by Peter Harmon
Florence went back to texting, uninterested. “DUI and indecent exposure when I stepped out of the car. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Judas honked. “I totally saw that episode of Rich B Words.”
“Ew,” Florence said, totally groadied out. “That was all in the editing anyway.”
Charlie pulled the conversation back around. “How much does a diving board even cost?”
“I’m not sure. We bought that one…”—Jonathan gestured toward what was left of the old high dive, which was pretty much some metal rods and yellow caution tape that said “Cuidado” for some reason—“my first summer here for a couple hundred bucks.”
“Back when you rode a dinosaur to work and gave Jesus a high-five that one time?” Judas chortled.
Only Matt laughed.
“I have a diving board guy coming,” Jonathan said. “We open back up tomorrow, so go home and get some sleep.”
Judas raised a single finger. “Are we still getting paid?”
“We’ll see,” Jonathan answered.
The employees dispersed. Judas could be overhead talking to Matt about how lame it would be if they weren’t getting paid and how he would totally bail.
Roheed and Charlie walked out the front gate to Charlie’s car.
“I kinda have to keep working here, pay or not,” Charlie said.
Roheed glanced toward Florence, who was getting into her car. “And I will continue to work here as long as I am in sight of that masterpiece. She is my motivation for the intake of oxygen.”
“You mean she’s the air you breathe?”
Roheed nodded.
“That’s cute,” Charlie said. “You should find a way to tell her that that isn’t creepy.”
CHAPTER 8
CHARLIE WALKED INTO the kitchen of his parents’ house wearing his trench coat. His mom and dad, Hilda and Art Heralds, sat eating at the dinner table.
Art beamed. “There’s my hardworking man. Never thought I’d see the day.”
Hilda gushed. “You are such a big little baby-man.”
“Mom,” Charlie grumbled.
“You want some dinner?” Hilda offered.
“No, I got something to eat already, in the city.” Charlie tried to leave the kitchen as fast as possible.
Art was bothered by the trench. “Take off your coat and stay a while.”
“Um.” Charlie fiddled with the collar. “I need to fold it a certain way so it doesn’t get wrinkled.”
“Wasn’t it too hot for it anyway? It was damned near ninety-eight degrees and rising downtown today, for Pete’s sake!”
“It’s chilly at my office, plus I need the pocket room.”
“Ah, yes,” Art mused. “The office, your grand internship that will propel you into the real world. Help you get a real job, a career if you will, and right downtown at the upstanding…where did you say it was again?”
Charlie thought fast. “The Washington DC Assemblage of Television and other Video Affairs Corporation…Commission.”
Hilda, with a mouthful of food, said, “That’s a mouthful,” she swallowed, gesturing to the amount of food in her mouth, then continued. “And the name of your internship place is long, too.”
“Sounds great to me,” said Art. “Anything but that minimum-wage crap job you had at the pool the past few summers. Now you can start to save some money. Being in debt after college is an epidemic.”
Charlie muttered under his breath, “Maybe if you planned to help pay for college…”
“What?” Art asked.
“I gotta take a shower,” Charlie said. “I was sitting next to some guy on the Metro who smelled like pee and poop.” He walked out of the room.
Art and Hilda shrugged and continued eating.
•••
That night Charlie sat in his room at an old typewriter. Stacks of movies adorned every flat surface, and there were movie poster one-sheets on the wall. The interior decor was punctuated by the Animaniacs cartoon curtains on his window and a matching comforter on his bed—it was like a little kid’s bedroom had been partially overhauled by a film enthusiast.
The page before him was blank except for FADE IN: written toward the top left corner. He stared out the window into the night.
Charlie hadn’t meant to lie to his parents at first, but after he was turned down for a gig at the local news station, and he never heard back from that feature that was going into production for the summer downtown, and after even Popcorn Movies, the hellish movie rental chain that was on its way out, said thanks but no thanks for a summer position, what else was he to do but make up a fake internship and return to the easy job that paid crap that his dad hated?
He figured he was just killing time until the fall, when hopefully he would be attending Yellow State. So in the meantime he had bought a trench coat at the thrift store, watched a sewing tutorial on YouTube, and made a “young professional” disguise to wear for leaving and coming back to his parents’ house.
And his parents weren’t stupid, but it would never have entered their minds that their son had made up an internship, sewed sleeves, a collar, and pants into a coat, and was actually working at the local pool. I mean, who does that?
CHAPTER 9
THE NEXT MORNING Charlie sat in the same spot as before, sleeping. His head rested against his chest, and he breathed deeply.
Hilda called to him from downstairs. “Charlie! Rise and shine! Cockadoodle do, don’t cockadoodle don’t!”
Charlie woke and shuddered. He looked at the clock and groaned, then looked at the nearly blank page in front of him and groaned again, wanting to just cockadoodle die.
Charlie walked into the kitchen still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Art was reading the newspaper. With a cup of coffee in front of him, he looked over the top of the paper and eyed Charlie’s feet suspiciously.
“You look very ‘professional’ today.”
Charlie was wearing his trench coat. He looked down and saw that he was wearing his beat-up snack bar shoes.
