Past the elementary school, where his genius daughter was in the second grade. The school had boring, angled, eighties-style architecture, though it was probably built in the nineties. There was a one-way, circular driveway for drop-off and pick-up, and the front office, two doors back, with the attractive and spirited single woman who ran the show, the Principal. She was sharp as a tack, creative, and filled with new ideas, but the task of managing careless parents with high expectations and low personal family discipline always got in the way of her fulfilling the vision she had for the school. She agonized over it.

Up a short hill. Someone had put out a perfectly serviceable reclining lounge chair for the garbage man to haul off, but he never did. It had a worn leather on it, and Jake had noticed it for weeks now. So had a 6th grader. A plump little kid who sat in it every morning with a book and some headphones. He looked as if he was early for school, and just passing the time. Parents must have rushed off to work, and shoed him out of the house, Jake thought. Jake considered that the kid was a reader, and that perhaps he was a bit lonely.

Keep going, hit the first mile, and assess how tired he was. Round another corner and there’s a long, straight stretch, gaining some elevation. Inevitably, he would pass an older Asian woman, in cream pantsuit and a pair of large, old-style headphones. She would walk fast, and Jake would smile and give her a slight wave every time, but the woman never looked at him, even though they passed each other every day.

Not so for the old man making his way in the walker. Always smiling, and moving slow, the man would see Jake coming, lift his arm in greeting, and Jake would pass him before it got halfway up. Then Jake would look back over his shoulder, catching his breath up the hill, and noticed that the man was halfway through turning to greet him. Sometimes, Jake wondered when he arrived home, he worried that twenty minutes later the old man was just finishing up going through the motions of waving hello, and continuing on down the sidewalk with his walker.

Reaching the water towers at the top of the hill, was the highest point in his suburb, and the halfway point on his daily jog. On a clear November day, he could see snow on the mountains to the east, and the ocean horizon to the west. He would take a deep breath and a long look, before he rounded the corner and headed back down, he would quietly thank God for the view, and remind himself what a lucky bastard he was.

Keep running, a slow decline and past an older couple, always smiling, greeting everyone. They both had plastic sacks in one hand, and mechanical grabbing tools to pick up trash. Who knew who they were? These two kind folks picking up trash in the neighborhood, getting some exercise and fresh air. Jake didn’t see them every day, but he did every Wednesday for sure, on trash day, when the garbage truck would rumble and barrel down the avenue, stopping every 25 feet to lower its own grabbing claw, hoisting the can up and over to spill into the back of the truck. It would shake the thing violently, and then slam it back down on the curb and rumble forward, leaving a dervish of lighter-than-air trash swirling in the wind, with the couple coming slowly behind, eager to get at it with their grab-nabbers.

Down the hill some more. Dog owners pulling their leashes close, often stopping entirely until Jake passed, so has not to trip him in a lasso. A woman with two-children in a double-jogger, coming the other way. The kids, bored to death. One of them missing a sock. One of them having tossed a bottle, or a binky, or a little blanket, which Jake would inevitably see on the sidewalk a hundred feet from there.

And then, often, the Beautiful One. The hot girl, bouncing up the street with intent, and a fit, flashy stride that showed off her hips, legs, chest. Jake tried not to stare. Tried to think of his wife. Tried not to smile back, as she always did at him. Trouble, he thought. Sometimes he stayed on the opposite side of the street, to avoid the temptation.

A slow curve, with no houses on one side, so he could look out and see the suburban frontier, and the wild land beyond. His house was right there, facing the sunrise, and with its yard to the west. His was at the boundary of the Development, and he liked it that way. He saw it as a great metaphor, that he was on the fringe of this little society, the edge of this world, the verge of something unknown, and maybe mysterious. He liked living there, and he wondered what he would do when new builders came, and extended the suburban sprawl. He wondered if he would ever move. If he ever could. And where he would go if he did. Not that he’d be able to afford it.