Smith looked at me like I was a horse moseying on by on a dirt road. I might be a distraction, but I wasn’t interesting.

“Well, sounds good,” I said, giving the smile I’d learned to give to folks who wanted to grease our wheels. Eddie started going over our stuff for the day; photo shoot of me with the latest line of action figures, interview with a toy magazine, another interview with another magazine, this time AARP Fitness, lunch with a little gal who’d written the best essay in the country on why she loved her Calamity Jane action figures, and then my favorite part of the day: Target practice, down at the range. Got to keep up. ‘Specially since I turned fifty, an’ these peepers don’t do the tricks on their own like they used to. Then meet with my speech coach Eunice, for the talk I’m gonna give to the NRA National Convention, then…

“If I may interrupt,” said Smith.

His voice was slow, cold. I could tell he was used to interrupting people, and also used to them stopping.

“Um, sure, Mr. Smith,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”

“I think we can do business,” Smith said. “My people need a product tested, Miss Cobb. And we think you’re in a unique position to do it.”

“An’ why, exactly issat, Mr. Smith?”

“Um, Jane,” Eddie began. Dang it, but didn’t I see a drop of sweat track down from his forehead down his left temple.

“Ed, what’s the problem?”

“We are, ah, already contracted now, to do this. He’s just here to go over the particulars.”

“Already contracted? Since when? I didn’t sign anything.”

Smith looked at Eddie. Eddie didn’t look at him, but leaned in and started talking to me. His face was whiter’n a whitewashed fence. “Look, Jane, I did it, and I did it because I’m legally empowered to do this, okay? Smith here has some very, very powerful folks who can do us a lot of good, and he wants you and me to help him test something. As a bonus, you get to see some old friends and maybe even score bigger in a day than we could in another ten years of pushing dolls and exercise tapes. Howzat sound?”

Well, honest? That sounded mighty fine. I was gonna be seventy-somethin’ next birthday, and I sure didn’t wanna be doing ten-count pushups and pretending I liked playing with little plastic horses and cowgirl dolls when I was eighty, even if the damn things did have my face on them.

“What’s the product, then?” I asked.

The old Mr. Smith took out a small plastic vial and put it on the table. I could see there was something blue inside.

“We’d like you to test this product, Miss Cobb. We’ve been using it in a controlled environment for some time now, but my people have determined it’s time we began field testing it.”

He picked up the vial, opened it and shook it a bit until a little blue crystal fell out into his hand.

“To demonstrate,” Smith said. He put it in his mouth, and started to chew on it, real, real slow.

A real, long minute passed. Suddenly, I saw his hair go from nearly bleached-white to jet black, and the wrinkles on his face smooth out until he had just the start of some crows-feet at the corners of his eyes.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

His eyes, though; they never lost that scary, hard look. I could see him giving instructions to me on how to use those those little blue rocks, or giving orders to kill a kid with the same, hard look in those eyes. You see that in some people. Men or women, it don’t matter.

“What the-”

“Miss Cobb, this product is available to you, now. It can’t make you a teenager again, but it can half your current, chronological age in terms of your glands, hair, respiratory, eyes and other major systems while leaving your brain and all the knowledge and experience you’ve gained in life intact.”

“So- I just gotta eat one o’ them, and I’m thirty-five, mebbe a few less?”

“A bit more is required, Miss Cobb,” Smith said to me. His voice made me think of sandpaper and oil. “You’ll need to recruit a number of individuals like yourself- that is, aging members of the Specially Abled Individuals community- to perform one last job. You will be provided with several choices, but the planning and execution of the theft is going to be left in your capable hands.”

I waited a second- did he say what I thought he said?

“You- you want me to get my old gang back together, to do a job? What about capes? The young set that’s out there now- some of ‘em ain’t just out there for show, you know.”

“I am aware of the capabilities of the current crop of SAIs, Miss Cobb. That is, in fact, one of the ways we are going to test the effectiveness of this product; will it, in fact, return your old abilities such that you will be able to out-perform them? That’s one of the questions we are hoping to answer. There’d be little point in you becoming young and in your prime again, and sending you out to tangle with the American Airman and his colostomy bag. Or, as I recall, you had a dust-up with The Feminist back in the late fifties?”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “That stupid bitch? She thought if she got a girl gang together that I’d join up, maybe even be her right-hand lady. Two minutes and I figured out she was just a dummy who’d been raised with a lot of money and spent too much time around the reds in college. I said, ‘nope,’ and got up to walk out. She grabbed my arm- big mistake. I laid her out with one punch to the jaw, and the rest of her gals in their fancy little get-ups tried to get cute, too, until I pulled my pistols an’ drilled one in the kneecap- the heavy, she was, called herself Big Bertha. The rest peeled off after, and I walked away without a scratch.”

“Excellent, Miss Cobb. There are some stipulations before you can become part of this experience; first, an agreement not to disclose our meeting or anything else, even to your partners, about our arrangement. Second, we’ll need to know that you’re going to go all the way with this; even if things do not work out as intended.”

“What do you mean by that second part?”

“Jane, honey,” Eddie again. He was good at the business end of things, but just couldn’t shut up. “He means that even if the capes catch you, or if someone screws up, you’re still gonna keep your mouth buttoned and you’re going to go through with the job.”

“Well, if’n that’s it, I’ll give it a whirl. Hand me them rocks, and we’ll go to town!”

And I took one. I don’t own a compact, and there weren’t no mirrors in the room. But I felt different, like I had more energy and could take on the world if I had to. And later, just a few minutes after we said our goodbyes and shook hands and Smith said he’d be in touch, I hit the ladies’ room.

Now, I’d kept in shape, but there’s no stoppin’ what’d been falling down on me bit-by-bit over the years. Now, my hair was black again, my arms- the biceps were busting up against the sleeves of my skinny-old-woman’s shirt, my lower back didn’t hurt from having to sit so long like it usually did after one of the meetings with Eddie, and . . .hell, why not say it? Even my ta-tas looked bigger an’ perkier again!

No wrinkles where I’d gotten used to seein’ em, and seeing- I blinked twice; I could see clear, without having to use my bifocals!

I looked down at the little vial of blue rocks in my hand. The other gals in the bathroom had already cleared out at me whooping in all-happy at the sight of myself.

My hair was dark.

My face was smooth.

And I could see it all, clear.

I always thought Eddie was some kinda god of business and negotiatin’, but that I looked in the mirror and said, “Mr. Smith, you got yourself a deal.”

#

But now? My arms were skinny, my tatas were sinkin’, my eyes needed glasses and I had my gray hair and my wrinkles all back. I was holdin’ a pistol the wrong way, just to make myself look like those youngun’s had got the wrong gal.

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TO BE CONTINUED...