“Oh, um, casual Friday?”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s the new rage at all the hip offices. Tuesday is the new Friday. Like how, uh, orange is the new black, or whatever…”
“I work in an office building.”
“Well, tell your boss to get with the times.”
“Mmm.” Art wasn’t buying it. “What is the name of the organization you’re interning with again?”
“The, um, Washington DC Assembly of Television and other Video Associations Company…Commission.”
“Where in the city is that?”
“Oh, you know, I just take the Metro to Foggy Bottom, then it’s a quick jog over to…23rd street.”
Art abandoned his paper. “Do you mean to tell me that you have an internship based out of the Lincoln Memorial?”
“Yes,” Charlie began, then amended, “No. It’s right behind it though. Similar addresses. We get their mail all the time. And vice versa.”
“What kind of mail does the Lincoln Memorial receive?”
“Fan letters.” Charlie reached. “The Penny Saver…”
Art just looked into Charlie’s eyes.
Charlie continued, “Because…Lincoln is on the penny. Get it?”
Art picked his paper back up. “I think I’d like to meet your supervisor one day. One day soon. I’ll see when I can get an extra hour off work to meet for lunch. The three of us.”
Charlie gulped. “Okay, awesome.”
•••
Roheed watched Florence from the safe haven of the snack bar. He rested his face on his hand and stared dreamily as she walked the length of the court with a ball hopper, plunking the metal basket down on top of the neon orbs.
From the guard chair, Matt Hedge made eye contact across the pool to Judas, who was spinning his long red whistle lanyard on his finger. Simultaneously they blew their whistles, signifying adult swim. The kiddies groaned and slowly pulled thei
r dripping bodies out of the pool, some running immediately to the locker room where they would stand under the hot showers, waiting until they heard that whistle again and they could run back to the pool to continue pruning their patooties; some running to the snack bar line, queuing up with their parents’ cash to blow on Lemynheads and Cherry Klan.
A young lad of about five years old startled Roheed out of his daze. He was too short to reach the order window, so he simply put his hand up with a crinkled dollar and a mess of coins and dropped it all on the metal counter.
His high-pitched voice rose from below, “What can I get for this many?”
Roheed snapped back into snack bar mode. “You can purchase any number of permutations of candy, beverage, and/or snack foods with that amount.”
The young lad looked up at Roheed blankly. “I want something tasty.”
So Roheed began telling him, in great detail, the numerous combinations of junk food he could buy with a dollar and eighty-three cents, much to the dismay of the line of kids behind him.
Meanwhile, Charlie sat at a small table in the back of the snack bar, well, less of a table, and more of a board that was nailed to two walls in a back corner. Empty food trays and rolls of coins cluttered his writing space as he sat with a blank notebook in front of him. He tapped on the page with his pen, a blue Bic Round Stic he had the habit of carrying in his left front pocket wherever he went.
Jill Bateman padded over to Charlie and stood too close.
“Whatcha writin’?”
Charlie, guarded, said, “I’m just trying to think of some ideas.”
“What for?”
“A movie or a short story or something. Anything really.”
“I write song lyrics.”
“Are you in a band or something?”
“No.”
Charlie should have stopped there, but his curiosity was twanged like a banjo at a yard sale. “Oh, it’s like a solo project? What instruments do you play?”
“I don’t play any.”
“So you just write the lyrics? No music?”
“Nope, but they’re really good. They’re old school, like Blink-182.”
Charlie nodded. He understood now. “Oh, cool. You’ll have to show them to me sometime.”
He went back to tapping his pen—think, think, think—like a sad food-service-business version of Winnie the Pooh.
But Jill wasn’t finished chatting yet. “You mentioned film school, right?”
“Did I? Yeah, I guess. I’m going to go for screenwriting.”
“What are you going to do with that?”
Charlie, sadly, said, “Probably nothing.”
“You should write like, The Hangover.”
“I think that’s already been written.”
“They say every story has already been written.” She said.
She had a point.
She continued. “My mom said that when I go to college it’s going to be right here in the community. I’m going to the community college.”
Charlie nodded. “That’s really convenient. Sounds really great.”
Jill made her move. “I’ll still be close to you.” She moved one of her cheeks to sit on Charlie’s thigh.
Charlie scooted his stool away quickly. “Jill, we’ve been over this. You’re fourteen.”
Jill pouted. “And three-quarters…”
Roheed called from the front, “Charlie! Board member!”
Charlie dashed into action. He grabbed a hat and put it on as he threw a hat to Roheed for him to cover his curly black locks. Roheed ushered a teenaged worker into the back of the bar, out of sight where he couldn’t visually violate any health code regulations. Jill just watched, frozen.
Charlie grabbed Jill by the shoulders. “This isn’t a drill. We have to pretend this place is sanitary.”
She tied her hair back. Charlie turned off the stereo. June, the board member, walked up to the window. Expensive sunglasses covered her eyes but she tilted them down and looked right past Roheed. “Scoot your boot, Kumar. Charlie, how are things?”
Charlie, a little bead of sweat on his brow, replied, “Great. Everything is fine.”
“Great or fine?”
“Great.”
“Are you being an acceptable manager?”
