Medical attention before the photo op was more the form than not. After the triumphant pounding of the home stretch, most pros were shaking and could barely stand, if at all. One was rarely witness to the expenditure of every last iota of energy, strength, and will, and to what it looked like the moment those quantities were perfectly spent.

  But the poom-pooming of the batons was giving Serenata a headache. Being incapacitated, and feeling a little threatened by the press of the crowd, she relinquished her prime position, using the cane to part the waters. She pulled herself up on the bleachers where the athletes’ briefing had been held, the more distanced view of the finish line wholly adequate, given how little she cared. Each time another contestant came in, the announcer bestowed the same booming baptism of “YOU . . . ARE” etc. with improbably fresh enthusiasm. Checking the app again, she was perturbed that Remington hadn’t made more headway on his second bike lap.

  She ripped off the price tags and drew on her new sweatshirt, over which she donned the hooded rain poncho from the same shop; the arm holding the umbrella was getting tired. Tugging the nylon tightly around her as drips pattered off the visor, she huddled down for the long haul: the loyal helpmate, the faithful wife, the poor excuse for a fan. They said time passed more quickly when you got older. Well, not always.

  By about five p.m., a familiar face penetrated her catatonia: Sloan Wallace had just come in. Assuming he’d entered the water at about 6:10 a.m., he’d finished the course in under eleven hours. Since these people talked ceaselessly about their times, she was painfully aware that “cracking eleven” was not only Sloan’s driving ambition, but Bambi’s, too. Serenata checked the trainer’s blue dot with an evil smile: the bitch would never make it.

  But she had nothing against Sloan, so she limped down toward the shelter marked finishers’ tent. Inside, the pros sat by themselves at separate folding tables, not talking to one another, with dull, vacant expressions, like robots that had been switched off. They left nearby baskets of Pop-Tarts and granola bars untouched. The dozen amateurs who’d come in were distinguishable by their clusters of excited friends and family. Yet when she waved to Sloan, just finishing off a liter of Gatorade, he was surrounded by no such retinue, and looked glad to see her.

  “I came to congratulate you,” she said. “I’m so sorry about the weather. It must have been grueling.”

  “Yeah, and to think we were mostly worried about the heat!”

  “So—where’s your family?”

  “My ex wouldn’t let the kids come,” he said. “I have custody every other weekend. This is her weekend.”

  “Pretty mean-spirited, not being willing to switch.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  After they chatted about the course’s travails and Serenata affirmed that Remington was still going doggedly at it, she asked, “Any idea what happened to Chet? The app says he’s DNF.”

  Sloan’s face clouded. Chet was more or less his protégé. “Damn, that’s a shame. I can’t believe he’d just quit. Hey, Patti!” he shouted to a volunteer. “Any idea what happened to Chet Mason? Short, compact, about thirty, and had to pull out?”

  “Oh, him,” Patti said. Gossip about contestant misfortune must have spread quickly. “Muscle spasm in his calf. That’s spasm, not cramp, and I guess there’s a big difference. They say he tried to keep running, too, and it was totally awful to watch. You know . . .” The girl illustrated with a humping galumph. “I saw him when they brought him to the med tent. Some guys fake injury when really they just can’t hack it. But that calf muscle, well, you could see it in this gross bunchy knot. He could hardly put any weight on the leg. Not the kind of problem you go to a hospital for—it just has to work itself out—but they wouldn’t let him back on the course. Man, I’ve never seen a grown man cry like that. I mean, he was bawling like a baby.”

  “From the pain?” Serenata asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Patti said.

  “Look what the cat dragged in!” Sloan exclaimed. “What took you so long?”

  “What do you think, I stopped for muffins,” Bambi snarled, approaching their table as she toweled off the mud. “Didn’t even beat my PB, much less crack eleven. Though I assume from that smarmy expression that you did?”

  “Ten fifty-six fourteen,” Sloan said with a smile. “Not bad for a sloppy course.”

  “I don’t appreciate going through this much shit only to feel like a fucking jackass,” Bambi groused. Misery had eaten a layer off her character like paint stripper. Gone was the sunny veneer. She exuded malice and resentment, like a normal person.

