He didn’t recognize the woman or her dog. But that wasn’t unexpected. Although he’d lived here for years, there were plenty of folks in the neighborhood he hadn’t yet gotten around to meeting. His grueling work schedule—early mornings, late nights, and long days sandwiched between them—didn’t make it easy.
“Good morning!” he called, flashing a cheery smile.
The woman, bundled in a bulky grey sweatshirt embroidered with a University of Southern California logo, acknowledged him with a slight nod but remained rooted in place and looked at him askance as he passed, holding her dog at bay. Furious, the dog scrambled along the perimeter of its leash, growling truculently and straining in vain to launch itself at Spencer.
In a parting gesture of amity, he cut the woman and her dog an extrawide berth, smiling and waving one last time, before refocusing on his run. He didn’t blame the woman—or her pet rat, for that matter—one bit. Even in broad daylight, his immense frame routinely attracted curious stares, and he pictured how he must have appeared from their perspective: a man big enough to be an NFL lineman, clad in black and wearing a knit skullcap, charging at them out of the early-morning shadows of an otherwise deserted street.
Aside from the dog lady, the neighborhood was still, and he was alone. As his muscles limbered up, he pushed the pace, accelerating to a brisk trot. He needed to. He was still in pretty decent shape, but it had never been easy for him to keep the paunch at bay, even back in the old days, and it was only getting harder now that he was closing in on forty.
He swerved to the left to avoid a row of trash cans at the curb, changing his heading by pushing off with his right leg. His right knee protested with a twinge of discomfort that fell just short of outright pain. That knee had been acting up recently.
Should probably get it looked at.
A sagging midline and creaky joints.
Old-man problems.
In his headphones, a newscaster was recapping the morning’s headlines: bland iterations of the ones from the day before, with little or no bearing on his life. The newscaster’s voice faded into so much white noise. His mind wandered.
Forty years old.
Had it really snuck up on him this quickly? That was the problem with being a doctor: By the time you soldiered through your education and training, and finally found a real job, it was practically time to retire. All told, his own training had taken him, what … twelve years? But he loved neurosurgery, from the time he was a kid he’d wanted to be a brain surgeon, so his sacrifices had always struck him as irrelevant. He didn’t even think of them as sacrifices. They were choices, his choices, and he didn’t regret them. He didn’t believe in second guesses. Monday morning quarterbacking was worthless.
And yet.
Second guesses and doubts were what lately had been slipping into his head. They nibbled at his psyche, exhorted him to reconsider some of his irrational life choices. The ones he’d made in his love life.
The ones about Rita.
But what wasn’t irrational about love?
It had been nearly a year now, one year since she’d clawed his heart out of his chest for no apparent reason other than that she could. People said time healed all wounds. What a crock. Time healed nothing. But was a year time enough, if not for healing, to at least accept the way things were? To acknowledge that Rita really was done with him and for him to move on with his life?
Rita.
Spencer couldn’t help but envy his friends who’d shifted smoothly into the next phases of their lives. Sometimes, alone late at night on his phone, after a few beers, Spencer would scroll through pictures of his friends’ young families on Facebook. There were always firsts. Lots of them. First smile. First steps. First day of ballet class. First day of soccer. First day of school.
Spencer, single and sad and loyal, pointed and clicked, liking each and every one.
Rita.
But wait. He had his freedom. Right? He could do whatever the hell he wanted, whenever the hell he wanted. He wasn’t tied down. He didn’t have a steady girlfriend. He got to play the field. He was living the dream. Right? Isn’t that what all guys were supposed to want?
After all, forty was when the other guys who’d settled down were supposed to flip into midlife-crisis mode. Rage against conformity. Ditch the wife and kids. Have a fling with a pretty little thing just this side of statutory. Buy a really cool car. Wear skinny jeans.
But Spencer liked conformity. He craved normality. He went to church on Sunday; paid his taxes every April; visited his parents back in their small town in Washington State every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter; bought Girl Scout cookies once a year from the uniformed girls staked out in front of the supermarket, then bought some more from their mothers selling them at work. These things made him happy.