Chapter 13 — Second lap

The second time I went to the stadium, I knew where to sit.

Which, objectively, constituted major progress.

Not a transformation.

I had not become a stadium person. I owned neither a performance water bottle, nor a windbreaker, nor reliable sports vocabulary.

But I knew the entrance by the trees, the unreasonable temperature of the second row, and the place where Liora’s group left their bags.

I also knew that taking out my sketchbook quickly made me look less suspicious than a motionless man who had come to silently watch people run.

Important distinction.

On Tuesday evening, I arrived eight minutes early.

Eight.

Not twenty-five.

Spectacular progress.

I had even written “Stadium” in my phone.

Not “Go Out.”

Not “vague outdoor activity.”

Stadium.

The word seemed almost aggressively clear.

The air had the same cold, synthetic smell as the first time. Damp track, grass, plastic jackets, metal railings. Rain was waiting somewhere above the floodlights.

A group of children was finishing practice. Parents waited beside the gates. A group of adults jogged with a discipline I found deeply incomprehensible.

The first time, everything had seemed to belong to the same baffling whole: the cones, the lines, the people running without fleeing from anything.

This time, I could distinguish stages.

One practice ending.

Another beginning.

Bodies that were already tired and others that weren’t yet.

It wasn’t exactly competence.

Let’s call it a limited reduction in ignorance.

Farther away, Liora’s coach was speaking with two boys, a stopwatch hanging around his neck.

He lifted his chin in my direction.

A brief gesture.

Terrifying in its simplicity.

I responded with a movement that was probably a greeting.

Or a neck mobility check.

I climbed the bleachers and sat in my unofficial seat.

Second row.

By the bend.

The previous time, Liora had said the bend was better for watching disasters.

I hadn’t asked her to elaborate.

I opened my sketchbook.

Blank page.

I drew the track, then the railings.

I had not come to draw today.

Not officially.

The sketchbook remained a social safety measure. An object that said: I am occupied, not strange.

It lied acceptably.

“You picked the right place.”

I looked up.

Liora stood at the bottom of the bleachers, bag over one shoulder, gray sweatshirt, black leggings, hair tied high. Her cheeks were already red.

She was smiling.

To someone who didn’t know her, she looked normal.

I saw her fingers gripping the strap too tightly, her gaze returning to the coach, her weight shifting from one foot to the other.

She wasn’t holding still very convincingly.

“I learned,” I said.

“I’m proud.”

“Concerning, coming from someone who calls this bend ‘the site of disasters.’”

“It’s affectionate.”

She climbed one step and placed her bag beside the railing.

“You look less like you’re having a crisis.”

“I prepared a plan.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Arrive. Sit down. Avoid any movement suggesting participation.”

“Very solid.”

She smiled.

Then looked toward the coach again.

“You’re tense.”

“No.”

Immediate answer.

Bad sign.

“Focused,” she corrected.

“Is that different?”

“Focus has better publicity.”

I smiled.

So did she.

“There’s a test today,” she added.

“What kind?”

“An eight.”

She said it like that.

An eight.

Not eight hundred meters.

As though the distance had become an annoying person she had known for too long.

“A full one?”

“Yes. To see where I am before regionals.”

The word entered the conversation with more weight than expected.

“Is that soon?”

“Two and a half weeks.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t make that face. It isn’t surgery.”

“I didn’t make a face.”

“You made a ‘two and a half weeks is serious information’ face.”

“It is precise information.”

She laughed slightly.

Her fingers remained around the strap.

The coach called:

“Liora, are you coming?”

“Coming!”

She turned toward me.

“If I die, tell Eugène he was right not to trust the Plexiglas.”

“You aren’t going to die.”

“Athletically.”

“Not even athletically.”

She stepped away, then came back half a step.

The famous half step.

I was beginning to recognize it.

“Watch the second lap.”

“Okay.”

“Not the first.”

“Can I watch both?”

“Yes, but the first one lies.”

Then she left before I could ask what that meant.

Fine.

New athletic information.

I mentally filed it under: things Liora says that sound absurd and then probably become important.

The group was smaller than the first time.

Two girls, three boys, the coach.

Fewer jokes.

The athletes spoke quietly as they changed shoes. One of the boys checked his laces three times. A girl bounced in place with her headphones on and her eyes closed, as though trying to leave the stadium before she even ran.

Even the jokes seemed to serve a purpose. They appeared, lowered the pressure by one degree, then disappeared.

Liora made two.

Neither sounded entirely like her.

She laughed one second too late.

I noticed.

A very bad habit in development.

The bags were in the same place, the jackets too, but everything felt tighter.

Like the moments before something real.

The coach gathered everyone together.

Fragments crossed the air.

“Target pace.”

“No stupid starts.”

“The second lap is where it happens.”

