Nike commercial auditions: Line forms to the left.
Summertime, and the living’s easy. I did a three-mile run through Gunpowder Falls state park today.
You must understand how out-of-character this performance was.
Camera opens on Figure A. Figure A is lolling on the loveseat, cigarette in one hand, novel in the other. She’s barefoot, wearing jeans, her hair in place, sleeves rolled up. She’s lost inside her mind, following the travails of a made-up person. This is a habit 14 years in the making, begun when she picked up No. 7 in the Baby Sitters Club series (“Claudia and Mean Janine”). Ever since, heavy stacks of books have been a primary element of her environment, usually within arm’s reach.
Figure A does not believe in exercise, in much the same way as she does not believe in the Tooth Fairy. She eats whatever she hankers for. And she miraculously maintains a weight for which most women would happily commit suicide: 110 pounds. Though she believes fat is a feminist issue, she just doesn’t think about it.
Yes, she does occasionally wish she were a cup size (or three) larger. She wishes her chin were square, her cheeks angular, her stomach concave. But these are random musings, not obsessions.
Figure A believes calorie-counting is for empty-headed dieters, and weightlifting is for muscle-bound gym rats. She prefers the cerebral to the physical. Above all, she hates to break a sweat.
Switch camera to Figure B.
Her feet are pounding the packed dirt of the trail — Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Her breath rasps out in synch with the rhythm. She smells fresh spring growth, a hint of dead animal, the sanitation station across the river, her own heat. But strangely, these are good smells, because they are outdoors smells. All she can hear is the rushing of the river and the blood in her head.
Figure B focuses on the slippery carpet of leaves before her, mud-buried rocks that could twist an ankle. She leaps across a brook — a splash as her heel hits the edge. She keeps moving. Yellow rectangles painted on trees mark the trail. She dips her head and pumps her arms for the incline.
Her feet hit the dirt — thud, thud — as she navigates a bend in the path, watching for broken branches, murky puddles, wet sucking mud with deep footprints in it.
She flies past a man in crotch-high waders carrying a cooler and a rod. She is accosted by images: A shoe. A watch. A tree. A smiling woman in a pink sweater. Chandra Levy. She prays she that makes it back to her car, where she will pause to stretch, drink water, and thank God she was not abducted and killed today.
She feels only heat, stinging sweat, and the euphoria of moving.
So this is what it feels like, she thinks. This is what it feels like.
Camera fades to black.
