Three Miles A Day

Lorrie searched her closet until she found her decade-old tennis outfit and the still pristine sneakers she’d bought after a New Year’s resolution. She changed and jogged down to the park. The trail was damp and cool, lined by ferns and deep puddles. When she passed under the bridge, traffic rumbled far above her.

Starting that afternoon, she ran three miles a day.

After the second missed call, her mother asked, “Did you meet someone?”

“No. I started to run.”

She could imagine the verdict: Typical. Of all possible sports, it’s running. The Hermit’s Delight.

________

By September, Lorrie was running ten miles a day.

A leathery woman in a Boston Marathon t-shirt always gave her a look when they passed each other. Her face and forearms glistened like freshly oiled oak floors. Her graying hair fell down to her eyebrows in sweaty corkscrews. One day, she pushed a button on her timepiece and slowed down to a halt.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” the woman said. “Are you on a battery?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

The woman lifted her the hem of her loose shirt and fanned her flat stomach. A gel pouch stuck from her hip pocket. They jogged to the park entrance together.

“I didn’t catch your name. I’m Lorrie.”

“My name is Boston,” the woman said. “I changed it legally after I ran three oh one in my last Boston Marathon.”

“Nice to meet you.”

________

Lorrie and Boston only saw the poodles when they were almost upon them: three animals, white like the snow, pink bonnets on their heads. They sat perfectly spaced and puffed clouds of breath, as if someone had put them down, paws lined up behind the pink leash connecting them.

“What the heck,” Boston said.

A woman’s voice shrilled in the distance: “Where are you, girls? I’ve got your favorite!”

A child whined: “You’re not allowed to run away! Come back!”

The poodles stood up and paced, dragging the leash through the snow.

“Sweeties,” the woman’s voice called, “come here!”

One of the poodles glanced at Lorrie with pleading eyes.

“For fuck’s sake,” the woman yelled. “Come here!”

The child sniffled. “You said the f-word!”

A woman strode around the bend with big swings of her arms, a young copy trailing, mother and daughter dressed in identical neon-red snowsuits and fur-rimmed moonboots. The dogs bristled and gathered at Lorrie’s and Boston’s feet.

“Hey!” The woman shouted at Lorrie. “What are you doing to my daughter’s dogs?” She charged, surprisingly quick in the snow.

Lorrie sprinted away, Boston with her, the poodles right behind. To Lorrie’s surprise, the woman and her daughter gave chase. Lorrie imitated Boston’s melodramatic track deity posture—chest out, hands slicing the air—and turned to look over her shoulder.

The woman had managed to grab the leash and, no longer running, reeled in the whining poodles, using her lower arm as a crank. Her daughter screamed.

“Good girls,” the woman said to the poodles. “Good girls.”

After the poodle incident, Lorrie and Boston warmed up drinking whiskey and tea at Lorrie’s place, the first time they’d spend time at either of their homes together. The furnace roared in the basement.

“There are some creepy people out on the trails,” Boston said, holding the glass with both hands. “With some of them, you have to wonder whether they’re even people.”

“I get you.”

“Cheers,” said Boston. “To good girls, wherever they are.”

“And poodles.”

In the weeks that followed, they kept an eye out for mothers and daughters with white poodles, to no avail. They never found them.

________

Lorrie and Boston signed up for a trail marathon in West Virginia. Boston came up with a low-mileage plan to minimize their risk of injury. The idea was for Lorrie to get an idea of the marathon distance.

Lorrie won the female division in three hours and fifteen minutes and took home a golden plastic trophy of a runner with...