Then:

“You don’t improvise a strategy because your own time has offended you.”

If he ever grew tired of coaching, he could become a writer of athletic threats.

Liora was trying to listen without already running inside her head.

I could see it in her shoulders, her chin, the foot tapping the ground before she stopped it.

She wasn’t distracted.

She was too full.

They began warming up.

I now recognized the slow jog, the drills, the progressive strides. The movements were no longer entirely incomprehensible.

When the coach pointed to his left shoulder, Liora lowered her arm slightly on the next pass.

I felt a strange satisfaction.

Highly provisional.

No getting carried away.

She passed close to me during one of the strides without looking over.

Not because she was ignoring me.

Because she was already inside it.

Her stadium face.

Concentration.

Irritation available.

Energy contained.

The coach called everyone back to the line.

“We’re doing a controlled eight. Not a record. You should finish with information, not an ambulance.”

Weak laughter.

“I want the four-hundred split. Stick to the plan. Go out too fast and you’ll pay at six hundred. Fall asleep and you won’t have time to come back. The final two hundred should not have to repair the first six hundred.”

He drew the race in the air with one hand.

“You settle in. You hold. You build. Only then do you use what’s left.”

Liora looked at the track as though “what’s left” were a personal insult.

He turned toward her.

“You know your trap.”

She adopted a perfectly illegal expression of innocence.

“No?”

“Yes. Say it.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I start too hard.”

“Because?”

“Because I enjoy suffering.”

“Liora.”

She crossed her arms.

“Because I hate waiting.”

The coach nodded.

“There. Today, you wait.”

Even from the bleachers, I saw how much she disliked that sentence.

She smiled.

Through clenched teeth.

Two athletes ran before her.

The coach noted their times, then called Liora and another girl.

Liora removed her sweatshirt.

Dark T-shirt.

Bare arms despite the cold.

She jumped twice in place, shook out her hands, looked at the bend, then the line.

The joke had disappeared from her face.

I straightened without meaning to.

My sketchbook remained open to the line I had drawn at the beginning.

This time, I couldn’t draw.

The coach raised his hand.

Then the whistle sounded.

Liora started.

Too fast.

I saw it immediately.

Or thought I did.

The coach shouted almost at once:

“Liora, no. Settle.”

She adjusted.

The start had lasted only a few dozen meters, but her body had already thrown itself forward as though the race needed to be settled before the first bend.

The first lap lies.

I understood better now.

It said: everything is fine, you have energy, you can take the position now.

The second lap, presumably, presented the bill.

Liora ran in second place, directly behind the other girl.

Not trapped.

Positioned.

The coach walked along the inside of the track, stopwatch raised.

“There. Hold.”

“Don’t move up.”

“Breathe.”

Everything about her wanted to do the opposite.

Her head slightly forward. Her arms ready to take up more space. Her stride opening, then returning.

A very tense conversation between her body and an instruction.

I didn’t know enough about the 800 meters to judge a time.

I knew enough about Liora to recognize the frustration of waiting.

At the four-hundred mark, the coach shouted numbers I didn’t understand, followed by:

“Good. Now you build.”

Build.

A strange word for running.

And yet it seemed right.

Liora passed in front of the bleachers.

Her breathing was already there.

Not broken.

Present.

On the following bend, the other girl accelerated slightly.

Liora reacted.

Her torso moved.

Her foot searched.

The coach shouted:

“Not yet!”

She remained behind.

I didn’t know how.

I only saw the decision pass through her.

The fury of not immediately transforming energy into speed.

That waiting seemed more violent than the acceleration.

At five hundred meters, her face changed.

The effort became less polished.

More real.

The girl in front held a lead of a meter, maybe two.

“Another fifty!” the coach shouted.

Liora clenched her teeth.

My fingers tightened around the sketchbook.

Ridiculous.

Completely useless.

Then:

“Now!”

She attacked.

Not like an explosion.

Like someone finally releasing a door they had held shut for too long.

She moved to the outside.

Her left arm rose too high.

She corrected it almost immediately.

A tiny detail.

I saw it anyway.

She came level.

Then moved ahead.

The final straight was less clean.

Her legs continued, but everything else negotiated each meter. Her shoulders rose. She forced them down. Fatigue had found somewhere to enter.

She crossed the line, slowed, and placed her hands on her hips.

The coach announced a time.

Her expression was enough.

It wasn’t what she wanted.

Not catastrophic.

Not good either.

Or perhaps good, but not in a way that allowed her to be satisfied.

The coach approached.

I only heard fragments.

“Better positioning.”

“You waited.”

“That matters.”

“The time will come when you trust the plan.”

Liora answered something while pointing at the finish line.

The coach shook his head.

“You’re looking at the result as though it erases the way you ran. It doesn’t.”

