The following is true, details as close as I could remember.
*
I started jogging in the summer of '05. I had been laid-off from work a few months before and began noticing that I was gaining weight around my thighs and mid-section, and that would not do. I was a nurse. I had been a nurse for six years and knew how fast an unhealthy lifestyle can sneak up on people. I had always been in decent enough shape for my five foot-six frame, especially working as nurse. My body was clearly missing the leg work that nursing required. So I decided to do something about it. I decided that every morning before I sent off my daughter to school and my husband to work, I would wake-up a few hours early and take a few laps around the park. It wasn't a particularly big park, so I didn't think it would be that big a challenge.
The first week was terrible.
I remember oversleeping the first few dawns when I started, coming back from my jog dead tired with sores on my feet. The second week wasn't any better, but I had actually begun finishing my laps by then. As the weeks went by, the more I ran, the more I was getting into a groove of things. I started to get leaner and feeling better about myself again. And just as fall was around the corner, that is when I officially met Henry.
I had seen Henry around the neighborhood many times before, going years just passing by each other without saying a word. I didn't think much about him except that he was the single, older man living in the nice green house a few blocks away. He had been a tall, sleek man then, with thinning silver hair and a king-like face, rugged and a bit haggard.
"Morning," were his first words to me as we passed each other on the park one day. He had just been finishing up his run and I was beginning mine. The park stretches out into curves that sometimes are difficult to read, especially early in the mornings when fallen branches and tree saps wind up on the ground. I was passing by such a stretch of turns then, when I failed to notice a branch at my feet. I stepped on it and my ankle rolled. I tumbled right into the concrete.
It honestly didn't feel that bad at first, but I was bleeding from my elbows and I had dirt on my face. I just laid there for a minute or two, not wanting to move, as I heard a voice approaching me.
"Hun, you okay?" Henry kept saying as he knelt down to help me. Months later, he would admit that he had been staring at my ass as I ran past him, and that's how he happened to see that I needed help. If he hadn't been a dirty old man, we probably wouldn't have had our adventure together.
I told him that I was okay.
"No, you're not," he told me and he helped me up. He was right. I was hurting, mostly my ankle. I leaned on him getting up and noticed for the first time that he had these strong, broad shoulders on his body. I was impressed. He didn't come off like a well-built structure with his wiry frame, but apparently he was hiding a respectable physique under his clothes. He helped me home with me leaning against him the entire time.
I found him rude though. He talked about how people don't watch where they're going, like it was my fault I fell. I thought he sounded like a grumpy old man, but now I see he was probably just talking in generalities. I thought I was getting lectured. "Common sense for people to watch where they're going," he told me, "and clean up if they see something on the road."
When we reached my lawn, I thanked him and sent him on his way. I was put-off by his attitude, but thought of him differently after that day. He was no longer the single older man that lived a few blocks away. He turned into the well-built, single, old jerk who lived a few blocks away.
Four or five days later, I started running again and decided to wake-up earlier to make up for my missed time. I wanted to run five or six laps on my first day back. I felt good. I ran into Henry then in the middle of the park.
"Hello," He said waving at me and slowed down, "How are you feeling?"
I told him I was fine and thanked him again for helping me the other day.
"Oh, please," he said showing me his nice smile. "Do you want to run with me?" he asked.
I thought about saying no, but I didn't want to be rude after he helped me the other day, so I accepted.
We ran four laps together and I got to know him a bit better. Henry was fifty-seven years old and a retired actor. He never did anything that anybody would recognize him for, but he had a few minor television roles back in the seventies and did some work in the eighties as an extra. He said he retired early in the nineties and moved back home to work in his father's dealership. He was just okay at it, he said. He sold some cars, but was never the salesman of the month or anything of that nature.
"Just like the acting," he told me. "I never stood out."
I told him about my life. I was born in Queens to Puerto Rican parents, but raised by my grandmother. My father had left my mother and me when we I was five, and then a year after that, my mother followed him. My grandmother was all the family I had for a long time until I met my husband. My husband and I met in college. He wanted to be a musician then, the last great Guracha musician, but somewhere along the way he ended up as a CPA. A good one, but not what he wanted.
"It happens," Henry told me and made some points about how life never pans out. It didn't really make me feel better.
When we finished our run. I felt a great deal of respect for him and was surprised at myself for opening up so much to a stranger. He would have made a great therapist. When he had asked me questions about my life, questions that I should have given the standard -everything is fine - answer to, I instead told him the truth. Like when he asked me about my parents, he offered his sympathy and told me that my grandmother had done a good job with me. He had a soothing, courteous voice and a way of talking that put me at ease. Right away I found that I was very wrong about him.
"Same time tomorrow?" he asked me as we finished our run and we were leaving the park.