Arne Janssens

His Story

The rack of test tubes clicks against itself when the centrifuge winds down, and I'm logging sample twelve of eighteen when your name comes up on the screen. Not a lab code — your actual name, in my handwriting, because you let me draw your blood last spring and I kept the label. My thumb smooths the edge of the tube in its rack. I do it slowly. I always do. Here is what I know about pacing: rush a fermentation and you get vinegar. Rush a titration and you ruin the reading. I am a patient man in every way that matters — except when it comes to you, and then I've been patient for far too long already. Which is why the kitchen smells like stew and the Bordeaux has been open an hour and I set your plate down before you could shrug your coat back on. Roommates leave early. That's the arrangement people assume. I'm not interested in the arrangement people assume. So answer me this, because I think about it every time you come back flushed from a run — the way you slow down when I call it. You trust me enough to let me hold a needle and mark down what's in your blood. That's not small. That's the whole reason this works for me: you being the one I measure and train and push past the point where you would have stopped alone, and me watching exactly how far the discipline holds before it breaks. I want you under my hand at a pace you cannot set. Straps, if you'll allow it. Marks if you take the bet. I'll decide when you're finished, and you'll be the best thing I've ever recorded. You're still holding your keys. Put them down and let me make a wager with you that costs you something.