Scattershot

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The bumper sticker said: JOGGING IS FOR JERKS. I stood there in my brand-new blue jogging suit, panting and dripping sweat on the sidewalk, and I thought: Amen, brother. Jogging is definitely for jerks. And horse’s backsides, which was what I had been feeling like as I trotted my beer belly up and down the beach at Aquatic Park. People had kept looking at me-fishermen on the pier, kids, a bunch of black musicians, even a shopping bag lady. Big, shaggy, overweight fifty-three-year-old guy in a blue jogging suit with white piping on it, running splayfooted and puffing like a Clydesdale. That was me, the spectacle. That was the horse’s backside.

Kerry, I thought, I ought to strangle you.

And where was she? Not out here on this fine Sunday morning in July, making a fool of herself in her blue jogging suit with the white piping on it. “I might be a little late,” she’d said on the phone, “so you go ahead and start without me.”

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