Dear readers; Due to a few comments that the ending of this story felt too abrupt, I've re-written it for a much smoother feel. I've also changed a few items and dialog along the way for a better overall flow. I hope you enjoy this improved version. Thank you all for your input. It is appreciated.
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Andy Paterson, after being told by his primary doctor that he had heard an abnormal heart rhythm, was sent to a specialist to take a closer look and diagnose the problem. After a battery of all day tests, he was finally diagnosed with heart disease. No big surprise to him, his dad died from it, and after being raised in the fifties on butter, eggs, bacon and cheese nearly every day for breakfast, with lots of whole milk, pancakes, french toast, and the thousands of lunch-time cheeseburgers and fries thrown in for good measure, he was a walking, talking, ticking time bomb. All that yummy food he loved so much, for so long, had to go.
Sure, he noticed that it was getting harder to do every day stuff like cleaning up and vacuuming around the house, gardening, climbing stairs, and hell even masturbating had lost its thrill since the old love muscle took more time lately just to persuade it to stand up by itself. His ballooning weight was taking its toll. Something had to be done.
Andy had always done well with the ladies. "Tall dark and handsome" is what they called him back in the day. Well-groomed shiny dark hair, never sporting those long hoodlum-like sideburns, or letting his hair grow over his ears. He was athletic and very popular all through high school due to his natural sporting abilities. Even through college, he stood out as the guy all the women wanted to meet. The most eligible bachelor who the girls whispered about in their dorms.
As he grew up, graduated, and became the dreaded "P" word -- Professional, he lived the life of an extremely happy single man, dating all the best looking ladies in the office, with an uncanny ability to strike up a conversation with any pretty girl on his daily subway commute. Not normally the first place one would go to pick up chicks. Everyone on the subway usually just sat and stared straight ahead like zombies, or never raised their eyes up from looking at the floor. When the station was finally reached after all the rocking and banging and clanging, the travelers would just quickly rise up from their seats and exit the car like robots on a mission. Andy, more than once would catch the eye of a lovely lady sitting alone, and with his fetching smile, could spark a conversation that almost always would lead to at least a dinner date, or more often than not, much more. His most memorable dates, he would often say, came from that ride home from the office.
As a wall street investor, he'd made enough money to retire early. Well, early by comparison to some of the other folks whom he traveled the rails with every morning and every night for well over twenty years. After working his way up the corporate ladder, his nest egg was secure, and he felt it was time to finally settle down, or at least live life the way he had envisioned it for so many years of staring out of his office window. "Single, rich, and fancy free. Look out world," "I'm comin' to get ya!"
He still had his investing chops, and after leaving without much fanfare, and with a handsome retirement check, he walked out, knowing he could always work from home whenever he wanted to raise a little "play money." His time was finally his own. No more alarm clocks. No more crowded subway platforms. No more sales quotas.
The only thing missing in Andy's life was a good woman. At fifty-nine, he was feeling the need to find a fun, intelligent, happy, secure and of course, ridiculously beautiful woman to share his retirement years with. He longed to travel the world with his lover by his side. Doing it all by himself sounded awfully boring and a little, well. . .sad.
The number of hot dates he had once easily scored slowly diminished over time, but he was still pretty sure of himself and his ability to pull in the hotties, in spite of his advancing years. He still felt about thirty years old in his mind, and knew he had plenty of good years ahead of him to travel or do what ever sounded interesting. But he first had to lose some of the weight the doc had warned him about and get his flabby ass back into shape. It was time to get serious. Time to start dating again.
The harsh reality was that dating wasn't as easy at fifty-nine years old, as it was at thirty-two. He quickly discovered that life as he remembered it, had changed. It was like suddenly waking up on a different planet many years in the future. This wasn't what he had envisioned. It seemed to him that all the really good women were already taken, engaged, completely obsessed with their own careers, or just too busy to spend some quality time with one man. He hated when a lovely female dinner date would blather-on all night about how successful or busy she was at work. Or whip out pictures of her kids or talk non-stop about what an asshole her x-husband is. Andy just wanted to meet someone who could hold up their end of a casual dinner conversation about politics, the economy, current events, something, anything, other than themselves! He felt too old, too fat, and slightly embarrassed to hang out in his once favorite local bars, and when he did, he felt like everyone's father. In the blink of an eye, it seemed, the world had change for the former professional stud-playboy-rich kid-man about town, and this new reality was a crushing blow to his ego. Going out for a couple drinks, it seemed was no longer fun. The world belonged to the young. He decided to spend more time at home, trading, short selling, investing and making money.
After toying with the idea of going back into the city to work part time, he realized that it would probably all be the same there too. So why bother? It is what it is. Deal with it. Move on. After a couple of weeks, he settled into his dream gig as a home based day trader. He already had all the sophisticated software he needed and a kick-ass desktop computer to check on the markets with by-the-second precision. It's not as if he needed the extra money, but it would certainly keep his mind busy and focused and off the fact that maybe retiring wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And where the hell were all the ladies?
