Wednesday August 3rd, 2016

The exercise:

Write about something that is: hanging in the balance.

It was the usual mayhem at the bakery this morning. I had a little more trouble with it than I typically do, as I seemed to have difficulty getting into the flow of things. I got there eventually though.

I sold the last loaf of bread around 12:30, cinnamon buns and croissants were gone by 9:30'ish, and everything else sold out somewhere in between. Hectic, to say the least.

This afternoon I stayed home with Miles while Kat and Max went to the beach for some much needed Mommy and Max time. He's been having a bit of a rough time lately, and I think it's mostly due to adjusting to no longer being the only child.

From the sounds of it I think this afternoon helped, and we're hoping to make this a regular thing going forward.

Mine:

You'll find the answer hanging in the balance.

It had taken me a long time to figure the clue out. Longer than it should have.

If I was being honest with myself, I realized as I stepped off the number twelve train and into the rain at Szabo Station, I would have found the answer much sooner if I hadn't fought against it so hard. Sometimes getting out of your own way is the hardest part of being a private investigator.

Hunching my shoulders against the steady drizzle, I walked slowly through an umbrella forest sprouting from the sullen faces of reluctant pedestrians. Hah. If only they knew the real meaning of reluctance. I could feel my shoes scraping across the pavement, as though they were the failing brakes of a soon to be demolished Studebaker. The damp made my right knee ache, but I was used to that by then and paid it little attention.

The old gymnasium at Twenty-fifth and Landry was exactly as I remembered it. Dull, imposing, a square building built with the imagination of an old Soviet Bloc architect. Its surroundings had changed drastically since I'd last seen it though. Where before it was just one of many, now it was the rotting, loose tooth dangling between the towering perfection of shiny new skyscrapers. It looked like they had been playing with it and wiggling it, hoping to knock it out, but so far the old gym was refusing to fall.

Before I could think about things too much I slipped inside. Immediately the memories of another life came flooding back - the endless hours on the mats, the routines on repeat until they were flawless, the falls, the falls, the falls... until the fall that ended it all. My right knee torn apart, my Olympic dreams left behind on the operating room table.

By that time those were another man's hopes. I had left them far behind. Or so I had thought.

But standing there once more in that gym, staring at the new stitches on the balance beam, I knew that 'Flexy' Lexy Morgan was back in my life. And that there would be no end to the troubles coming my way.