The Front Runner

alone."
    Suddenly he was asleep, breathing slowly and shal-lowly like a child. It was about quarter of ten. Quietly I turned out the bedside light, and lay down by him carefully so that he didn't wake up. Sleepy and relaxed myself, I drifted straight off.
    How many more times would I have embraced him that night, how many more times would I have kissed him, if I had known the name of that stranger lover who was already in Montreal, who had already bought his stadium ticket from a scalper for the 5,000 tomorrow?
    That implacable lover who was going to turn Billy's eyes away from me forever.
    EIGHTEEN
    IT was just a few minutes before the 5,000 final began.
    Those minutes, plus the thirteen-odd minutes that the race would last, and another day, and we could all go home.
    The twelve runners were jogging up and down the track, keeping warm and loose until the moment the officials told them to go to the line. In the infield, the high-jump finals were going on. The marathon was out being run on its 26.2-mile course through Montreal, and would finish up here later. Right after the 5,000 the 1,500 final would be rap—the race that Vince should have been in, and wasn't.
    The murmur of the stadium spilled down onto the track. Nobody was watching the high jumpers. They were all watching the two slender runners jogging around, Billy and Armas Sepponan. I knew that the eye of the TV cameras would be fixed on them. Via satellite, their image would be flashed to millions of viewers in dozens of countries. It was safe to say that the entire civilized world was looking at Billy at that moment.
    He was unaware, inward, alert, as he jogged along the straight; then wheeled gently and came back. His number 928 was pinned to his breast. Dellinger passed him jogging the other way, but they didn't look at each other.
    Vince was by me, wearing his sleeveless jerkin. Next to him was Mike Stella, who had bombed out in the 5,000 heats.
    Vince looked at me. "Harlan, right now he's not even thinking about you." He smiled a little.
    "I hope not," I said.
    The crowd's murmur grew. The officials were mo-
    tioning the runners to the line. They stood there in a ragged little row, loose, doing their final psychs, hands on hips, looking around a little. Then their line straightened, crisp, military, each man bent and toeing the mark.
    We scarcely heard the starter's pistol as the crowd yelled them off.
    I sat there keeping track of Billy's laps. This time around, I was a bit more relaxed. Possibly, as I looked back on it, it was the months of fatigue setting in. Even if he loses, I was thinking, he'll still have the gold from the 10,000. Very likely he'll get a silver or a bronze here. It won't be a great tragedy, really. He will have made his point.
    With his usual cheerful willingness to be the guinea pig, Billy had put his body up front. He was clipping along at a near-world record pace. He wasn't running away this time, just teasing them on at that punishing tempo. The field went with him, Sepponan running in next-to-last place. They were nicely bunched. Billy purled them through the first 3,000 meters, averaging 62 seconds a lap.
    At 3,000 Billy shook up the field by accelerating sharply. They started stringing out behind him. The next lap he gave them a 58.1. Doggedly, Bob Dellinger had moved into the No. 2 slot, and Sepponan was forced to start moving up.
    "Here we go," said Vince. "The show's on."
    In the next lap, Billy raised the ante to 57.3. With the runners well into the last half of the race, the crowd noise was swelling. So intense was their concentration that you didn't feel the usual "dead space" that the crowd sometimes feels in these long-distance races on the track.
    The field, a little shaken by his display of confidence, was really stringing out now, and Sepponan moving up on the outside. Billy led by thirty yards. Dellinger struggled gamely to stay ahead of Armas, then let go, and Armas was in the clear.
    The crowd had surged to its feet and the yell had risen to its Olympic shriek—that massed yell of human-
    ity that you hear only at the Games, high-pitched, deafening as the keening of a hurricane wind.
    They went into the next-to-last lap. Now it was Billy and Armas's race, with the rest trailing and shattered. Armas was kicking, rapidly closing the gap between himself and Billy. Vince had his hand clenched on my arm so tightly that it might have hurt had I been more aware.
    Through my glasses, I watched that distant pale