He was rolling along, feeling content in his new home office, and starting to feel pretty good about his decisions, when one day it dawned on him that almost every other week or so, some old friend would call with the dreaded "did ya hear about so and so" phone call. His old buddies from school, their wives, family members, neighbors, and close friends were starting to pass away or get diagnosed with some crazy over the top, incurable and always fatal disease. Heart attacks, strokes and of course, the "C word" became a regular, it seemed to him, phone call. Whenever he took a call from someone he hadn't heard from for a while it was almost never good news. It seemed as if his peers were dropping like flies.
All of this was an obvious wake-up call to get that complete physical and find out exactly what he could expect from this steadily aging but still operating body. "A finely tuned machine." He used to say admiring himself in the mirror at the company gym. Now, a tune up was probably needed. Sure, the gut had bulged out a little from just sitting around at home, but the legs were still pretty strong, the lungs seemed good, and the dick, after a little prompting, could still get hard when he needed it. Problem was, he couldn't remember the last time he actually needed it. Yeah, things were a lot different now. At least after that grueling check up, he knew where he was on a scale of one to ten, and that he had to cut back on the cheese and eggs and alcohol and start running around and exercising like a damn fool. He was pretty sure that one was a given.
A runner he wasn't. He tried to jog a couple times at a local track, but after a half mile or so, he was totally winded. Maybe his lungs weren't working as well as he thought. He decided to start slow and gradually build up his distance over time. At first he would walk. Everywhere. Every morning and on a nice night he'd take a brisk walk around the neighborhood. He managed a couple miles at first, then after buying the correct walking shoes, and letting all the blisters heal, increased the distance and gradually added in a couple hills that were in the area. He was enjoying his new regimen, the fresh outdoor air felt good and he started to notice more energy doing everyday tasks. It didn't seem like torture anymore. It actually got easier. He threw out all the junk food in his house, and replaced it with some healthier alternatives. He still treated himself to his favorite cheeseburger once in a while, "After all," He'd say, "let's not get too crazy!"
After a few months, he noticed a different person looking back at him in the mirror. The big hanging gut was flattening out and his man-boobs and spare tire were retreating. He was ecstatic with his progress, and found a new confidence and drive to keep going. Buying smaller jeans helped a lot too.
Andy usually walked the same route every morning: It was a three mile stretch of tree-lined sidewalk and back. If he had some extra time between stock trades, plus some extra energy, rather than return home, he'd continue on up the steep hill at the end of the street and walk back down again. After that part, soaked with sweat, he knew he'd had a damn good workout. It wasn't often, but when he did it, he was proud of himself. Enough so, that he'd do the Rocky victory dance once inside his door.
He also wasn't the type of walker you see around town every day wearing headphones or ear buds blasting music from an MP3 player. He used this quiet time to think of alternate investment strategies. With only his thoughts, he could focus like a laser beam on the next big move. It also kept his mind off how far he was walking and helped him increase his speed without even thinking about it. It seemed that nothing could distract him from his thoughts. Until one morning, deep in thought, and cruising along at a good pace, he looked up and saw. . .her.
A very attractive lady in form-fitting work out clothes, he figured to be around forty or so, was deep in her own thoughts, and on a collision course with him. She was walking a small dog on a leash and together, she and the dog took up the width of the sidewalk. She looked up just in time to see Andy, who had stopped dead in his tracks, and moved over to let them pass. Surprised, she gasped and yanked the little dog back to the center next to her, and with a mouth full of perfectly white teeth behind lips the color of pink roses, flashed an embarrassed, sexy smile and tilting her head slightly to one side, said:
"Oh! I'm so sorry. Excuse us!" Andy instinctively returned fire with his equally perfect teeth and the smile that made him a legend around the office. They passed only inches from each other. Close enough to look straight into each other's eyes, then continue on their separate ways. She had the most beautiful light blue eyes he'd seen in a very long time. Andy was, as they say in England, gob-smacked. He felt as though he had been punched in the chest and the wind had been sucked out of his lungs. He was tempted to turn around to look at her as she walked away but didn't. He just kept walking as best he could on shaky legs, unable to get that face, that smile and those electric blue eyes out of his mind.
"Wow! What was that?" He thought. "She was a living doll!" Never mind his share of ladies in the past, this encounter was going to be hard to forget. And it only lasted for a second! He walked back home and all through dinner and for the rest of the night, thought about that woman with the little dog.
He stared at the TV But didn't see a thing. He wondered if she walked the same time every day, who was she? Why was she home during the day? Was she single? More importantly, how could he manage to run into her again? He didn't sleep well that night, as he fantasized about the mystery woman. He wondered why he didn't stop her to talk. He could have said something to her! And how stupid he must have looked standing there, with his mouth open, just staring at her beautiful face.
The next morning Andy showered, put on deodorant, shaved a little closer than usual, put on clean workout clothes and combed back his hair. Just in case.
