LITMIR.BIZ

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bike?”

      Cooper grinned. “The same. He’s out of town right now.”

      “In a race?” Charlie asked.

      “Big triathlon in Australia.”

      “Holy smokes,” Charlie said. “He’s an Ironman?”

      Cooper laughed. “He is.”

      “What’s his name?” Charlie asked.

      “Blake Smiley. You going to look him up?”

      “It’s what I do, Cooper. You want me to fill you in?”

      “I think I have enough information, but thanks.”

      “You ever want to compete in a triathlon, Cooper?”

      “Absolutely never,” he said, clearly amused. “Not that I don’t admire the folks that can do that...”

      “When’s he going to be here?”

      “I’m not sure. Any day now, I guess.”

      “I’m going to track the race. Do you know where in Australia?”

      “No, I don’t know where. Can there be a lot of them?” Cooper asked.

      Charlie was on it. He got out his laptop and looked the guy up. This was what Charlie had been doing for a long time—finding information and learning on his laptop because he didn’t have a lot of friends and couldn’t run and play like the other kids. Charlie had suffered from some serious allergies and asthma as a little kid and was therefore confined to a quieter life. He believed it was his frequent bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia when he was younger that resulted in him being a little undersized for his age. Either that or his Vietnamese roots through his mother’s side of the family. But then one day someone passed on an old laptop, showed him how to use it and all those indoor days had resulted in a smarter than average fourteen-year-old.

      Charlie’s mother, Lin Su, was Amerasian. Since Charlie’s biological father was white American he supposed that made him Amer-amerasian. He could see Vietnam in his black hair and dark eyes.

      He looked up Blake Smiley. The man had been racing for fifteen years. He went to college on a scholarship and was thirty-seven years old. Smiley was a triathlon champion many times over having scored his first win in Oahu; he held a couple of records, had a degree in biology and physiology and was sponsored by a few corporations and even made a commercial for a fancy juice mixer. A juice mixer? Charlie wondered. Smiley was also a coach, consultant and sometime motivational speaker. Charlie was in love with TED Talks; he’d love to be smart enough or experienced enough to teach or inspire people with his accomplishments. “He’s a god,” Charlie muttered to himself. And then there was his size. He was five-ten and one hundred and fifty pounds. Not huge. Charlie found that encouraging.

      He’d seen the guy. He looked so strong. So ripped. He saw him ride his bike down the beach road, pick it up and jog up two flights of stairs to meet Cooper on the deck of that house he bought. But as pro athletes go, he was small.

      The second thing to intrigue him—Smiley had to teach himself to swim. He gave speeches about how he built his athletic career on survival instincts and practice.

      Charlie couldn’t swim. His mother freaked out if he even ran and he sure hadn’t had a pool in the backyard. He wanted to swim. He’d spent the summer hanging out here on the beach watching the older kids paddleboarding and, lately, windsurfing. He’d had a ride on a paddleboard with someone else paddling. And he’d been wearing a life vest...

      Charlie closed the laptop and went to Winnie’s bedroom. He knocked lightly on the door. There was no telling what was going on in there. It could be bathing, primping, reading or maybe Winnie was sleeping. “Come in,” his mother said.

      He pushed open the door and saw that his mother had been giving Winnie a manicure. Winnie loved manicures. Winnie had become a good friend; they spent a lot of time on their laptops together, talking, figuring things out.

      “You are never going to believe this,” he said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “The new guy next door? He’s an Ironman!”

      * * *

      Blake arrived from Australia late at night. He’d slept on the plane so he was up for a few hours knowing that in the next couple of days jet lag would kick his ass. Then it would pass.

      He was creaky and stiff. His body had become a little less responsive in the past few years. Things like prerace training and international travel were beginning to take their toll. And it was odd going home to his own house. It was his first. People wouldn’t guess that. He was almost forty and had never owned a home. Not even a condo or town house. He’d given the location a great deal of thought. He wanted to be near the ocean; he liked the cold of the Pacific. As a workout it was more taxing than warm water; the unforgiving nature of the ocean was more realistic than a lake or pool for training. He needed altitude training and he had that in Oregon. Everywhere he looked...mountains. He had seriously considered Boulder or Truckee but at the end of the day he liked this little spot. When he wasn’t racing he was training and when he wasn’t training, he was living. He could get his training done here. And while he might keep up with the training for life, he wasn’t going to race professionally forever. For living he wanted a quiet place that wasn’t overrun by professional athletes and Olympians. Shake a tree in Boulder or Truckee and ten Olympic contenders fell out.

      He spent his first day unpacking, arranging his gym and doing a short workout to keep from stiffening up after a seventeen-hour plane ride. Then he drove into a larger town to the grocery store, rounding up his food. He stuck mostly to organic vegetables, legumes and grains, including quinoa. He ordered his supplements online. He wasn’t a vegetarian. For his purposes he found it served him best if he cooked up a little poultry or beef to add to his vegetables and grains. Cooper had suggested that if he got friendly with Cliff, who owned the seafood restaurant at the marina, he could get fresh fish, crab and other shellfish.

      When he was training, which was almost year-round, he avoided or at least limited his favorite things—cheese, simple starchy carbs, the most flavorful fats like butter and cream. He limited his alcohol to the occasional beer. But when he was off-season and his training was moderate, when he was relaxing for a little while, he indulged. Not too much, of course, because no one was more disciplined. But a good, greasy pizza was the best thing in the world as far as he was concerned. And yes, he could make his own vegetarian with a gluten-free crust, but if he was indulging that wouldn’t do it. The way he grew up, he still longed for those things he couldn’t have and pizza and beer were a couple of those things.

      His second day home he woke up too early, blended up one of his protein drinks, stretched out, dragged on a wet suit and hit the bay. It was eight-thirty but the sun wasn’t quite up, given all that sea fog, and the water felt icy. He didn’t know the exact distance across the bay but after a fifty-minute swim he’d have an idea. He had already measured a couple of cycling and running routes before making an offer on the house.

      He loved the house. He’d looked at a hundred of them, at least, in a lot of places, including Hawaii. Hawaii was tempting; the lifestyle was alluring. But he thought most of his future work would be in the US, and while he didn’t mind travel, he’d like to be able to have a base less than ten hours away. If work took him to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles he could get home to Thunder Point in six hours or less. Boulder, being in the center of the country, was practical but wasn’t as tempting as this unpretentious little fishing village on the ocean. There was a house on Cape Cod he liked but the East Coast beyond the cape wasn’t as peaceful or traffic friendly as Oregon. He remembered asking Cooper, Doesn’t anyone know about this place yet? The freeways weren’t clogged, the air was clean, there were some wide-open spaces... When he was ten years old, the idea that he could live wherever he wished had never occurred to him. But then, when he was ten his most urgent concern was eating and staying warm.

      He set the timer on his watch, walked into the water, dove, swam out past the haystack rocks and began swimming from end to end across the bay. When the timer went off

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