Charlie said quietly, “I don’t think I could be much worse than the last guy you hired.”
June folded her flabby arms across her chest. “You aren’t doing so great yourself, buckaroo. All those health code violations really hurt us last year.”
Charlie tried to stay calm. “With all due respect, ma’am, the one and only violation we got was for the microwave that the board wouldn’t replace. After the front screen fell off, we were probably exposed to dangerous waves of—”
“Beside the point,” June interrupted. “You should have duct taped it or something. You better watch your ass now that Bill’s gone.”
Charlie tried to start, “You—”
“Irrelevant,” June shut him down. “I want to make an order. I am on a very strict diet so I’ll have a veggie burger and a salad.”
Roheed piped up, “A lot of our usual items were out of stock when we went on our last run.”
“Extraneous information. I’ll change my order to one double cheeseburger and freedom fries with cheese. And make it fast.”
Charlie scribbled the order down on a nearby Post-It. “OK.”
“And I want cheese from that pot.” June pointed to a filthy crock pot o’ nacho cheese. Hardened orange goo was stuck around the rim of the lid. “And you better believe I want my buns toasted.”
Roheed scurried to the back of the snack bar to grab the fixins. He tossed two frozen patties on the grill, and they began to sizzle.
CHAPTER 10
FOR THE FIRST weeks following Bill’s death, few patrons populated the reopened pool grounds. This didn’t bode well for the morale of the crew, but they reconciled that people were probably on family vacations and the weather wasn’t great, so…you know, whatever.
And they continued lying to themselves on Hot Dog Night, usually a huge event, where Charlie would sweat it out in the snack shack, grilling dogs and toasting buns for hours as the pool stayed open late, and kids could bring their boogie boards and alligator floats and ride them in the pool. The highlight of the night was a trio of black truck tire inner tubes that were brought out of the back storage shed and let loose in the water. Middle-schoolers would spend the entire four hours crowding around the tube, jockeying for position, hoisting themselves up, then getting knocked off by the next king of the float. The following morning they would wake up with chafed nips from the harsh rubber that they had so gladly rubbed their tender chests against the night before.
But on this Hot Dog Night the truck tires floated listlessly, bumping into the sides of the pool like the most boring game of Pong you’ve ever seen. Charlie made maybe a dozen hot dogs, and most of those were for a dad who was there chaperoning his tween daughter.
And the last straw, when they knew they were screwed, was illustrated by the poor attendance at Ruby’s early morning Senior Swim & Sweat. Ruby, who by all accounts wasn’t really in great shape herself, led a six a.m. aerobics class in the three feet. It was always hopping with geriatric fitness enthusiasts wearing floppy hats and eye-surgery grade sunglasses, lifting foam dumbbells above their heads and listening to “Gangnam Style” as they felt the burn.
So even though Jonathan had only planned to look into possibly finding out how to go about getting a new high dive, he actually had to do some legwork to get a diving board specialist over to the YCCSRC, because that would solve all their problems, he thought.
•••
Jonathan stood next to the broken high dive with a tough looking gal with Chris stitched onto the breast of her polo shirt, size S, to show off her size L guns. On the back of the shirt it read The Diving Broad: More Splash, Less Cash and a phone number with a MoCo area code.
“Chris” worked on a
mouthful of chewing tobacco as they assessed the board sitch’.
“Board is spelled wrong on your shirt there,” Jonathan pointed out.
“No it’s not. It’s broad,” Chris said as she spit a mouthful of black tobacco juice into the pool.
Jonathan looked at the floating phlegm for a second, then he gestured toward the diving board. “What do you think it’ll cost to replace her…it?”
“Well”—Chris loogied into the water—“I think you could be doing double-gainers this very afternoon for the low, low price of five G’s.”
“Five thousand dollars? Don’t you have anything cheaper?”
“We do, but how many more lives do you want your diving board to take?”
Jonathan winced. “We just aren’t making that kind of money right now. Membership numbers are at an all-time low. It seems the whole ‘guy dying on the premises’ thing is scaring people away.”
Jonathan looked away from Chris and had a moment. “I miss him.”
Chris broke the moment as she spit a glob of goo into the pool. “They’ll be dying to get on the premises with the DiveMaster9000 state-of-the-art diving board system.”
Jonathan sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you a call once we round up the money.”
Chris pointed to the back of her shirt with two thumbs as she indicated the company phone number. Her hands were directly on top of two screenprinted-on hands already in the logo.
“Just ask for Chris,” she said.
“Is that short for Christine or something?”
“No.”
“Crystal?”
“No.”
“Christen?”
“Nope.”
“Chrysanthemum?”
Chris shook her head and donated a final wad of chew to the water of the YCC pool as she walked away.
CHAPTER 11
TO STOCK THE snack bar, a manager would have to drive to the nearby exceptional wholesale bulk food club. They would ride a flatbed cart down the aisles, picking up cans of ketchup, boxes of candy, and vats of oil that, when heated, cooked most things to a crispy, artery-tightening, brown, delicious color and texture. If the truck tires bouncing around the empty pool were like a terrible Pong, then the stacking of snack bar necessities on the flatbed was its Tetris-esque counterpart.