She ran both hands over her face.

He pointed toward the first bend.

“There, you still tried to settle the race in thirty meters. After that, you worked. That’s what we keep.”

Liora shook her head.

Frustration.

Not refusal.

Then her hand briefly moved behind her right calf.

A quick rub.

She removed it immediately.

I saw.

I didn’t like it.

The coach didn’t seem to notice.

Or perhaps, in that world, bodies constantly signaled things and not all of them became emergencies.

I wasn’t qualified.

That didn’t stop me from worrying.

Competence and worry rarely required one another.

The boys ran afterward.

I watched them less.

My attention kept returning to Liora.

She walked along the railing, drank, rotated her ankle, listened to another girl talking.

She smiled at the right moments.

But the smile didn’t hold.

The group did a few more short accelerations.

Liora ran them cleanly.

Too cleanly, perhaps.

As though she wanted to prove the session had left no mark on her.

On the final pass, she pushed slightly too hard.

“No need to add anything!” the coach shouted.

She raised one hand without turning around.

A gesture that said: yes, yes.

And also: too late.

When the session ended, she remained with the coach.

He spoke calmly.

She answered quickly.

He stood still.

She moved too much.

Then she went quiet.

Finally.

I couldn’t understand the words.

I understood the shape.

Liora wanted more.

The coach wanted her to hold better.

Those two things weren’t opposites.

Except inside her, apparently.

She eventually nodded.

Not satisfied.

But she took the instruction with her.

Then she climbed toward me.

More slowly than the first time.

I closed my sketchbook by reflex.

She reached me, still breathing hard, face red, strands of hair stuck to her temples.

Alive and furious.

A now-familiar combination.

“So?”

The same question as the first time.

Not the same weight.

I searched for a sentence that wasn’t empty.

She sat beside me, leaving a little space. She stretched out her legs with the caution of someone negotiating with her muscles.

“You can say it was terrible.”

“I don’t know how to evaluate that.”

“Diplomatic answer.”

“True answer.”

She stared at the track.

“The time was average.”

“Okay.”

“Not horrible. Average.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to say okay after every sentence.”

“I lack the necessary tools.”

A very brief laugh escaped her.

Then silence returned.

I looked toward the opposite bend.

“You waited.”

She turned her head.

“What?”

“On the second lap. When she accelerated. You wanted to follow.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t do it immediately. It was obvious that every part of your body found that unbearable.”

“Thank you for that deeply flattering description.”

“I didn’t say you looked reasonable.”

“Oh. Good.”

“You mostly looked like you were negotiating with a version of yourself that wanted to disobey.”

She turned toward me.

“You can really see that from the bleachers?”

“I have good eyesight.”

“That’s concerning.”

“You’ve said that before.”

She looked down at her shoes.

“It was unbearable.”

“But you did it.”

“And ran an average time.”

“Maybe that wasn’t the only result.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“You sound like my coach.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This is serious.”

“I can sit farther away.”

One corner of her smile returned.

“Continue.”

I sighed.

“The first time, I understood that running could mean holding yourself back. Today, I saw what it costs you.”

The smile disappeared.

Not badly.

It was replaced by a quieter attention.

“You looked more tired after waiting than after accelerating.”

The stadium continued around us.

A bag zipped shut.

Children shouted near the exit.

The floodlights overtook the sky.

Liora ran one hand over her face.

“You see too many things.”

“I can look less carefully.”

“No.”

One word.

Quick.

Then:

“Don’t do that.”

The sentence entered anyway.

She rested her elbows on her knees.

“I feel like I’m losing time if I don’t attack.”

“Even when the plan says to wait?”

“Especially when it says to wait.”

“Why?”

She looked at the track.

“Because waiting feels a lot like letting something pass.”

She rotated her water bottle between her hands.

“When someone accelerates ahead of me, even when I know it isn’t the right moment, it feels like they’re taking something I won’t get back. A position. A second. I don’t know. So I go.”

“Even when it costs you later.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know that while it’s happening?”

“Perfectly.”

“And it changes nothing?”

She gave a humorless smile.

“Knowing isn’t always an instruction.”

I didn’t answer.

A reasonable person would have thought only about the 800 meters, the coach, and the time.

I also thought about her overfilled days and the way she moved toward things before they had the chance to leave.

I said nothing.

Some parallels became unbearable the moment you explained them.

“Your coach said you waited.”

“He also said I still start too hard and force things when I’m frustrated.”

“I heard fragments.”

“You always choose the irritating fragments.”

“They carry better.”

She laughed.

Then grimaced slightly.

Her hand moved toward her calf.

Again.

“You okay?”

She stopped.

“Yes.”

I looked at her.

“It’s only tight,” she added. “The session was hard.”

“Did you tell your coach?”

