Emil Pitkin

The riders in front of me were treated to a piercing, reverberating, existential yawp. We were inside the tunnel of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, midway through the bicycle leg of a triathlon, and I had taken account of how many miles I had to go before I could sleep. Compounding the suffering was a curious sight: hundreds of riders on high-performance, titanium space-age machines, and one eccentric fellow, your humble author, on a City Bike accessorized with iron cage for the bicycle lock, pedaling uphill the whole race.

Stalin and Prokofiev died on the same day in 1953. There were no wreaths or flowers at Prokofiev’s funeral because everything floral in Moscow was commandeered for ex-Comrade Stalin’s obsequies. So too, the bike shops of DC had no bikes for me to rent the morning of the largest race in town. You might ask why I hadn’t attended to securing the only piece of equipment one needs to complete a triathlon, say, the day before. I would answer that if Tanya had told me before Friday at 5pm that there was a triathlon on Saturday at 8am, and that she was competing in it, I would have.

That Friday, I had just finished giving a sales demonstration to Tanya, a policy specialist at the National Governors Association. The NGA, unlike its partisan cousins the Republican and Democratic Governors Associations, exists to support the governors of all 50 states; to have NGA as a client conferred legitimacy in a town with a nose for pretenders; I would have this quarry.

We got to talking about weekend plans. She went first, and volunteered that she’d been training for a couple months for tomorrow’s DC tri. Thus I was informed about my weekend plans. What a coincidence! said I. I’ll see you there. I went home that evening and signed up for the DC triathlon.

As soon as I heaved across the finish line, jelly-legged, I took a Gatorade and jumped into the fan section to be ready to loudly clap for Tanya when she crossed the line. I had expected to finish well before her and have a few minutes to recover myself. I was surprised when she tapped me on the shoulder in two or three minutes except already changed into street clothes, fresh, and smelling of shampoo.

“Good morning!” she beamed. “Have a nice race?”

“Not bad. Really impressed by your time though.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t feel like racing today. Just came by to cheer on my friends.”

As I rode back to Union Station on my City Bike to drop it off, I remembered the best laid plans of mice and men and cracked my first smile of the day.

***

This was the first time that I’d gone rabbit hunting. The term originated with my friend Tory, who lent a hand of friendship when I told him we were trying to do business with a three-letter government agency. We were building a product that we thought they would need, but they wouldn’t disclose in writing what they actually needed – understandably, they didn’t want to tip their hand about the ways and means of their investigations. I needed to speak to a senior at the agency. Tory was professionally acquainted with their Senior Counsel, and invited him to a coffee in the Hart Senate Office Building. My job was to arrive 5 minutes after their coffee date started, recognize Tory, feign surprise, and introduce myself to the Senior Counsel, Mr. Devon Rabbit.

Nothing came of the fortuitous meeting with Mr. Rabbit, but a few months after the triathlon the NGA accepted our proposal to become a client, the first time we had bested our competitors head-to-head. When I got the call with the news, I put the phone on mute and let out a rapturous primal scream. I’d hunted my first rabbit.