Hearts Racing Read online

  “Oh! Yes. Just ah, you know. Okay! I’ll open up. Wait.” She pulled her phone from her pocket, pointed it at herself, smiled and took a photo, and then uploaded it to the gym’s social media outlets.

  “Hey, I wasn’t in that, was I?” Buck asked.

  “I have to take a selfie every day when I get to the gym. Helps motivate students, you know.”

  “Rule one of CrossFit . . .” he said.

  She had the key in the lock, half turned. She stopped. Glared.

  “Always talk about CrossFit,” he finished. “I knew what the rest of it was,” she said, talking over him.

  He put his hands up in a “no offense” gesture, but it still irritated her. Today’s WOD is going to be a rough one, just for that, she thought. Wait, he had to do a baseline first. Damn it.

  She sent Buck into the gym to warm up while she did a few morning tasks. The gym had a stationary bike, so she assumed he’d gravitate toward that for his warmup. But after she’d read emails and turned the heater on, she walked into the gym to find Buck flowing smoothly between yoga poses. His mobility was pretty good, for a non-Crossfitter.

  “You do yoga?” she asked.

  He straightened and turned to face her. “Yuhnn,” he said.

  She’d taken off her beret and puffy winter coat. The effect was transformative. Her looks hit Buck like a baguette to the face. She was gorgeous. Athletic. She looked like she could leap five feet directly upward, like she’d been genetically engineered to grow the shiniest hair on Earth. He seemed to be having some sort of problem with his lungs that was effecting his speech. “Hmmm, ung. Yoga,” was all he could manage.

  She gave him a quizzical look, and he emitted a high, fluting laugh.

  He collected himself. “Well, anyway, yeah, let’s get this WOD going or take another selfie or whatever.”

  “Fine,” she said, and turned to the dry erase board behind her. She wrote a series of what he assumed to be exercises in the gibberish these CrossFit weirdos used.

  Faith turned to face him and caught his eyes flick up. He’d been looking at her butt! What a perv! A beautiful-eyed, limbal-ring-having, finely-sculpted perv. Her face was doing something now. Oh god, it was smiling. Take control!

  “Okay,” she said. “Today we’re going to do what’s called a baseline—”“Couldn’t we skip forward a bit? I mean, I’m . . . you know. I’ve worked out before.”

  “Everyone starts with a baseline. It’s how we judge progress.”

  “Okay, well, see, I just need to beat New Orleans. That’s how I measure progress.”

  He was looking at her with some sort of unwavering glare that he clearly thought was impactful.

  “Everyone starts with a baseline,” she repeated. Glare all you like, Mr. Dimples, you’re in my house now, and we do things my way, she thought.

  “Fine,” he said. “Whatcha got?”

  She gestured at the board for his benefit. Five-hundred meters on a rowing machine, forty air squats, thirty situps, twenty pushups, ten pullups, for time, meaning she’d be timing Buck’s progression through the workout.

  He nodded.

  “I think I can probably do pushups one handed, but I’m going to have problems with pullups. My collar bone is broken.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll help you.” She said.

  Buck climbed aboard the rowing machine and moved back and forth a few times, and then looked at her. “Ready?”

  “Are you?”

  “Born ready,” he said. “Hit it.”

  She hit the timer with an exaggerated motion to show that he should start, and Buck did exactly what she’d thought he probably would. He started immediately putting out as much power as he could. In her experience, the best times on the rowing machine came by taking it easy to start, and then pushing it near the end if you still had the gas. In most cases, a trainee wouldn’t have the gas toward the end. But Buck was going hellbent for leather. He’d never last 500m at this pace. After a minute passed, she peeked at the display to see how far behind he was.

  Holy shit, 475 meters!

  He was going to smash the gym record. He finished at 1 min 15 seconds then stood, a bit wobbly, and sank into air squats with decent form.

  Faith bit her lip to keep from smiling. Why was her face trying to smile all the time now? Stupid face. Focus.

  Buck blazed through the rest of the workout, his lean muscles showing a sheen of sweat. He was obviously used to working out, even if he wasn’t perfectly familiar with the movements. He had some trouble with pushups, but anyone with a recently healed collarbone would. Those done, he popped up then leapt to grab the overhead bar to begin his pullups. Faith grabbed his lower legs and used them to add upward force so he could pull his body up without his full weight.

  She could smell him now. He was wearing some kind of intoxicating cologne, a mesmerizing scent. She felt an urge to put her face next to his back and sniff him deeply, but held herself in check. Wow that stuff smelled good.

  At last, he was done. She helped him down and checked his elapsed time. It was as good as some of the top-ten students at her gym. She couldn’t let on that he was good, or that smirk would come back for sure. “Your time is okay,” she said. “But obviously we need to work on your shoulder mobility.”

  “Okay, how do we do that?” he asked, toweling his face and neck.

  “Not today,” she said, shaking her head. “You do a baseline and then you leave. That’s your first day at CrossFit.”

  “Aw, come on! I’m used to working out for hours. All day.”

  “That’s not how we do it.”