“No need.”

I didn’t answer.

She sighed.

“Aurèl.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your silence took over.”

“It’s autonomous.”

She smiled and quickly massaged the lower part of her leg.

Not for long.

Not as though it hurt.

Long enough for me to keep the image.

“I’ll tell him if it stays.”

“Okay.”

“You’re not going to report me to my father?”

“I was considering it.”

“Traitor.”

“Balcony safety, calf safety. It’s consistent.”

Her laugh removed some of the tension from her face.

She straightened.

“Regionals are Saturday, two weeks from now.”

I looked ahead.

“Okay.”

“In the afternoon. There’ll be several races, lots of people, differently ugly bleachers.”

She played with the cap of her water bottle.

Open.

Close.

“Could you come?”

I turned toward her.

She was looking at the bottle.

Not at me.

Liora, who normally threw invitations like balls against a wall, had placed this one more quietly.

More slowly.

As though giving it the possibility of not holding.

“Only if you want,” she added. “You don’t have to. It’s long. And not necessarily exciting if you aren’t running. There’ll probably be terrible sandwiches. My parents might be there, so the risk of practical questions will be higher.”

“I’ll come.”

She looked up.

I had answered too quickly.

No delay.

No emergency exit.

Not even a defensible “I’ll see.”

I’ll come.

Two words.

Solid.

Far too exposed on municipal concrete.

Liora looked at me as though waiting for me to correct myself.

I didn’t.

Because I didn’t want to.

Which was worse.

“Oh.”

“I can phrase it more administratively.”

Her smile appeared slowly.

“No. That was good.”

“Concerning.”

“Very.”

She closed her water bottle.

“You know my father might be there.”

“I’ll bring a summary sheet.”

“Income, social contributions, five-year plan?”

“Eugène’s safety plan in the appendix.”

She burst out laughing.

The coach shouted from beside the railing:

“Liora, stretching. Not philosophical discussion.”

“Coming!”

Then, more quietly:

“He thinks anything that doesn’t resemble a workout is philosophical.”

“He isn’t completely wrong.”

She stood carefully.

I noticed the way she placed weight on her right leg.

She noticed me noticing.

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face filed a report.”

“It works with your father.”

“I suspected as much.”

She picked up her bag, then stopped in front of me.

That moment again.

The one when she could leave but didn’t quite.

“Thank you for coming.”

“You gave me the time.”

“That isn’t a contractual obligation.”

“I’m learning.”

She smiled, then joined the group.

I stayed a few more minutes during the stretching.

Liora spoke less than usual.

She listened to the coach.

I looked away on principle.

And because worry could quickly become a form of surveillance.

I didn’t want to be that.

I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to be.

A much more complicated question.

I left the stadium before she did.

At the gate, I turned around.

She was sitting on the track, one leg extended, the other bent. The coach was speaking to the group. Liora looked up at the same moment.

She waved.

Not broadly.

Not the energetic gesture she used in the hallway or from her balcony.

A wave precise enough to be meant for me.

I answered.

A still-approximate social gesture.

But recognizable.

It remained.

On the tram, the sketchbook rested on my knees.

The blank page still held the line of the track from the beginning.

An incomplete oval.

Two laps.

The first lies.

The second presents the bill.

I thought about Liora waiting on the bend.

About her anger at not immediately turning energy into movement.

And about my own answer.

I’ll come.

Without delay.

Without caution.

The previous time, my calendar had accepted something before I did.

This time, my mouth had handled it directly.

Questionable progress.

When I returned, the studio seemed too quiet.

Eugène was waiting on the couch.

Superior judge position.

“I went to the stadium.”

He closed his eyes.

“Yes, again.”

I took out my phone.

Saturday.

Two weeks later.

I created an event.

“Regional Championships.”

Too official.

“Big Stadium.”

Too vague.

“Championships, 800 m.”

Almost acceptable.

The problem was that it could have been any 800 meters.

It wasn’t.

I replaced it with:

“Liora, 800 m.”

Far too clear.

Far too personal.

I left the cursor after her name.

I could have erased it.

I could have returned to a clean, administrative phrase with no visible emotional implications.

I kept it.

Truth had defeated caution.

I added the time, location, and an alert.

Then a second one.

Then removed one.

Then put it back.

Ridiculous.

I saved.

“Liora, 800 m” appeared inside my week.

A small visible box between my commissions, emails, deliveries, and invoice reminders.

I picked up my sketchbook again.

Added a second line beside the first.

Only the bend.

The place where she had waited.

Then, in very small letters in one corner, I wrote:

Second lap.

I closed the sketchbook.

Not too quickly.

Eugène opened one eye.

Fine.

Almost no one.

The studio returned to its ordinary calm.

And an 800-meter race had found its place inside my week.