I’ve leathered the bottoms of my feet on summer asphalt. I’d
walk from my car to the pool deck barefoot. The whole swim season I never saw a
single shoe. Sure, every May I’d buy flip-flops and five pairs of cheep shades.
Sunglasses seemed to appear when I needed them – in my glove-box or in the
pocket of discarded shorts or hanging of the neck of my shirt, but flip-flops
only appeared one at a time and I didn’t like how they rubbed between my toes.
-Mark, it’s seven forty-five.
Everyone called me Mark, even though that wasn’t my name.
When they asked me, that’s what I said, as a joke. I thought they would say
Mark Who? And then I’d be like Mark Spitz. And if they still didn’t get it, I
would say You Know like the swimmer, but no one said anything so it just stuck.
-We had to pull the tarps without you.
When I first started working here every conversation I had
with Amy made me feel like a real weirdo. I still feel it now, when she’s
frustrated with me for being late even though we talked about this last week
and I said I would work on it. The funny thing is, the more I work with Amy I’m
convinced she’s the weirdo. On lunch I’ll like to enjoy a book under this one
shady tree, and she’ll just come up to me and start telling me about her family
and how they don’t give her enough space and how she used to have bouts of
depression but now takes medication. At first I wondered if she was hitting on
me, but I don’t think so. Because that would be the worst way to go about it.
-I thought we talked about this.
