Excerpt from, "Two Girls Talking... and God Listening In"

After eating my brunch, and am completing my investigation of the mall a bit. I am stopped as I approach the hotel lobby by a man in his early 60's. He's not part of the hotel, per se.

He asks me, "Are you going to run tomorrow?"

"Yes." I reply.

The man asks me, "May I talk to you about it, because, I've watched it other years before; but never really understood why or what type of person does this thing called a marathon."

To my surprise, as I'm a little leery, I reluctantly respond, "Well, what do you want to know?"

He replies, "Can we sit here in the lobby?" He points to a set of plush white couches, where everyone can see us in the open.

I realize that this is a safe haven, odd, but safe. As we approach the plush seats, I realize this man is lonely. Some stubble appears on the man's chin and jaw line, he probably hasn't shaven within the last three days. His hair is not yet white, he's mostly gray to silver, lacking some hair on top. His hands are big and robust, the insides of his hands look like my father’s. The type that appear to be rough as with crevasses of shale rock, making his calluses appear rugged like a tree deep in a forest of New Hampshire.

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