  He threw his towel down. “This is so stupid,” he mumbled. A flash of anger rose from her toes, up her legs, and crashed over her body like a wave. Stupid, huh? He was picking up his towel now, putting his warmup suit back on, preparing to leave. “Hey, at least we don’t wear cologne to work out around here,” Faith said.

  Buck gave a bark of a laugh, a dry sound without mirth, and headed for the door. He waved as he was on his way out.

  She wondered if she’d ever seen him again. No, she would call LeMond and tell him she didn’t want to see him again.

  LeMond answered on the first ring. “How was it?” he asked.

  “He was pretty fast.”

  “You sound testy. Are you sure it went okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. He’s just . . . strong willed, I guess. Cyclists are just weird people.”

  LeMond laughed now. “True enough, but weird in what sense?”

  “For one thing, he wore cologne. What a creeper.”

  “Ah, no he didn’t. Buck doesn’t wear cologne. Ever.”

  “Aw come on, I smelled him,” Faith said. “It was like I was sniffing—” she searched for the words. “A drug. It was like sniffing a drug.”

  “Maybe. But I can tell you it wasn’t cologne.” The old soigneur gave a knowing chuckle a parent might give a child speculating about Santa’s origins.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Buck Heart can’t afford cologne. He has nothing. Nothing but cycling. That’s his cologne.” She was quiet. LeMond went on. “What was his time like?”

  “One of the best this gym’s ever seen,” she said with a sigh.

  LeMond chuckled again. “He’s quite something, isn’t he?”

  Faith made a dismissive sound, like “pflegh,” to show she disagreed. Pflegh? She’d never done that before.

  LeMond only laughed again.

  “Stick with him, please. For me. I appreciate it.”

  She agreed then hung up the phone. She set it on her desk and stared at it.

  Pflegh.

  Chapter 4

  Buck unlocked the outside door of his flat. He was lucky to have this place, close enoug
h to a station that he could walk easily. People complained about the French occupation, but the occupiers had done a lot on the transit front. He remembered being a kid, before the French rolled through the former United States and New Lyon was still called Atlanta. There was a train system, but it didn’t have many stops. As a result, it didn’t make much money, so it didn’t expand, and no one rode it. Now there were stations everywhere.

  Inside, he left a baguette and bottle of La Victoire in the kitchen. The French had done a lot for wine production in the former US. Buck could afford a bottle here and there. Of course, he might also end up working at one of the state funded wineries if he failed at cycling.

  The French put their stamp on everything. His building looked just like a Parisian apartment. Only six stories high, lest it obscure the view. But what view? It wasn’t like there was an Eiffel tower in New Lyon. There had been an arch near a shopping center that resembled the Arc de Triomphe, but the French had ordered it demolished soon after the occupation. They’d been so offended by the steel-beam-and-sheet-rock version of the Arc, they’d made former Atlanta city officials clear the rubble after it fell.

  Buck turned on the TV: the reports were that French troops were still battling in Mexico. Latin America was proving a much tougher opponent than the US. The French had “liberated” Quebec, wrapped up the rest of Canada, and then surged through the contiguous US. No one could believe that the same country who'd built the completely useless Maginot Line in the 1930s had whipped the US so soundly, but the proof was in the crème brûlée.

  Buck’s phone rang. LeMond. He asked, “How’d it go?”

  Buck wondered why the man was calling instead of just waiting to ask tomorrow. He’d be seeing LeMond early for training, just like any other day. “Fine, I guess. Except for the CrossFit part.”

  “Uh huh,” LeMond said. Then there was a pause, as if LeMond was waiting for Buck to say something else and was giving him the space to say it.

  Buck thought LeMond sounded like he might be smiling, which was odd because he didn’t have anything further to say. He let the silence stretch, wondering what a smile sounded like and why he thought he heard one.

  LeMond picked the conversation up again. “I just wanted to make sure your mind is still on the bike,” he said, at last.

  “Of course,” Buck said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “No reason, no reason. Okay. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yep. Bon soir.”

  Buck hung up then looked at the phone quizzically a moment before putting it down. He got up, feeling stiff but good, and then he headed into the kitchen. He’d have a glass of the La Victoire then call it an early night.

  He wouldn’t admit publicly to anyone that he wanted to hit the bed early to protect himself against the dreaded DOMS, but that was exactly his plan. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness: a muscle’s brutal way of telling you it isn’t used to whatever you were making it do the day before. Buck couldn’t afford DOMS this close to the New Orleans race. He didn’t think he’d be sore after that joke of a workout today at the CrossFit gym, but any time you use muscles you don’t normally use, or use them in a new way, you were flirting with soreness.

  Now that he thought about it, he’d be better off foregoing the La Victoire for an extra liter of water before bed. It’d probably mean getting up for a middle-of-the-night pee break, but it’d be worth it to be strong on the bike. At thirty, he was still young for a human, but getting old for a cyclist. He needed to make his name before he washed out for good. Guys had stayed in the peloton well into their forties before, but not many. If he blew it as a cyclist, he’d have plenty of years for La Victoire as he drank away his regret, working at a churning machine in a dairy or shoveling shit in some no-name vineyard.