  She turned to the volunteer. “Hey, kid, what’d you say about Chet?”

  Patti enjoyed some attention for once (question: Why did anyone volunteer for this thankless go-fetch? It wasn’t for the glory) and repeated her performance.

  “Fuck, my first DNF,” Bambi said. “And that camera guy told me at the swim check-in that Hank went AWOL. What a bunch of douches. Hey, gimme that.” Having never even said hello, she grabbed Serenata’s phone, which would obviously be tracking her husband. “Rem’s way too far behind. He’s one punk runner, you know. Fucker doesn’t have a prayer of finishing. Gotta love this year’s stats: one quitter, one casualty, two DNFs, and a no-show.”

  So much for positive thinking.

  Serenata returned to the bleachers. As the light faded a shade at six p.m., she granted that Bambi had a point. Had Remington kept up his original pace, he’d have transitioned to the run by now. The cyclists rolling into T2 reduced to a trickle. By seven p.m., #1,083 was the only bike on the course.

  The tracking app eliminated any suspense, so when at 7:40 he banked around the curve, she was ready for him. The wait had provided opportunity to brush up her math skills. His average speed had sunk from fourteen miles per hour to ten. Including getting changed, he now had to run a distance in under 4:20 that the winner might have dispatched in 3:14, but which in the previous year’s race the whole field ran at an average 4:57. Why, for today’s run even the beatified Bambi Buffer had clocked 4:10. What were the chances that Remington could run 26.4 miles in only ten minutes longer than his Amazonian trainer, when in Saratoga Springs he’d taken almost seven and a half hours to run 26.2? ZEEEEEE-RO!

  There was nothing like sitting around for hours cold and damp with zip to do for working up an explosive disgust. Balancing on the cane on an upper bleacher—from which, not only could she see him tool down the last hundred yards of the course, but he could see her—she belted at a volume any voice coach would have warned could damage her instrument, “Remington Alabaster, that’s enough! Give it up, and let’s have dinner! You’ll never make the cutoff!”

  Three minutes later the fucking idiot was out the other side of the T2 tent in his running togs.

  After a third meal in the same restaurant—it was the closest to the site—she limped back down to the finish line. The distances were short, but this was cumulatively way too much mileage for her knee in one day. She’d been popping NSAIDs like Good & Plentys.

  Of course, no need to hurry. It was nearly eleven p.m. when she paid the bill, and Remington’s blue dot wasn’t halfway through the run. He’d been averaging 3.5 mph: a brisk walk. Were he to run the remaining fifteen miles in an hour—while enjoying a festival of abrasions, a pulled Achilles, a strained hamstring, a damaged rotator cuff, and contusions that had probably done muscle damage—he’d have to rival Hicham El Guerrouj’s 3:43 record for the mile fifteen times in a row.

  Even unimpaired, Remington had a curious running style. His step high, all his energy seemed to plow into the vertical. From any distance, he appeared to be running in place. Though he was slight for his height, his feet hit the trail with the same dead plop with which his arms hit the water on a swim. Indeed, he managed to haul that sinker quality from the pool to dry land.

  Physically, he was a wreck when he started. Emotionally, she couldn’t predict how exactly he’d take failing to finish—aside from not well.

  The curve of the home stretch was now lit up with multicolored lights. The rain having finally stopped improved attendance. This crowd was noticeably more feverish than the audience for the pros. The runners coming in during the final hour were likely to be what the rest of the world regarded as “ordinary people” who were attempting the extraordinary, which they’d imported large groups of rabid supporters to witness. Thus Serenata no sooner established her special disability stool than a battle-ax brunette shoved her hard enough that she almost fell off. “I got three people comin’ in, honey. Gotta be in front.” With the emergence of every subsequent contestant from around the bend—all of whom couldn’t have been “her people”—the pushy spectator screamed at a volume that most women would not have been able to muster during natural childbirth.

