Who Do You Love(103)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

The Adidas Grand Prix was in New York that June, and Andy was scheduled to compete in both the 5000 and the 10,000. The day before the heats, he’d run an easy three miles in Central Park, then came back to the apartment and saw reporters and a news van with a satellite dish blooming on its roof. He knew, even before he got close enough to hear them shouting his name, what had happened and why they were there. It was like the nuns had told him, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”

He kept his head down as he made his way through the throng, ignoring the questions—“How long have you been doping?” “Have you been subpoenaed?” “Will they make you give your medal back?” He heard cameras clicking and saw, across the street, a perfectly groomed woman in a yellow dress and high heels standing in front of a camera with a microphone raised to her lips. He was almost to the front door when he saw Bob Rieper from Sports Illustrated, the Grim Rieper, who’d written that profile of him, who’d found out about his father.

“Hey, man,” said Bob. He put his hand on Andy’s shoulder, and with that touch, those two words, Andy knew that his life as a runner was done, that his second life had started, whether he was ready or not.

Up in the apartment, he found his cell phone and called John Mahoney, who answered on the first ring.

“Andy,” he said, in his familiar rasp. “Did you hear?”

“I haven’t heard anything, but there’s a bunch of reporters outside of my building.” Instead of being panicked, he felt a weird, shocked kind of calm. His pulse felt almost sluggish, and his heartbeat seemed to slow.

“Don’t say a word,” Mahoney instructed. “If they call, just hang up, and if they catch you, say ‘No comment.’ ”

“No comment,” Andy practiced, pacing the living room, then walking back to the bedroom to see if Maisie was there. He heard the shower running, and saw the TV tuned to ESPN, which seemed to be showing a loop—runners on a track, followed by a banner reading DOPING SCANDAL and a serious-looking white guy with an incongruously orange face saying something that Andy couldn’t hear because Maisie had turned the volume down. Her suitcase was already open on the bed. He wondered what she’d say, what excuses she’d make, what last-minute photo shoot or family crisis she’d invent to get herself out of here, away from him.

He barely had to wait to find out. Maisie came out of the bathroom with one towel wrapped around her, another around her hair, and looked at him like he was a burglar who’d made it past the doorman and up to the thirty-third floor.

“Hey,” Andy began.

Her expression was a mixture of sorrow and embarrassment. Underneath that, like the primer she smoothed on beneath her makeup in the morning, Andy glimpsed a familiar cool calculation. This was what Maisie did when she met someone new—a teammate’s new wife, a photographer’s new assistant—and was trying to decide who that person was, what he or she represented, and how he or she could be of any use to Maisie or Andy, individually or together. She’d turned them into a pair of beautiful people, featured in all the magazines, invited to all the parties. Now, Andy saw, she was figuring out how to turn herself into someone new, a woman betrayed by a boyfriend who was a criminal and a cheat.

“Mitch called for you. And Alex.” Alex was Alejandro Pérez-Peña, Andy’s new coach.

“What’d they say?”

“Call Alex back. There’s going to be a conference call at three. They hired a crisis management firm. And lawyers.”

“Lawyers?” Andy felt his legs, those world-beating, record-setting, medal-winning legs, start trembling underneath him. Could he go to jail for this? Was that even possible? Was it fair? Who had he hurt, except himself?

The fans, his mind whispered. All those people who believed in you, who thought you were winning fair and square. Not to mention the companies who’d paid for him to speak, the manufacturers who’d paid for him to endorse their goods, the publisher with whom he’d just signed a contract to write his story. “Andy Landis,” his publicist, chic in a fitted suit with gold buttons, had announced, at a luncheon with his new publicity and marketing team. “An American Story.”

Some story, he thought as Maisie looked at him, eyebrows arched in a parody of surprise. “Yes, you need lawyers. The stuff you were doing was against the law.” She gave a small, theatrical shudder. Her fake shudders, Andy observed from his bubble of detachment, had improved over the years. The acting lessons were paying off. “Some of it’s only been approved for use on animals.”