With floodlights blazing, just before sunrise and no one around, an otherwise average man named Kip, in his mid 30s, is lining up at a community college track somewhere in Texas at 5:30 in the morning. He is in gym socks up to his knees, shorts, a t-shirt, and four-inch stilettos. 

As if he hears a starting gun, he launches into a dash around the track and he’s making good time with little or no indication of pain on his face despite the footwear. By the time he reaches the end of the first lap, a little old lady is sidling up to the starting line wearing a 1920s era tennis outfit. She’s slow, but determined, and without the aid of a walker or cane. Kip slows down by lap two and stops alongside her.

            “Hi. I’ve never seen you around here before,” says Kip to the old lady, who is wind-milling her arms and stretching.

            “Never seen anyone like you before in that kind of get-up,” says the old lady, eyeing up his red, sparkly leather stilettos. “Why are you wearing those?”

            “How old are you?” he asks without feigning politeness.

            “Don’t you know it’s not polite to ask a lady that question?”

            “Sorry granny, don’t you know it’s not polite to ask a lady about her shoes either?”

The old lady laughs and says, “Young man, when I was your age, we HAD to wear shoes like that to the work place. I only meant, why would you want to run in those?”

            “I have unique job hazards of my own,” Kip replies with a smile.

            “Job hazards?”

            “Being a 5’4” security consultant isn’t easy, lady. These,” Kip says, pointing to his heels, “at least get me through the psychological barrier door. That is, if they don’t look down or too closely.”

            “Weird,” she says.

            “What?”

Feigning surrender, she raises her hands. “Fair enough,” she says with a little laugh. “You gay? Trans?”

            “No, just short with a love for sexy shoes.”

            “I only say that because my great grandson is gay and likes to…”

            “Dress up? It’s fine, but I’m very straight, or maybe I’m a male lesbian. I like to look this way and I like women,” says Kip.

            “Okay, you got me.”

            “So?” 

            “So, what?” asks the granny.

            “So. How old?”

“You are persistent.” She answers, “Today I’m a hundred and one.”

            “You’re telling me that you woke up this morning, saying, ‘I’m 101 and I’m going to get up before dawn and go for a jog’?” Kip asks with a snort of laughter.

            “Yeah, what of it, young man?” She winds down her warm up. “Wanna race me?”

Kip laughs, not sure what to make of her. “No thanks, granny, my feet are killing me.”

            “I wonder why,” she says with light sarcasm.

            “Say, what do you attribute your longevity to?” He asks, not sure what to expect from the matron of 101.

            “A fifth of Jack Daniels a day.”

            Kip stares at her, straight-faced and says, “No shit, I’m a Gentleman Jack guy, myself.”

            “There wasn’t any of that ‘mellowed’ stuff around back when I started,” she replies.

            “And when was that?”

            “When my husband, Bob, died about forty years back,” she says stoically.

            “Was that a good thing for you?” Kip asks, testing the waters.

            “Yes, and yes…to the Jack and the dead husband.”

            “What’d he die of?”

            “One too many fifths of that Turkey shit. Bad stuff. Really bad. Wrote the book on dying for those who can’t hold their liquor,” says the old lady and laughs.

            Kip joins in her bubbling up laughter. “Hell, maybe we’ll both live forever,” he holds up a mock glass of imaginary whiskey, to which she joins in the pantomime and they clink invisible glasses. “To you…”

            “Helen,” she says, completing the sentence while holding out her hand in the old charmed fashion.

            “Kip,” he replies taking her hand and kissing the top.

            “You’re a very nice…whatever, Kip,” she says. “And I won’t ask about your shoes anymore.”

            “I wasn’t really offended,” he says. “I just had to know what a classy old flapper like yourself would be on a track with a guy like me at this hour of morning. I needed to know if you needed my help or not.”

            “I wasn’t really offended either,” she says.

            “I’m taking off now, see you tomorrow maybe, Helen?” He asks, handing her a thick embossed business card that he pulls from his shorts’ pocket in silver and black that reads Kip Keller, Security Solutions.

            The granny takes and eyes the card before putting it in a pocket. “Most likely if I’m still alive,” she says with a laugh, bends over, touches the stopwatch button on her wristwatch and starts down the track as fast as can be expected at her age.

            “Definitely, then,” he shouts after her. 

Kip leaves the track clicking all the way toward the parking lot. “After ten years, why does it still have to hurt? The price we pay to be tall…and a classy security consultant guy only…and definitely not a hitman,” he says softly. He pulls off the heels one after the other and walks the rest of the way to his car.