Running

This is great, thinks Jeremy. Temp’s good, about 65, cool breeze, perfect day for this. Got my tunes, Saturday morning, lots of time. I should be able to get five miles in.

Usually when he heads out, Jeremy starts thinking about the front-yard grass that needs cutting, the window trim that needs paint and that he never gets to in summer, the cleaning he always promises Claire he’ll help with. Next he’ll think about work, this month’s board meeting, the strategic plan that always gets shoved to the back burner. None of that today, though. It’s odd. Today he’s thinking about the day they got married, how radiant Claire looked in the high-neck Victorian dress with the long sleeves and all that lace. He thinks about when Emily and Josh were young, family weekends out at Ocean Beach, orange popsicles and finding a fossil in the sand. He thinks how well they’re doing now. Emily starting in architecture, Josh thriving in grad school and tutoring kids in the City. Jeremy thinks about how well everyone is doing. But the thoughts flash by quickly, in a hurry, on fire.
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“What’s going on?” asks a man in Ray-Bans and a Yale sweatshirt as he approaches the gathering crowd.

“Guy’s down,” answers a woman holding a bag of bagels. They stand together, regarding the prone figure in tee shirt and shorts, motionless, sprawled on the dirt path between the bakery and the gourmet pizza place. His iPod lies just past his outstretched hand. “No ID on him, apparently,” says the woman. “No one knows who he is. Doesn’t look good.”

An ambulance wail drifts on the horizon, then comes closer. “Nice cross trainers,” says the man in the Ray-Bans.

“Yeah,” says the woman. “Too bad he won’t be needing them anymore.”

(Word count: 298)