Her entrance was arresting… clandestine, in fact. She was fully dressed, head to toe, and wearing a parka worthy of Alaska.

A salt-and-pepper pageboy, not a hair out of place, topped off her image. She had a well-wrinkled face.

She looked left, then looked right, and then pulled one of the light-weight wicker chairs around the deck – of the indoor pool at the gym. Her tennis shoes didn’t make a sound, but the chair screeched.

She plunked herself into the chair and pulled a cell phone from a pocket of the coat without pause. She dialed a number and began to speak, straight away, without awareness of her position in space – or the oddness of her act.

Meanwhile, I’m in the pool, swimming and bobbing and weaving a water aerobics routine, which I do daily, for a half-hour at 8:15 a.m.

I’m content in my health-driven routine. I sing aloud, muse about an event or an issue in my life, and/or kibbitz with the kid in the other lane…

But never, ever have I spoken on a cell phone.

My mind started to whirl, to spin out this story. I abandoned the beats that usually time my work-out to spin the beats of this tale.

Why would a Baby Boomer need a clandestine area in which to conduct a phone call? Did she have a stalker, a bad husband from whom she desired a divorce?

If she was calling her lawyer, was it to up the ante of her settlement? Or to beg for witness protection for a crime she’d just witnessed? Was this the only place she could call her hairdresser/friend/mother?

The phone call continued for twenty minutes. I cursed my lack of ability to read lips.

Who was she and to whom did she talk, Constant Reader. What was the conversation topic? Was the hitman content with the details she provided? What was his price?

Let your imagination go wild!