Free Joggers by R.E. Donald

 
    JOGGERS
     
    Five fifty-four a.m. Lying on her
stomach, feeling a weight in the hollow behind her knees, Elspeth
Watson pulled the sheet over her head and burrowed under the spongy
pillow. Her first vacation in six years and her goddamn internal
alarm clock wouldn’t let her sleep past six a.m. Against her will,
she began to count the dull booms of the surf.
    Enough. If she had to lay still one
more minute she would scream. She scissored her legs, once, twice,
heard a snuffle and a yelp, and the weight behind her knees
thrashed a few seconds, then bounced up her back and thrust a
growling snout under her chin.
    “ Pete! Get off me!” She
growled back. “Pete!”
    The dog barked. A lightweight, elfin
sound.
    “ Shhhhh!”
    He barked again.
    “ Goddamn it, Pete! Shut
up! You want to get us busted?”
    El swung her feet to the floor, rested
her hands on her thighs, then hoisted herself off the bed and
padded to the window, the dog dancing around her feet. She lifted
back the curtain, raising a faint scent of stale smoke and mildew.
The breakers glowed in the wash of mist and pre-dawn light, the
beach yawning beneath their foam, colorless, except for a few dark
filaments of kelp. Barely visible, a green light winked where the
grays of the horizon met. Not bad. She might as well spend another
night here. That would leave only five more days to
kill.
    Movement on the beach, a jogger. He
was scrawny and tall, joints like knots in rope. He wore thick
glasses, grimaced as if each step would be his last. “Nerd,” said
El, letting the curtain drop.
    The shower was feeble, a tepid drizzle
that once again made her curse the decision to leave home. “I don’t
want to be here,” she muttered to Peterbilt as she tried to towel
the clammy feeling off her skin. “Why the hell do people pay good
money to be tormented and bored?” She grunted at the tiny coffee
maker on the bathroom counter. She’d used both coffee bags last
night. El pulled on her sweats, the dog prancing beside the
door.
    “ Okay,” she said. “Let’s
hit the beach.”
    El retrieved a can of Coke from her
truck first, held the can away from her to pop the top, let the
brown fizz drip on the fog damp asphalt. Caffeine and sugar, one
way or another. Until they’d cleared the motel, she kept Peterbilt
on the leash. He bobbed against the end of it like a horizontal
helium balloon, pitting his seventeen pounds against her two fifty
plus. You had to give him credit, he never stopped
trying.
    So this is Monterey
Beach. Off the leash now, Pete chased the
receding foam of the surf, leaped barking soprano at a low-flying
gull, dashed in mad circles around a tangle of kelp. He stopped and
sniffed, shot a quick glance up at El, then mashed something into
the sand with the side of his head, began screwing his whole body
into it. El jogged up and grabbed him by the collar, yanked him
away. “Goddamnit, Pete!”
    A dead flounder, half rotted away. “So
this is Monterey Beach.” This time she said it aloud, wondering
where she could buy tomato juice, if she needed it.
    The dog scooted off again and
disappeared behind a rock higher up the beach. El whistled, and his
black form appeared for a quick look, then darted back behind the
rock. El trudged toward it through the sand, her breath heavier.
Her stomach rumbled. Breakfast would be good.
    The dog squealed and shot out from
behind the rock, followed by a grimy sneaker and a string of
curses. El whistled again, but the dog stood its ground, barking.
It spun out of the way of a rock, turned and barked again. “Pete!
Come here!” A figure rose up, a man, leaning heavily on the rock.
He wore a black toque with what used to be yellow trim. A gray
raincoat that looked almost new hung down past his knees, the rest
of his clothing stuck to him like scabs, brown and thick. Pete
charged back towards him and the man kicked, hard, his holey
sneaker sending the dog spinning with another yelp, another curse.
“Pete!”
    “