All original works by Ramie Rudlee (except newspaper articles and names used for inspiration, and where noted). Feedback, questions and ideas welcome.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Sandy and the Lifeguard

Sandy and the Lifeguard is the color of a fictional nail polish.  It might be a neutral pale pink color, like the inside of a shell that's been on my toes for almost a month now.
It's at the point where I have to decide either to remove it or go get another pedicure.  Instead, I've been working on this, which has now gone slightly beyond the length of a short short, weighing in at 2163 words.  Not quite finished, but it needs to go up now, so I can work on other things.  If demand is high, I may continue the story of

     Sandy and the Lifeguard    

    On Wednesdays, Sandy slept late—as late as nine a.m., most weeks.  Even if she had been up late the night before (or out until dawn in a few cases), she wasn’t going to waste a minute of her only day off in the most popular beach town in Maryland.  It was summer after all, and worries about course selections and dorm room assignments were a good six weeks away.    

    Unfortunately, it was Saturday--her longest work day of the week—a miserable day of having to serve pancakes and coffee to grinning, sunburned tourists in the morning and press dopey designs onto cheap cotton t-shirts for them until late at night.  They were all relaxing, enjoying the weekend without a care in the world.  Sandy had to get up before six to serve them.

    “Whatever,” Sandy muttered as she dragged herself out of the sagging pullout sleep sofa.  She folded the creaking furniture back into itself, only half-heartedly trying to be quiet for her roommate, Donna, still asleep in one of the lumpy double beds of the efficiency apartment they shared.

    Her other roommate, Lisa, had already left for work.  Her pancake joint was four blocks further down the boardwalk than Suzi’s and opened a half hour earlier.  

    Donna rolled over and pulled the thin cotton blanket up over her head.  A veteran of the college-kid-working-off-the-summer-in-Ocean-City club, Donna had scored a job waitressing in one of the nicer restaurants, where her nightly tips equaled a week’s worth of Sandy’s.  

    Sandy stood under the barely-warm water in the small shower stall just long enough to get wet.  As she dried and dressed, she looked down at the chipped pink polish on her toes and hoped she would make enough in tips today to pay for a pedicure first thing Wednesday.  She shoved her bikini and beach towel in her bag so she would be ready catch a quick swim (and maybe a lifeguard) before starting her shift at the t-shirt shop, grabbed a Pop Tart and headed out the door.

    Jill and Ryan were almost done with the side work when she walked in the back door of Grandma’s Griddle Breakfast Emporium.  Sandy grabbed a ruffled apron from the hook and started filling syrup pitchers.  There were only three empty ones.

    “Glad you could make it,” sneered Ryan.  “We would have saved you some of the side work if we knew you were gonna be early.”

    “Shut up, Ryan,” Sandy sneered back.  “Stuck me with the counter again.  Thanks.”

    “No problem,” Ryan said.  “Show up on time a little more often and maybe you’ll get some tables like a real serving wench next weekend.”

    “Oh, you’re so good to me,” she said, pulling the bus tray full of table settings over to the counter.  She placed a cylinder of silverware and rolled-up napkin at regular intervals on the red linoleum counter top.  Each roll went on a worn spot that corresponded to a round vinyl stool just out of sight from her side of the counter.  There were nine of them.  It was going to be difficult to earn pedicure money this morning.

    “Door’s open!” sang Jill as she unlocked the front door to let in the first rush of diners.  A young family of four—two weary looking parents and their totally wired toddlers—took a booth in Jill’s section.  A trio of young men, still loud and wobbly from Friday night’s pub-crawl, sat at one of Ryan’s tables.  Neither group was known for generous tips.

    “Maybe the counter’s not so bad,” Sandy mused as she watched Jill and Ryan put on their best ‘I’ll-be-your-server-today’ faces and greet their rowdy customers.

    The first of the counter customers came in—mostly old guys with newspapers who ordered coffee and egg sandwiches.  They never talked much, ordered much or tipped much.  Sandy plunked down egg sandwich plates, scooped up empty plates and handfuls of change and kept the coffee mugs filled.  

    To keep her mind occupied, she daydreamed about her few minutes on the beach between jobs: bikini, beach blanket and a spot just close enough to the lifeguard stand to allow some mutual checking out.  He would be blonde and muscular, with dark glasses, a whistle hanging around his neck, and looking for an excuse to come up to her.  Maybe she’d nick her toe on a seashell, and he’d come over to see if she was all right.  He’d get out the first aid kit, ignoring her protests that she was fine.  He’d hold her foot and gently bandage it, then he would let his eyes travel up her leg, along her body and rest on her face . . . But if she didn’t get a pedicure soon, he’d take one look at her shabby feet and toss her back in the water.
    Sandy dropped a stack of dirty dishes into a bus tray and gave up on her daydream.

    “Back to work,” she told herself.  “Maybe Mr. Lifeguard will come in here where he can’t see my toes.”  She snorted and looked up at the door as someone came in.

    He was one of the regulars who came in once or twice during the week and usually took a booth.  This morning, he appeared to be headed for the counter, since the booths were crowded with families chowing down before hitting the beach.

    “Nope, not a lifeguard,” Sandy thought as she pasted on a grin and welcomed him to Grandma’s-Griddle-Breakfast-Emporium-coffee-sir?

    He lifted his chin in a weak nod as he tucked his knees under the counter.  He must have been at least six-foot-three.  Sandy knew those stools couldn’t have been all that comfortable for him.  They were built almost fifty years ago, when the average height of a man was around five-eight.  No wonder he usually took a booth.  

