Why Sasha Gave Up Jogging

Baxter’s Books is located on Henry Street, in the same shopping center as a pet supply store and a liquor store, and across the street from The Coffee Shop On The Corner, which would be an adorable name for a coffee shop were it not for the undeniable fact that it was, in no significant way, on any variety of corner. Still, I suppose The Coffee Shop Sandwiched In Between An Orthodontist And A Cell Phone Place doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Now, suppose you needed a book. Suppose further that you were determined to buy it from a brick-and-mortar establishment rather than going online. Where would you go to buy said book?

Not Baxter’s, that’s for sure.

Baxter’s is, without question, the single worst bookshop in the city. There are four such stores in town and three of them are conveniently located, have a wide selection and each boasts a courteous and informed staff. Baxter’s, on the other hand, is hard to get to, has a very poor selection and the staff seem openly disdainful of their customers. Not in the usual way that retail workers despise their customers. At Baxter’s it seems more personal.

The only reason to go to Baxter’s would be that you tried and failed to find a specific book at the other three stores. Baxter’s would, therefore, be your last ditch effort, your “Hail Mary” before you gave up and bought it on Amazon. That, at least, was the reason I was there on the warm, breezy Autumn afternoon when my story begins. And, while I predictably failed to find the book I was after, I did succeed in finding Sasha.

I hadn’t seen Sasha in four years. We used to work together, but then she got a better job, as did all the smartest, most talented people we worked with. We said we’d stay in touch, and we did, for a while. But you know how these things go. Eventually, it was just the occasional like or comment on Facebook. And I hadn’t heard anything from her, not even on social media, for over a year when I saw her that day at the Worst Bookshop In Town.

We went across the street to The Coffee Shop That’s Not Where It Says It Is to have a cup of coffee and catch up. I filled her in on the recent adventures of her former coworkers, she bragged about how much better her current job was, I stifled my frustration at not being able to get a better job myself after two solid years of trying, and, all in all, it was very pleasant.

The thing that I remembered most about Sasha was that she was a jogger. When I had known her, she had jogged every morning. Often, she came to work straight from her morning jog. She seemed to take the pastime pretty seriously. She had one of those electronic dealies that monitored her heartrate and told her how many calories she’d burned, she kept a log of her speed and distance and when I politely asked her how her jog was, she would say a bunch of numbers that made no sense to me.

“I did a two-twenty in under ten, but that’s up five from last week.”

Stuff like that.

But the real reason why Sasha’s jogging had stuck in my memory was the fact that she seemed to hate it. She did it every morning, even on her days off; she put a lot of work into it, but it made her miserable. She grumbled as she logged her heart rate, she moaned when she took note of her calorie expenditure, and more than once she referred to the electronic dealie she wore as “you little bastard.” Now, I’ve known many people in my day who have had hobbies. But, for the most part, these people enjoy their hobby. In fact, it’s my understanding that enjoyment is one of the main reasons one takes up a hobby.

All of us at the office knew that Sasha hated her hobby, but none of us ever said anything. We never really knew why. It just didn’t seem polite, somehow, to ask the question we were all desperate to ask: “If you hate jogging so much, why do you do it?”

“So,” I asked over that cup of coffee across the street from Baxter’s Really Terrible Bookshop, “how’s the jogging?”

“The what? Oh, that. I don’t jog anymore.”

“You don’t? Really? Why not?” I knew why not; it was for all the reasons I said just now. But I asked her anyway because I wanted to be polite. As it happened, it was a good thing I did ask, because her answer was not what I had been expecting.

“Well, I finally decided it was never going to happen so I just gave it up.”

“Never going to happen? What was never going to happen?”

“That I was never going to find a dead body.”

The phrase “dead silence” seems a little on the nose in this case, but it’s the best one I can think of to describe what followed this sentence.

“Er…I’m sorry?” I asked.

Sasha seemed not to notice my shock and confusion as she sipped her coffee. “I love detective stories,” she said, as if this were a satisfactory explanation for her recent declaration. “Always have. As a kid, I read the entire Sherlock Holmes collection in third grade. Then I read Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammet, Ellery Queen, and every book I could get my hands on. I watched all the old detective shows, like Kojak and Columbo. I’ve seen every adaptation of Holmes and Hercule Poirot. I even read those dumb books about that little girl who pretends to be Sherlock. Murder mysteries are my absolute favorite. That’s why I started jogging in the first place.”

I was at a loss. To me, at least, saying “I started jogging because of murder mysteries” was a bit like saying “I went to Prague because my uncle is very tall.”

“You started jogging because of detective stories?” I asked.

“My dream has always been to be part of a detective story. To be a character in a murder mystery. When I was a kid, I thought about being a detective or a cop or something, but that wasn’t going to happen. I love mysteries, but I’m bad at them. I hardly ever figure out ‘whodunnit’ before the detective in the story. Plus, if you’re a cop you have to work your way up through the ranks to be a detective, and I didn’t want to spend however many years writing tickets just on the off chance that I might, someday, get to see a murder up close. So, I knew if I wanted to be part of a real life murder mystery, I would have to find another way.

“That’s when I figured it out: You know on detective shows how the police arrive in a park or an alley or somewhere like that, and one of them always says, ‘joggers found the body early this morning?’”

“Yeah.”

“I thought, ‘that’s something I can do!’ I can take up jogging! Then, I might get to be one of those early morning joggers who finds a dead body and calls the police. I would give them my statement and they’d say ‘thank you, you’ve been very helpful.’ So, I started jogging in the mornings. But nothing was happening. Then I realized that there was a big difference between ‘jogging’ and ‘being a jogger.’ I mean, I could go to country club and play a round of golf, that wouldn’t be the same thing as being a golfer, would it?”

“I guess not.”

“So, I got all the stuff, I read websites about jogging, I even bought books about jogging. I became a jogger. The only problem was…”

“You hate jogging.”

“I really hate jogging! It’s the worst! Walking makes sense to me, running makes sense to me, but jogging? What is the point? And people do that for fun? What is wrong with them? So, after years of making myself miserable jogging and not getting any closer to seeing a dead body, I just gave it up. I’m much happier now.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But what about your ambition to be part of a murder mystery?”

“Oh, that? I came up with a better way.”

As if on cue, a car pulled up at that exact moment. The driver’s side window rolled down and a smiling face leaned out.

“Honey,” he said to Sasha, “we’re gonna miss our reservation.”

“Coming, sweetie,” said Sasha. She turned to me. “My fiancée, Roger.” She leaned in close to me and whispered, “he’s a homicide detective! He tells me everything about his cases! Everything! Plus, cops’ families are always being threatened by killers, so…” she held up her crossed fingers, then got into her fiancée’s car and they drove off.