Bill Pronzini: Scattershot

The bumper sticker said: JOGGING IS FOR JERKS. I stood there in my brand-new blue jogging suit, panting and dripping sweat on the sidewalk, and I thought: Amen, brother. Jogging is definitely for jerks. And horse’s backsides, which was what I had been feeling like as I trotted my beer belly up and down the beach at Aquatic Park. People had kept looking at me-fishermen on the pier, kids, a bunch of black musicians, even a shopping bag lady. Big, shaggy, overweight fifty-three-year-old guy in a blue jogging suit with white piping on it, running splayfooted and puffing like a Clydesdale. That was me, the spectacle. That was the horse’s backside.

Kerry, I thought, I ought to strangle you.

And where was she? Not out here on this fine Sunday morning in July, making a fool of herself in her blue jogging suit with the white piping on it. “I might be a little late,” she’d said on the phone, “so you go ahead and start without me.”

Yeah. She was now forty-five minutes late, and maybe she wasn’t going to show up at all. Maybe she had decided, in her infinite wisdom, that she didn’t want to be seen cavorting in public with a horse’s ass.

The jogging had been her idea, of course-one of her current passions. “You could stand to lose a few pounds around the middle,” she’d said. “And jogging is fun, you’ll see.”

Well, I had seen, all right, and jogging was not fun. Jogging was about the least fun thing I had ever done. Jogging was for jerks.

I kept on staring at the bumper sticker. It was on the front bumper of a 1978 Datsun, and the Datsun was parked near the Aquatic Park pier at the foot of Van Ness, and I was standing on the sidewalk in front of it feeling stupid. I did not want to turn around and go lumbering back for another lap along the beach; I did not want to give the fishermen and the black musicians and the shopping bag lady another show. I wanted to take off my blue jogging suit and stuff it into a trashcan and then go get a nice cold beer somewhere. If it wasn’t for Kerry …

A bald guy wearing a windbreaker came up the path from the beach and went past me to the Datsun. He stopped next to the front fender, laid a possessive hand on it, and narrowed his eyes at me. “Something about my car?” he said.

“I was just admiring your bumper sticker.”

“Yeah?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Why do you wanna know?”

“I want to get one for my car,” I said.

“How come? You’re a jogger, ain’t you?”

“Not anymore. I’m taking the pledge.”

The bald guy considered that. “My brother-in-law’s a jogger,” he said. “He’s also a jerk. That’s why I put the sticker on there. It annoys the hell out of him and my wife both.”

“Good for you.”

“Yeah. I got it in a place at the Wharf. They make them up with anything you want on ‘em, as long as it ain’t obscene.”

“Jogging is obscene enough,” I said.

He nodded sagely, gave me a crooked grin, and got into his Datsun. I turned around and looked at the path to the beach. Then I went the other way, uphill past where my own car was parked to the bocce ball courts. I loved Kerry, I would do just about anything for her, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. If she wanted me to lose weight, I would go on a diet; I would even stop drinking beer. But I was damned if I would have a heart attack for her in a blue jogging suit at Aquatic Park.

All of the bocce courts were in use, as they usually were on weekends when the weather was good. Most of the players were elderly Italians from nearby North Beach, and they approached the game with a seriousness that bordered on reverence-making wagers, arguing strategy, tak ing their shots with studied care. Bocce, if you don’t know the game, is mostly like lawn bowling and a little like shuffleboard. The courts are long and wood-sided and dirt-floored, and the balls are made of wood, and you play in teams of three or four to a side. One player rolls a tiny pivot ball from one end of the court to the other; then each player in turn rolls a larger ball, about the size of a softball, toward the pivot, the object being to get as close to it as possible without touching it. “You can make your shot straight at the pivot, or you can bank it off the wooden sidewalls. Or, if you’re trying to knock an opponent’s ball out of the way, when all paths to the pivot are blocked, you can even hurl your ball underhand through the air. It may sound simplistic when you break it down to its basics, but there is a symmetry and tradition to bocce that makes it fascinating. My father used to play it, back when I was a kid in Noe Valley, which is how I learned to appreciate the game. Even now I would come down here once in a while, on a Saturday or Sunday, and spend hours watching the old Italians play. I had also joined in a time or two when they were shorthanded.

I went in and sat down on one of the benches facing the near court; Kerry could find me there easily enough-if she showed up-because it was visible from the street and because she knew I liked bocce. My respiration was back to normal by this time, but I was still marinating in my own sweat. So I made sure to sit in the sun; there was a breeze off the bay, a little nippy, and now that I had avoided cardiac arrest, I also wanted to avoid pneumonia. ‘

A couple of the old men I knew nodded and said hello to me. None of them said anything about my jogging outfit or even raised an eyebrow. That was the nice thing about old-world Italians: they were always polite and never embarrassed anyone in public. The way they figured it, people in general, and probably fifty-three-year-old horse’s backsides in particular, could take care of that well enough themselves.

I had been sitting there for fifteen minutes, absorbed in the match, when Kerry arrived. I saw her come in through the gate, and I felt a little fluttery sensation in the pit of my stomach; she did things like that to me. She was thirty-eight, worked for the Bates and Carpenter ad agency, and was the daughter of a pair of onetime pulp writers; I had met her, and her parents, six. weeks ago during a pulp-magazine convention and a subsequent double-homicide case that had almost got me killed. She liked private eyes because her mother had written a pulp series about one, and she thought I was a pussycat. I thought she was gorgeous. Even in a twin of my blue jogging suit she was gorgeous. She had coppery hair and a generous mouth and greenish chameleon eyes that seemed to change color according to her mood. She also had a good willowy body and a smile that could melt your chocolate bar, as a fellow private cop I know in Hollywood puts it.

She gave me the smile as she sat down next to me, but there was a hint of reprimand in it. “So,” she said, “sitting on your ample duff.”

“I went jogging,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Look at me. I’m all sweaty.”

“Mm. It wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”

“It was awful. I’m going on a diet instead.”

“Come on, exercise is good for you.”

“So is sitting in the sun like a houseplant,” I said. “You’re an hour late, you know that?”

“I was fiddling with that damned presentation of mine.” She hesitated. “And my father called.”

“Again?”

“Again.”

“The same old crap, I suppose?”

“Yes and no. He wanted to tell me he’s going to New York for a few days on business.”

“Good. Maybe he’ll leave you alone.”

“He’s not influencing me, you know.”

“Isn’t he?”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Then why do you keep saying no?”

“I haven’t said no.”