Rob and Tom Running

What an exciting dream. My best friend and his wife running a small commune for actors in the middle of New York City. Operating out of a sprawling house on a piece of land that would be small in the suburbs or country, but is large here. People coming and going all the time, lives rolled up in one another, passionate actings out of literature overlapping with dishwashing and running errands in the communal truck. They throw a fund raiser in one of the city parks, and I help. As the successful day ends, a cloudburst! A running thief uses that distraction to steal the jar containing our profits.

My friend and I chase him, first through rain, then through a freshly washed city with the sun coming back out—just my old friend and me, now, the way it was when we were Missouri teenagers, before he was an acting guru with countless admirers, before we both had our separate lives of adult responsibility. He’s as down to earth and funny as he ever was, and once again it’s as it should be, us two Missouri boys observing life together, making observations and jokes like we first did 50 years ago. “That bastard’s running like Jim Brown with a dozen ticking bombs to deliver,” says my buddy, one of our pet movie references (“The Dirty Dozen”) back in the high school days.

We’re both running like we could run in those days, but doing it tirelessly. All over a New York City that has some different, fun, crowded thing going on at every corner. I almost forget we’re chasing a thief. I’m thinking, “We’re doing it! We’re seeing the world like we said we would. This is the future we waited for.” On we speed, side by side, seeing more and more. It feels like immortality.