in front of us and the bell sounds. In the screaming stands, the four of us look at each other and shake our heads. Teri is still running fast in the middle of the pack, in the first lane, but now she’s boxed in. She has no choice but to fight her way to the outside. It will cost her energy and time, but she’ll lose if she stays where she’s at.
While Matt and Seymour shout at the top of their lungs, I close my eyes and go still. I let myself feel Teri, her pain, her anxiety, and I dissolve so deeply into her I feel as if my mind is closer to the track than to the stands. Yet the pain is nothing to me, I have suffered tortures much worse than what Teri’s going through. And her nerves—I feel as we blend together, a sudden upsurge of confidence washes away all her petty fears. She has not come this far to lose, neither of us has, and if she has to kick some butt to win, then so be it. The gold medal is hers, it will be hers.
Teri—or is it me?—accelerates through the two women in front of her. The fact they are inches apart doesn’t matter. They are in her way, and they had better get out of her way. Teri thrusts her arms forward to widen the crack, and then pushes the women apart. She accelerates, moving from eighth place to fifth in a single stroke.
It’s not enough. There’s only half a lap left. I see that Teri must return to the outside, to the second lane, to be able to pass everyone left in front of her. Teri sees what I see—maybe she reads my mind. Without hesitating, she jerks to the right and accelerates sharply and comes up on the shoulder of the woman in third place.
There are two women directly in front of her: Radhur Jamur and Olga Stensky from Russia. Jamur runs like a sleek gazelle. Olga has legs as thick as a shot-putter. If she’s not injecting herself with steroids in the off-season, then both her parents were weight lifters and forced Olga to haul boulders on her back when she was in grade school.
So far Teri has run on nerves and fear and excitement. Now she enters the realm of real pain, the type even I have to respect. Her lungs feel as if they fill with molten lead. Steaming cramps radiate from her shoulders down into her chest and arms. Her legs, the most crucial part of her anatomy for what she must do next, keep jarring. The muscles are stiffening up, and she can’t let them. Somehow, she must will her legs to move faster no matter how much they hurt.
They enter the final turn. Olga pulls up on Jamur’s shoulder, and Teri crowds Olga. Teri knows Olga will wait until the final straightaway to make her move. To try to pass Jamur on the curve will be foolish. It will cause her to run farther and use up the last of her reserves.
Yet Jamur stumbles, and like a true warrior Olga pounces. To hell with the extra distance, the Russian thinks. Olga swings out and passes Jamur and begins to pull away from Teri and the world-record holder. Teri freezes for an instant—she doesn’t know what to do. But I know, and I mentally push Teri to go after her.
Olga and Teri hit the straightaway. The gold medal waits at the end of the orange track—eighty meters away. Olga has cut back into the inside lane to block a possible spurt from Jamur. But she sees Teri out of the corner of her eye in lane two and recognizes her as the final threat.
Olga’s legs are riddl
ed with scars from wounds caused by countless encounters with spikes. She is used to the trenches; she probably prefers them. As Teri stretches forth with her magnificent stride, throwing the last shreds of her strength into an agonizing sprint, Olga suddenly moves into the second lane and bumps Teri with her right hip. Then, to finish off the cocky American upstart, she rams her elbow into Teri’s side.
Teri falls back a step. Olga runs for the gold.
“Destroy her,” I whisper quietly in the stands, knowing the words, the idea, is flying across the track faster than either of the women can run. Teri catches my meaning, and the five-thousand-year-old blood I secreted into the marrow of her bones finally ignites. She burns with hatred, with revenge, and most of all she burns with the desire for glory.
Teri lets loose the full length of her beautiful stride and begins to eat up the gap. The finish line is twenty meters away when Teri draws even with Olga. The Russian sees her victory slipping away and does the only thing she thinks can save her, never mind that it’s against every rule in the book and might get her disqualified. She swerves into the second lane again, trying to either trip or block Teri before she can reach the finish line. But Teri sees this impending disaster through either my eyes or her own. Teri swings to the inside lane, and Olga misses her by inches and loses a full stride.
Teri flies like an eagle toward the finish line.
The victory tape breaks across her chest.
The board flashes a new world record.
Teri collapses in Coach Tranton’s arms twenty meters beyond the finish line. She didn’t know to stop running. In the stands, Matt, Seymour, Shanti, and I all hug for a long time. I’m glad they hold on to me. I’m filled with joy, but like Teri I’m ready to collapse.
FOURTEEN
The president of the United States wants Teri to come to a party he’s having for the Olympic gold medalists. The message comes in the middle of a party I’m holding for Teri. I’ve rented out a small ballroom at the hotel where I’m staying, and Teri has invited two dozen friends from the American track team.
But the presidential invitation changes everything. It says that he loved her race and wants to congratulate her in person. The invitation also says she can bring a guest, but just one. Shanti and I beg off, and her old coach is wise enough to know that this moment belongs to Teri and her true love. Yet our star feels guilty about leaving. As is often the case, she turns to me for advice.