The Ex

3

At least four mornings a week Molly Jones ran the outermost paths of Central Park, then farther. Her distance was a little over six miles, she’d figured, after reading a Times article about running and the best kinds of shoes to buy for various athletic activities.

Her own shoes were well-worn Nikes. Not the fancy kind the kids wore, but medium-price, sensible training shoes un-mentioned in the article. She was training to live a long and able life, not to slam-dunk a basketball.

She was in the stretch now, approaching the exit onto Central Park South, near Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street, where she’d shopped for a birthday gift for Michael yesterday at F A O Schwarz. It was a few minutes past noon, and a couple of office workers on their lunch hour, guys in white shirts and brightly flowered ties, with their dark suit coats slung over their shoulders, walked by and gave her the look as she jogged past them breathing hard, her long legs kicking out and her thighs straining with effort. She was running flatfooted now, hearing and feeling the entire surfaces of her rubber soles slap on the packed asphalt. Each stride sent a jolt of pain through her ribs on her right side and stretched the tendons in her calves until they felt as if they were about to tear. The fronts of her thighs ached and threatened to cramp. She was laboring, but she’d make it. She repeated to herself that she’d make it. Her breathing was harsh and ragged, rasping with effort. A man riding a balloon-tire bicycle smiled at her struggle. An old woman dressed in rags glanced at her with gloomy hostility from where she sat cross-legged on the grass, her wispy gray hair a wild tangle, a misshapen plastic trash bag of personal possessions lying beside her like the black and foreboding burden of her life.

Molly reached the park bench where she’d decided to end her run, then made herself take a few strides past it. Discipline. Finally she stopped running and walked in a slow circle, hands on hips, a medium-height, thin woman with a heart-shaped face described as sweet more often than beautiful. She was a bit wide through the pelvis, with breasts she sometimes imagined would fit neatly into teacups. David had told her that about her breasts once, not in any way un-complimentary, while they were making love.

She spat off to the side. Not very ladylike, but she’d breathed in a gnat or some other minute insect as she’d passed the bench. Probing around the inside of her dry mouth with her tongue, she decided the insect was gone but she needed something to drink, and soon. She stood for a while bent over, still with her fists propped on her hips, then straightened up and used the bottom of her faded Phantom of the Opera souvenir T-shirt to wipe sweat from her face.

She let out a long breath and looked around. The office workers and the man on the bike were gone. The old woman was still glaring at her, as if finally she’d found the one responsible for her situation.

Molly felt a pang of pity for the homeless woman, then a thrust of fear as she saw that no one else was around.

The woman stirred on the grass, then began to rise, old bones and sinew demonstrating surprising dexterity and strength.

This was silly, Molly knew. She was a twenty-seven-year-old woman in good shape, maybe a bit winded from her run, but she could still easily outdistance this ancient and decrepit derelict. She had nothing to fear.

Yet she was afraid.

Not of the old woman, she realized suddenly, but of something she couldn’t quite identify.

A man walking a pair of black poodles on short leashes came into sight from among the trees near the lake. He was moving directly toward Molly and the old woman.

The woman gathered up her bulging plastic bag and, with a final scathing glance at Molly, began shuffling away in the opposite direction. She and the man walking the poodles passed within ten feet of each other without seeming to notice, on the same planet but not in the same universe.

When the man passed Molly, he looked over at her and smiled, then strolled on. She heard him speak sharply to one of the poodles that was interested in something in the bushes and had strained the leash pulling to the side. With a firm tug on the thin leather leash, he drew the desperately curious dog back near him and continued walking.

Molly, seemingly alone now in the sun-dappled park, was still uneasy, and still unsure why. It was as if an unremembered nightmare were plaguing her with a residue of terror. She felt isolated and vulnerable. She hurried toward the brighter sunlight and the sounds of traffic drifting from beyond the trees near Central Park South, breaking into a jog as the shadow of a cloud closed in on the trail and trees around her, darkening grass and leaves.

It occurred to her then that since beginning her morning run she’d had the vague, unaccountable sensation that something was behind her, stalking her.

She remembered the woman who’d been badly beaten while jogging in the park, the victim of a wilding, as it was called. A stockbroker or financial consultant or some such thing. Running along as Molly had been, thinking of stocks or her love life or treasury bills, maybe a friend she was meeting tomorrow for lunch-then all of that had almost ended permanently for her at the hands of cruel strangers.

Fear passed like cool air over the backs of Molly’s forearms and the nape of her neck, causing her to hunch her shoulders.

Ridiculous, she told herself. As ridiculous as being afraid of a poor, harmless old woman innocently taking in the sun, perhaps the only friend left for her.

What must it be like, Molly wondered, nearing the end of life and without a human friend?

Without love.

Then her sense of isolation ended abruptly, along with her fear. She was out of the park and on the sidewalk, surrounded by more people than she could count, within twenty feet of hundreds of vehicles streaming past, even a horse-drawn carriage heading into the park.

In the middle of New York again.

The middle of her life.

At the edge of the park, Deirdre stood watching.