Waking Hours by Lis Wiehl Page A

fitness center isn’t what I want to do with the rest of my life,” he told her. “Maybe I’m trying to broaden my horizons.”
    “Doing what?”
    “You have to promise not to laugh,” he said.
    “I promise not to laugh.” She couldn’t help noticing how nine out of ten college women going by gave Tommy more than a passing glance, and probably not because they recognized him from his playing days. He had to know how good-looking he was. If he didn’t, she certainly wasn’t going to tell him.
    “Well,” he said, leaning his head back as if bracing himself, “actually, I’m studying to be a PI.”
    “What?” she said, laughing, then catching herself. “Why? From watching reruns of Magnum, P.I. ?”
    “Don’t knock Magnum ,” he said. “That was a great show.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, first of all, there was the Hawaiian locale . . .”
    “Not why was it a great show—why a PI?”
    “There’s actually an answer to that,” Tommy said. He smiled briefly. “Tell you later. But if you don’t mind my asking, why not? Why does it seem so ridiculous to you?”
    “It’s not ridiculous,” Dani said. “I’m sorry. It’s not ridiculous at all. I just thought you already had something you were doing.”
    “I have something that makes money,” Tommy said. “And I like working with kids. But the rest of it’s pretty boring.”
    Clearly Tommy was not one of those retired sports celebrities who wanted to spend his days attending memorabilia shows or writing tell-all books . . . though of all the retired athletes with stories to tell, his might be the most interesting.
    “It’s something I always wanted to do,” he explained, leaning back against the wall with his briefcase as a cushion, hands in his coat pockets. “Ever since I was little. I wanted to either play professional football or be a private investigator. I used to think I could do both. Fight offensive linemen during the season and crime in the off-season. They’re actually kind of similar.”
    “How are they similar?”
    “Puzzle solving,” Tommy said. “Middle linebacker is the most cerebral position in football. Most people think quarterback, but the defense doesn’t get to know the play beforehand. You have to read and react in a split second.”
    “And then you smash into people.”
    “Yup,” Tommy agreed. “At which point you shut your brain off and let your body do the work. You zone in.”
    “Zone in?”
    “The zone,” Tommy explained. “And I don’t mean the diet. A guy interviewed hundreds of athletes who’d broken world records, and nine out of ten said, ‘Actually, I’ve done better.’ And the guy said, ‘Actually, you haven’t— we’ve been keeping track,’ but the athletes all said they didn’t feel at their peak when they broke the record. They weren’t focused, or they hadn’t slept the night before.”
    “How is that being in the zone?” Dani asked.
    “It means you do your best when you try without trying. You can’t get in the zone by saying, ‘Now I’m going to get in the zone.’ If you overthink it, you mess up. You train and train and think and visualize and focus and do your mental reps, and then you let go and trust your body to do the right thing.”
    “So how many cases have you had?” she said. “As a PI?”
    “Yours is the first,” he told her, straightening and adjusting the strap to his briefcase higher up his thick shoulder. “Look, I have to get back to the gym, but it was great running into you. Oh—I have something for you. Got it this morning.”
    He fished in his briefcase and handed her a printout.
    “I had a friend translate,” he told her. “This is what Abbie Gardener said when I caught her stealing dead frogs from my pond. She’s out there where the buses don’t run, but I thought you might be interested.”
    Dani took the printout but didn’t look at it. “Wait a minute,” she said, following him down the hall and out into the sunshine. “What do you