  As he settled into bed, he thought about his parents. He’d never really known his mom, but somehow her absence still left a void. There were pictures of her holding him as a child, looking at him as if he were the most precious thing on earth, but she’d passed when he was very young. His father had raised him, given him an appreciation for the beauty and passion of cycling. They watched the spring classics together, Paris-Roubaix chief among those, and the grand tours: the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta Espana, and the Tour de France. Even when the French came and forced his father out of his government job to work in the state-run dairy farms, Old Man Heart never lost his love of pro cycling. He always called it the most beautiful sport, right up until the day an accident at the dairy ended his life.

  What would his dad say about him doing stupid-ass CrossFit—about him just asking for soreness before a big race?

  “Don’t worry, Pop,” Buck thought. “I’m good to ride. And I’ll be thinking of you.”

  He woke five minutes before his alarm went off, and kicked his legs up to roll out of bed in his customary move. They burned like someone had rubbed metal filings into the muscle fibers. He reached to clutch at them, but his arms were like dead wood, and the effort of curling his body made his abdominal muscles sear with stringy, pulling fire. Oh god, no.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Double, extra-fiery shit. He had it. DOMS! He was screwed.

  He managed to shuffle into the bathroom, take a leak, and then dress himself, but every movement made his muscles roar. He’d be okay on the bike, maybe, but slow. It would be embarrassing to get dropped by the pack, if that happened, but everyone had an off day now and again. No one had to know it was because of CrossFit. If he could just get himself on the bike and turn the pedals, he’d be okay.

  Stupid CrossFit. He’d really let LeMond hear it about this one. If he ever made it to the training facility, that was. Getting out of his flat and down the stairs was torture, and walking to the train station made his legs feel like they were filled with battery acid. He plopped into a seat on the train, breathing elevated from the effort of just walking.

  At the gym, he dressed and joked with the guys, trying not to let on how much pain he was in. LeMond walked through the locker room and shot a knowing look at him for some reason, and Buck returned a glare. He wanted to grab LeMond, corral him into his office, and shout at him for a good long while, but the Wolverine appeared and raised his hands for the team to be quiet.

  “Bonjour,” the Wolverine said, looking around the locker room with a clipboard in his hands. “Today we will have a race to determine placement for New Orleans.”

  Buck searched for options like a man attempting to ransack an empty office. Panic bloomed where his insides used to be. This was the worst possible news. Normally he’d have nothing to fear from the other New Lyon riders, but he could barely move his legs. Stupid DOMS from stupid CrossFit and the idiots who think all that leaping around is a sport. He’d murder LeMond! Twice, maybe.

  A typical city vs city race took place over as few as five or as many as seven stages. Some stages were on flat roads, which favored the big sprinters. Mountain stages favored good climbers: strong guys who were light and often smaller in stature. Time trial stages required a mix. Buck was what was known as an all-rounder, the kind of rider who was strong enough to climb the switchbacked roads up a mountain but also good in a solo time trial where he’d race alone against the clock. A rider had to have that mix of skills to come out ahead in a stage race, but a criterium, or “crit,” was different. It didn’t play to his strengths at all.

  A criterium was a race of less than a mile around a prescribed course, usually flat by cycling race standards. With no major hills to slow the big sprinters down, they’d be able to destroy the lighter, all-rounders like Buck by keeping the pace high. Cycling is all about cutting through the wind, and on flat ground a 200lb sprinter can do that a lot better than a 160lb all-rounder. A heavier rider has higher terminal velocity. If a big guy who was fast on flat ground won, which one almost certainly would in a crit, the team would have a sprinter as their team captain for the stage race against
New Orleans. They’d certainly lose without a strong all-rounder up front.

  What was Bernard thinking? The French occupiers didn't suffer poor cycling teams well. Or at all, really. New Lyon could lose its whole cycling program. All the riders could be let go and forced to manual labor. Buck could end up in a God damned dairy over stupid CrossFit!

  Another concern was that in a typical city vs city race, Buck would have his teammates to rely on. The lesser domestiques would line up to deliver him to the finish line. Over the course of the many stages, he’d have a competitive total time thanks to his mix of skills and teammates. But in a crit like today’s, it would be every homme for himself.

  There was nothing for it but to suit up and ride hard, Buck thought. It wasn’t fair, but life wasn’t fair. He was a road racer. There was a race today. He’d get in the saddle and ride like his life depended on it because he loved the sport. And because it was all he had. Simple as that. But first, he’d catch LeMond and murder him, and then take him to a hospital, have him revived, and murder him a second time.

  Thoughts of violence aside, he had at least enough time to yell at LeMond. The race would be in a few hours, at one. That was a bit of good news. It would be a few degrees warmer outside by then.

  Dressed in his team kit, Buck turned the corner into LeMond’s office, still trying not to look like every step was torture. LeMond sat at his desk, looking at his computer screen. When he saw Buck, he put both hands up and shook his head to indicate “I had no idea.”

  “What the hell?” Buck asked.

  Lemond nodded toward his office door, which Buck closed quietly.

  “What the hell?” Buck asked again.