Right to Die

could hear your ankles grinding.”
    Nancy was wearing jeans and one of my old chamois shirts.
    I said, “After the session with Eisenberg, I didn’t expect to see you for a while.”
    Her face was flushed, and she used the back of her wrist to wipe away the perspiration. “I thought I’d try to cook you something.”
    “Unfortunately, I’m down to just pasta for the race.”
    “I heard that’s what they push, so we’re having spinach linguini, nonalcoholic beer, and whole-grain crisp-crust bread for your—what is it, your ‘carbos’?”
    “My carbos.”
    About midway through the meal and a particularly good hunk of bread, I said, “This mean you don’t still think I’m stupid about running the marathon?”
    “No. This means I think you are so incredibly more stupid for even considering doing it after getting shot that I realized I had to do what I could by way of damage control.”
    “Nance?”
    “What?”
    “How long you been working on that line?”
    “All afternoon.”
    “Should have been more concise.”
    “I tried it a lot of different ways. That was the best.”
    I munched my crisp crust and shut up.
    After a moment Nancy said, “So, I’ll drive you out there and then come back here.”
    I put down the bread. “You’ll be at the finish line?”
    “Reluctantly. But I’ve got a trial first thing Tuesday, so I can’t stay over.”
    “For once in your life, call in sick.”
    “Can’t. But that reminds me. You should phone Del Wonsley.”
    “Wonsley?”
    “Yes. I heard his voice on your tape machine as I was coming in.”
    “Did you catch any of the message?”
    “Yes.” Nancy used a soup spoon to twirl some pasta onto her fork. “Good news, I think. He said Alec Bacall is coming home tomorrow.”

= 31 =

    “If I hadn’t seen it.”
    Nancy wagged her head, watching perhaps thirty other people dressed just like me standing in an auxiliary parking lot off Route 495 in Hopkinton. In a rain shower, temperature in the high forties.
    I said, “These conditions are supposed to be good for the race.”
    Nancy made an indescribable noise.
    Getting out of her car, I fiddled with the green garbage bag I was wearing, my head through the hole I’d made on top. My fiddling had to be from the inside, because I hadn’t cut any arm holes.
    “John, please be careful.”
    “You’ll be at the finish line, in the archway of the bank?”
    “With the stretcher bearers. Good luck, you jerk.”
    I closed the passenger door, and she drove off.
    A yellow shuttle bus arrived. We trash bags filled it front to back. Inefficient, should have been back to front. Nobody was carrying much, just wearing extra layers against the wind, rain, and cold. Nervous banter, the laughter too hearty.
    It was a few miles to a school building. From a van in the circular driveway a kid read incomprehensible instructions over a loudspeaker, presumably for the registered runners. Hundreds of us bandits stood under eaves and overhangs, dodging the raindrops and trying to sound modest about what time we’d finish. A lot of the folks were my age or older, and no one mentioned not finishing.
    At eleven-thirty people began moving in throngs toward the street. I followed, the throngs swelling to form their own little parade. We were pointed toward the village green and past the yellow ropes that corralled the sixty-four hundred registered runners, in numerical order, white cardboards with red numerals flapping against breast plates and spinal columns.
    At the back of the pack I stripped down to shorts, a cotton turtleneck and the body by nautilus, brain by mattel T-shirt Nancy had given me for Christmas. Balling up my outer clothes, I added them to one of the ragged heaps on the sidewalk.
    The crowd buzzed, and the report of the starter’s pistol provoked a loud, long cheer. Nobody in my part of the pack moved for a good six minutes. Beginning slowly, I finally crossed the start line at eight minutes after noon, jogging downhill lightly and freely. There was more spring in my step than I expected, and no pain at all from the closing wound in my side.
    A remarkable number of people flanked the road despite suburban, even rural, countryside and lousy weather for spectating. The elderly in lawn chairs, holding umbrellas in gnarled hands. Kids in slickers with peaked fronts like the beaks of ducks, splashing both feet in rain puddles. Middle-aged men in Windbreakers and baseball caps, John Deere or Boston Bruin logos,