By four o’clock Winnie started asking questions. “What’s taking him so long? He’s not supposed to do too much the first day! Lin Su, go next door and see what’s keeping him.”

“Uh-uh, no way. If they need me for anything they know where I am.”

“Oh, don’t be so tough! You’ve cleaned the kitchen five times!”

“A kitchen can never be too clean,” Lin Su said.

That first workout, which was supposed to be moderate and easy, lasted a long time. Charlie didn’t show up at Winnie’s until almost five. He was flushed and sweaty, not at all what she expected. She thought he would be bored and disappointed!

“You should see all the stuff he has,” Charlie said excitedly. He now had two books plus his notebook. He sat down in the living room with Winnie, and Lin Su joined them there. “He has heart monitors, breathing equipment, scales, speedometers, you name it. He can run a lung capacity check that’s almost as sophisticated as the hospital’s. It’s amazing!”

“Tell us about it,” Lin Su said.

“It was awesome. We started with some resting readings but I was too hyper so I had to lie on the massage table and...”

“He gave you a massage?” Lin Su nearly shouted.

“No, the table moves and vibrates and massages. Jeez, easy does it, Mom. So then when I was calmer, he did some resting readings. Then I took a hit of the nebulizer and he had me walking, then at an incline, checking vitals all the time. I thought I was ready to quit until he pushed me a little bit.” Charlie laughed and his face was bright. “I didn’t think I’d get to run—I got to run! Well...jog. My vitals were good. Then I had a rest and got on the elliptical for a while, till I started to sweat pretty good. Then he gave me a fruit drink and some power bar thing—tasted like shit... Oops, sorry, Winnie. But it did. Then I got on the bike. Just for a little while. Then he has this lifting operation—cables, pulleys and free weights. That wasn’t so much endurance—he was just checking my strength. Then I jogged a little—real slow. Just fast enough I couldn’t walk, just getting my heart rate up to an aerobic level for a little while. Then he stopped me, took my blood pressure, did some more readings. He listened to my lungs. He’s a physiologist and trainer—he has a stethoscope. My heart rate and breathing recovered in just ten minutes—I didn’t need another hit of the inhaler.”

“You were gone such a long time,” Lin Su said.

“It took a long time to do all that. We won’t have to do it all forever, just in the beginning. He does that for himself, you know—checks his heart rate, his breathing, his recovery time, his strength. Big muscles don’t swim very well but no muscle won’t get a bike up a hill. He’s always looking for exactly the right balance—a strong and lean one-fifty with good endurance. Timing is everything in a triathlon, did you know that? He can’t start out too fast or he won’t end in the money. He rations his strength and endurance perfectly—that’s what wins the race.”

“My word,” Lin Su said. “You got quite an education in one afternoon.”

“I have to read these two books,” Charlie said, holding them up. One was about anatomy and physiology and the training of athletes and the other was about asthma and training. “He has other ones—diet, weight training, body building, one called Speed. He said we’ll get to that someday. But the best thing? The absolute best thing? He said when I’m in a little better shape, he’s going to teach me to swim.”

Lin Su’s eyes widened. It took every fiber of her being to keep from yelling, No! Hopefully Blake would have all those heart rate monitors and other equipment at his disposal.

“Blake said it’s all looking good, and that last attack might’ve been worse because those guys who chased me scared the crap out of me. Half the battle is mental, he said. Did you know athletic competition is as much about mind-set as muscle? That’s what he said.”

Lin Su leaned closer to him. “You smell gamey.”

“That’s called sweat, Mom!” And there was no mistaking his sparkle.

It wasn’t long before Troy and Mikhail returned and Charlie’s experience was recounted again. Next came Grace bearing chicken parmesan, salad and garlic toast from Carrie’s. Charlie went through his story one more time and showed no sign of coming down to earth.

Lin Su was tired. Just worrying about the first day of this new program, the waiting and wondering, left her exhausted. She asked Grace if she could manage the bedtime rituals; she wanted to take Charlie home for a shower.

Bedtime wasn’t a demanding chore and Grace was more than happy to step in. It required just a little freshening up after which Winnie was content to read and watch TV in her room. But Grace would not let Lin Su leave without a generous portion of Carrie’s dinner to take along.

Charlie was still wound up when they got home to their loft; he was starving and ate as though he hadn’t been fed in days. He showered off the sweat, though Lin Su suspected he wanted to bask in it awhile longer, a kind of badge of glory. Then while Lin Su took to her bed to read, Charlie was reading in his own bed. His was the pull-out couch and he was completely absorbed in one of the books Blake had given him.

It took willpower not to tell him it was time for lights-out.

Sundays were often Lin Su’s own, the day she caught up on shopping, cleaning, laundry. But given that Charlie would be working out with Blake, Lin Su said she’d be more than happy to spend a little time with Winnie and the family, making sure everything was caught up.

“I bet you’d be happy to,” Winnie said.

“I wasn’t trying to fool anyone,” she protested.

The workout at Blake’s was not quite as long as on the first day, not quite as much discussion, Lin Su assumed. But in all other ways it was the same—Charlie was lit up like a lightbulb, happy, excited, feeling very proud. And smelling very gamey.

Lin Su wanted to take him home, fix him an early dinner and make sure he was ready for school the next morning. But she wanted to return to Winnie’s. “Now that we’re so close, after I have dinner with Charlie, I’m coming back. I’ll see you at about seven o’clock for your bedtime rituals. It won’t take long at all and I’d like to do it. Grace, you can take a night off.”