Transition: Chapter 6 (Newton)

Marc Oglesby is thinking that maybe it’s time to go home.

If the weatherman had said that it was going to rain, Marc wouldn’t have come at all. He has much better things to do on a Saturday than to lug his photography equipment all the way from Peabody to Newton, and if he had known that it was going to rain all morning, he would have stayed at home. In his warm bed. With his warm girlfriend.

Even though it finally has stopped raining, the sky remains unrelentingly gray, and Marc has finally given up hope that the clouds will break and allow him to get a decent shot. The hell with it, he thinks, and he begins to unscrew his camera from the tripod. What a waste of time...

“I think that’s Jill Kendal,” one of the volunteers says excitedly. Marc glances down the road. Two women, a blond and a redhead, are running toward the aid station, they’re maybe a couple of hundred yards away and closing fast. They’re running down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue, one on either side of the double yellow line. Although it’s hard to tell for sure from this distance, the redhead appears to be slightly ahead. It seems to Marc that the women are sprinting unusually hard for this point in the race.

If he sets up his camera right in the center of the road, he just might be able to get a few interesting shots of the women as they race toward him. The race marshals won’t like it, but what are they going to do about it? Given the quality of the light, the photos will probably be kind of drab, but he can always digitize them and brighten them up on his computer.

Maybe this day won’t turn out to be a complete disaster after all.

He frantically moves his tripod to the middle of the road, its spindly aluminum legs straddle the center line. He sticks the camera on the tripod, tightens the screw, glances at his light meter, and lines up his subjects as quickly as he can.

“Hey, buddy,” somebody yells at him from the aid station. Marc ignores him. The marshals won’t want to step out onto the road while a couple of runners are barreling into the aid station, and by the time they figure out what they want to do, Marc figures that he’ll be packing up his gear and heading for home.

He fires off a half-dozen shots in rapid succession as the two women hurtle toward him. He watches as slowly, nearly imperceptibly, the gap between the women closes...