  Admittedly, the racers at the tail end of the field made for a moving spectacle. These were the housewives, the gas station attendants, the schoolteachers, and the cable guys who were unaccustomed to the spotlight. Sometimes on the short side, or maybe a little plump, they weren’t the perfectly proportioned paragons who sold $200 running shoes for Madison Avenue. Most of the eleventh-hour participants would have possessed neither the cash nor the pomposity to spring for personal trainers, and would have relied on websites or a book. The determination that powered them to this finish line must have been relentless. Like Ethan Crick, for months on end many would have been arising at four or five in the morning to swim, bike, or run before heading to a full day’s work. Some of the women must have risked substantial familial ridicule during the painfully gradual muscle building required to raise their chins above that consummate bar. It wasn’t up to Serenata to decide that this crowning moment—“YOU—ARE—METTLEMAN!”—couldn’t be the highlight of their lives.

  A subset of the folks barely beating the cutoff would probably have expected to finish many hours earlier. Lean, tall, buff, and male, this conspicuously fit contingent must have found the difficulty of the course a shock. Even with the enticing orange archway within sight, some of these guys were having a murderous time forcing one foot in front of the other, while moving about as fast as Serenata post-surgery with a cane. They doubtless felt a little embarrassed to be finishing in the same time as the likes of . . . Cherry DeVries!

  Serenata had yet to hoot, whistle, or pound an inflatable orange wiener against the barrier, much less screech like this lunatic to her left. Yet when the familiar mother-of-three hoofed into view, she broke into a grin and yelled, “Good for you, Cherry!”

  “CHER-REE! CHER-REE! That a girl! You did it! Pumpkin, we love you to death! CHER-REE! CHER-REE!” It was Sarge.

  Shoulders back, head high, Cherry marshaled a final surge of speed. Lunging onto the plastic stool provided, she sacrificed three seconds off her time to bask in the roar before grabbing the bar to do one slow, flawless chin-up with her eyes closed. When she dropped to the ground as the MC deputized her an official MettleMan, it was impossible to tell if she was laughing or crying.

  Serenata ceded what little space the screamer had allowed her and threaded to the area outside the finisher tent. By the time she found Cherry, Sarge had an arm around his wife and was posing while the kids took photos on their phones. The man was beaming. Go figure. Maybe triathlons weren’t entirely evil.

  Serenata cut in and gave the muddy woman a hug; that was it for the new sweatshirt. “You’re a great example to your daughters,” she whispered in Cherry’s ear.

  “So what’s up with Remington?” Cherry asked.

  “He’s running a little behind.”

  Cherry checked her watch. “Oh, no! Is he not going to make it?”

  “It looks unlikely. But he’ll be touched that in the state you must be in you still asked after him.”

  “Gimme some sugar, champ! Didn’t I tell ya you could do it?” Now changed into skinny jeans and a clinging pink sweater, Bambi grabbed Cherry around the neck in a possessive clutch. “Realize you’re my only first-timer success story this year? Your pic’s going on my website, kid. I expect a written testimonial by end of week.”

  As Sloan embraced the unlikely finisher (“Welcome to the real club, Cherry! Drop by the shop, we’ll go get that tat together”), Serenata stepped back to check Remington’s dot on MMInc. “That’s weird,” she said aloud.

  “What’s that, hon?” Cherry asked.

  “His dot hasn’t moved for twenty minutes.”

  “Maybe he’s stoking up at a water station. Lemme see.” Cherry was clearly nonplussed when she saw how many miles the dot had still to go. “Or maybe, you know . . . He’s seen the writing on the wall. It’s ten to twelve, sweetie.”

  But Remington would only quit if forced to. He may have left his phone behind, but he had a watch. He’d known perfectly well when he started that run that he didn’t have time to complete it before midnight. As the bronze gong crashed at the stroke of twelve, Serenata felt the vibration in her gut.

  Multiple runners came in thereafter, and though they all went through the formality of the chin-up, the MC had gone insultingly silent. They were tired, they were wet, they were far fitter than the average bear, but they were not MettleMen. Medical staff and the volunteer issuing space blankets remained, but all the tension of the occasion went slack. Staff began picking up litter.

