They gathered at the same time and place every
Friday, sitting side-by-side on the old, wooden park bench like a flock of
birds upon a wire, eagerly anticipating the show to come.
Bundled against the cold morning air, these five
men – old now, but friends since they had played stick ball in this same park
as youths – sipped from thermoses of hot coffee and munched on
fresh-from-the-oven bagels from Happerstein’s Bakery just across the street.
In unison, their attention turned to the path on
their left from which the women would soon appear. It mattered not that heavy sweat suits had
replaced the revealing shorts and tank tops of summer. It was
their smiles – sometimes a wink, often a little wave – as they jogged past that
the men most looked forward to.
From the
Five Sentence Fiction prompt, “Companion.”