    She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as she reached for a clean coffee cup.  Plain brown hair hung across his forehead, stuck out from behind his ears and on top of his head, as if he had just taken off the hood from his faded red sweat jacket.   He pushed a pair of 50’s style G-man glasses—the kind that look like instant eyebrows—further up his nose as he unfolded a copy of some literary magazine.  She assumed it was literary because of the absence of pictures and glossy pages.

    “Heavy reading?” she asked as she poured coffee into the cup.  

    “Not hardly,” he said, flashing the cover of a mystery magazine with an illustration of body slumped over a desk.  “I save the heavy reading for when I’m at work.
    “I’ll have the egg sandwich, please,” he added.

    “EGG SAMMIE!” Sandy shouted back to the kitchen.  “You have to read for work?” she said.

    “Only to keep from going crazy,” he answered.  “The beach gets pretty boring, day after day after day.”

    “Oh, you work at the beach,” Sandy said.  “Which one?”

    “Twenty-fifth Street,” he answered and stuck his nose back into his magazine.

    Sandy knew the beach.  It wasn’t far from the Breakfast Emporium.  She wondered if she had seen him at the rental shack at the end of the street, the one that rented green and white striped umbrellas and blue canvas beach chairs to the same families that were filling the booths this morning.

    The service bell in the pass through window rang.  “EGG SAMMIE UP!” bellowed the invisible cook as a meaty hand slid the plate onto the ledge.

    Sandy served the plate to her mystery-reading customer and continued chatting while she cleared plates and wiped down the counter.  She didn’t understand why she was wasting her time with a bookish rental grunt when there were blonde lifeguards on the beach, other than service was slowing down and she was just plain bored.  

    She found out that they both went to the same college, had totally different majors, his friends called him Buddy (and he would not reveal his given name under any circumstances) and he kept a fish tank in his rental unit, even though the landlady had forbidden pets of any kind.

    “If she’s not going to do anything about the ants and cockroaches, I think I’m entitled to a fish,” he said.  His cell phone rang and he fumbled to get it out of his jacket.

    “Okay,” he said into his hand.  “Give me twenty minutes.”  

He snapped the phone shut, reached into his pocket for some bills and crumpled them on the counter with his napkin.

    “That should cover it.  Gotta go to work,” he said.  “Someone called in sick.  More like hung-over, if it’s who I think it is.”

    He rushed out the door without his change or his reading material.  Sandy didn’t pick up the magazine until after she finished clearing the entire counter, just in case he came back for it, which he didn’t. She stuffed it in her bag.  She might see him on the beach later, if she could manage to get off at a decent time.  If no one comes in before one, she’d be good to go.

    “Why do I care about his dorky magazine?” she muttered to herself.  

    The breakfast rush was over and the few lunch customers that wandered in headed for the booths and tables.  She got a nod from Ryan to close the counter so she could change and get to the beach for an hour or two before showing up at the t-shirt shop.  

    She jammed her tip money into her bag.  It would be enough for a bottle of nail polish, but no pampering.   Some leftover bacon with peanut butter on an English muffin would do for lunch.  She grabbed a pint of milk from the cooler on her way out the door.

    “See you guys tomorrow!” she shouted over her shoulder as she headed for the beach.
    
    It felt good to be out in the sun after spending all morning in the mechanically cooled air of the diner.   Sandy walked quickly along the few blocks to the 25th St. beach, chewing her peanut butter and bacon sandwich and taking swigs of the milk to wash it down while it was still cold.  

As she passed the rental shack, she looked for Buddy so she could return his magazine but found a skinny blonde girl in a bikini top and cut off short shorts instead.   Of course, there was a string of rental shacks all up and down the beach run by the same company.  He probably got called to cover a different one today.

    “Well, it’s not like it’s valuable,” she said to herself.  “I’m sure he can get another.”

    Sandy kicked off her shoes and let her toes sink into the hot sand.  It was as good as a foot massage to let the sand work between her toes and wrap around her arches as she walked to a clear spot on the beach to spread out her towel.  There was one not far from the lifeguard stand.

    She pulled off her shorts and t-shirt and dropped them on top of her bag on her way to the surf.  Without stopping to test the water, she ran in until the water reached her knees.  She didn’t have to wait long for a wave to meet head-on.  She emerged on the other side of it shaking her now wet hair back from her face, blew the salt water from her lips and crouched down to ride the next wave in.  A quick dip was all she had time for if she was going to work on her tan as well.

    On her way back to her towel, she glanced up at the lifeguard stand for a glimpse of her blonde hunky hero.  She frowned as she saw that it wasn’t the regular muscle-bound bleached blonde.  This one was leaner, a little taller, and had darker hair that reflected natural golden highlights in the sun.  He wasn’t bad looking.  He had the dark sunglasses and the whistle and something . . . familiar.  He lifted his hand in a friendly wave.

    Sandy looked around her to see who it was he was waving to, but no one else seemed to be looking in his direction.  When she looked back, he pulled his glasses down and looked over them, directly at her.  Her mouth fell open.  She closed it quickly as she reached her blanket.

    Sandy fumbled in her bag while her heart pounding wildly.  He never actually said he worked at the rental shack, she reminded herself.  Once her pulse felt normal again, she grabbed the magazine and turned to look up at him.

    “Buddy!  Fancy meeting you here!” she said with a forced grin—inside she winced at her lame line.  “I, um, you left, ah . . . 
  "Here!” she finally blurted.  She thrust the magazine in his direction as she buried her toenails in the sand.

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