I set off at dawn, a cool mist in the air, and by the halfway point of my run I was a good 15 seconds better than my personal best of the year. My course loops through a park, at the far side of which are some posh houses. Two dogs came bounding toward me, one small, the other large. I stopped. The little dog leapt at my knees and the big dog nosed my groin. “Be good, be good,” I heard. It was a woman calling, presumably to her dogs. They turned and raced to her, but a moment later they came back to me, the little one prancing, the big one alert in a sleepy sort of way. “They’re good now,” the woman said. “Don’t worry.” I noticed she was wearing a loose-fitting kimono sort of shirt, and it wasn’t buttoned. “Do you live in the neighborhood?” she asked.

“Renting a place a few miles down the road,” I answered.

She nodded. A light rain was falling.

“If I run, will they chase me?” I asked.

“Let me just pick the little guy up,” she said, and she bent down and picked up the smaller dog. “You should be okay now,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Before you go, maybe you’d like to come in and get dried off? Have some refreshment?”

I glanced at the runner’s stopwatch which hangs from a lanyard round my neck. Glanced without a shred of perception.

I followed her and her dogs into one of the posh houses.

A couple of hours later I jogged home, thoroughly refreshed.