  As several rugged buggies were revving up, Serenata approached a driver. “I’m concerned about my husband, number 1,083?” She pointed at the dot on the app. “He’s about thirteen miles back, and he’s been in the same place for half an hour.”

  “Don’t you worry, we’re off to pick up all the stragglers.”

  “Could I come with you?”

  “Sorry, we have to save the empty seats for the folks we’re picking up. They might not have quite made it, but they’ll be tired and—understatement—not in the happiest frame of mind.”

  “Well, could you at least call me when you find him, so I know he’s all right?”

  “No prob.”

  She lodged her number on the staffer’s phone. Yet when the helpful young man called half an hour later, he said, “Ma’am? We found the number 1,083 ankle bracelet, but not the guy it was attached to. He took it off.”

  “He’s still out there. You have to find him.”

  “Sorry to get all legalistic on you, but I sorta like, don’t have to find him. Check out the fine print on the release he signed. This outfit takes no responsibility for mishaps. Now he’s removed his tag, which is way against the rules, we really wash our hands.”

  “But we’re talking about an older man, an elderly man, with some serious injuries, who’s never done this before, out all by himself—”

  “Ma’am, we’ve all had a long day. Your husband, or at least his bracelet, was our last straggler, and we’re heading back to base. Want my advice? If he doesn’t show, check the bars. You wouldn’t believe how hard some of these guys take not making the cutoff. There’s actually a dive out on 86 called ‘The DNF.’ Popular with the locals.”

  “The only bar my husband is headed toward is that chin-up bar. He wouldn’t want you to pick him up. I bet he hid from the lights of your buggy—”

  The call had already terminated.

  Dismayed, she wandered the area behind the finish line, where the atmosphere resembled the all-business party’s-over of striking a rock concert set. She ducked into the finisher’s tent, which had turned into something of a hang. Cherry and her family were gone. The only person she recognized was Bambi, with her back to Serenata, pink-and-black cowboy boots propped on a table. She was knocking back red wine brimming in a large plastic beer cup with another taut, tough-looking young woman.

  “You’re a trainer, so you know what a bummer it is,” Bambi was saying. “And this one, it was like a clinical experiment, right? Your basic silk purse–sow’s ear science fair project. Like, he started out, bar none, absolutely the sorriest athlete I ever coached. Know what he clocked in the Saratoga marathon? Seven twenty-six.” The other woman hooted. “So you know me: I rise to a challenge. It’s fucking compulsive, actually. I spotted this plodder in Saratoga, I couldn’t control myself. I figured if I could shove this Clark Kent into a phone booth—well, the bragging rights would have a shelf life longer than Cheez Whiz. A born-again story on that scale could bring in loads more biz. I even had some money riding on it with Sloan—another contest the bastard won today. If that guy wasn’t such a good fuck, he’d be unbearable.”

  “As it is . . .” the other woman allowed, wiggling her eyebrows.

  “Only thing harder than that boy’s deltoids is his dick. Worth buckets of I-told-you-he-couldn’t-do-it. Anyway, good thing I made a fair whack of change on the old guy’s retainer. Compensation for the wife, wanna know the truth. The geez’s biggest handicap. Bitch wrapped around his ankles like a human ball and chain. What a tight, dismal cunt. One of those ‘I do ten jumping jacks a day, so I’m one of you!’ types. And whoooo-ee! Was she jealous.”

  “I know that drill,” the colleague said, taking a swig straight from the bottle. “All you gotta do is walk into the room.”

  “And they feel all weak and fat and sad.”

  “’Cause they are.” The two toasted.

  “And this geez,” Bambi said. “He was following me around like a puppy dog. I let him do me once. Just a hand job. No harm done. You know, all this training, you get a little tense.”

  “Those old guys, they’re always so grateful. Like you’ve let them handle a museum piece. That eighty-five-year-old, doing his sixth? He’s one of mine. I let him put his hand down my shirt, I swear he almost cried.”

  Serenata had heard enough. “Bambi, Remington is missing. He’s taken off his bracelet, and can’t be tracked.”