Chapter Twenty

There were places she was supposed to be that night. She had been to enough of them in seven years to know what they were like.

She went back to the track instead.

The stadium was empty and most of the lights were down. The banners moved a little, somewhere up in the dark. She sat on the covered earth in lane four with the gold still around her neck, because taking it off meant deciding where to put it.

Footsteps came out of the tunnel.

Cheta did not leave the Highlands. He was famous for it. He crossed the whole infield to her anyway, an overcoat over his good clothes, taking his time about the distance, and when he reached her he held something out in both hands, the way you hand over something living.

A recorder. Small, older than the stopwatch, its corners gone round from handling.

“He told me to give it to you,” Cheta said, “when you stopped running from him.”

She took it. She turned it over once. Then she pressed the button.

A hiss. A breath. And then —

“You don’t have to win for me.”

That was all. The hiss ran on into nothing.

She pressed it again.

“You don’t have to win for me.”

It was his voice with no coach in it anywhere. She had a number for that voice too. It was small.

She pressed it a third time.

The third time, it was true.

Cheta lowered himself down onto the track beside her, with some negotiating, and sat.

She had never once seen him sit.

They stayed there a while, the two of them, on the covered earth under the one light that was still on, in a place built for eighty thousand. The banners moved up in the dark.

After a long time, Cheta said:

“Your bend was wide.”

She laughed.