Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle by Ben English Page B

sweeping fine, pale arcs of mist across the meandering footpaths.
    Any minute now.
    Garret had been manning the till at the front counter a few days ago when the woman had first come to the pool. An older guard, a college guy named Tommy, had nudged Garret aside when she stepped up to the counter and asked if a week’s pass to the pool still cost ten dollars. Even Tommy had swallowed before he could reply, though Garret had to hand it to the older guard; he’d recovered far better than Garret had. His brain felt like a movie projector that had run out of film and left the ragged end of celluloid flapping noisily against its own apparatus.
    She’d been wearing loose shorts and an old Berkeley sweater, but that hadn’t been the kicker. Days later, when he tried to recall the exact details of the woman’s features, he was left with only a vague impression of a tanned face framed by hair that looked like liquid gold. What lodged in his mind’s eye most firmly; the memory that reached out and shook him nearly every time he’d thought of her since, were the woman’s eyes. She’d looked at Garret over Tommy’s shoulder as the older guard had begun to turn on the charm, had winked when Tommy looked away briefly to check his hair or whatever in a nearby mirror.
    What cobalt did for the color blue, her eyes did for green. Even that dusty morning, in the washed-out blue of the pool building’s office, she had been luminous.
    Garret remembered the feeling of his cheeks beginning to burn, and he quickly busied himself with counting quarters in the change drawer. He noticed in passing as the other lifeguard explained the pool’s hours that he’d tightened his own pecs and stomach the instant the woman had walked in.
    Tommy had finished his baritone rendition of the pool’s features and paused, trying himself for eye contact before delivering the punch line. “So if you’re new in the area I could maybe show you around town. Forge isn’t that big, but we’ve got a lot to offer in local color, y’ know?”
    She’d begun to fill out the application form as he’d spoken, smiling faintly to herself. She kept Tommy there at the counter until he’d begun to fidget. Garret couldn’t tell how old she was, he realized. She looked to be close to Tommy’s age, maybe a year or two older.
    “So what about it,” Tommy said. “Want to get some coffee or something?”
    Those green eyes flashed up again, sparkling. She smiled as she handed back the clipboard. “Thanks, but I don’t date lifeguards anymore.”
    Then she’d paid her bill and left, Tommy still leaning against the countertop.
    As soon as she’d turned the corner they both had lunged for the clipboard on which her application lay. “Definitely not a local,” Tommy said. “Idaho couldn’t be so lucky.”
    She was staying with her cousin, Diane Bergstrom. Garret’s neighbor, and a pool regular for years. She’d left a number for a satellite phone, proof positive of her exotic nature. And the name at the top of the application for a week’s pass to the Forge pool was like something off a movie poster.
    Mercedes Adams.
    And just like that, Garret had learned to love the early morning shift at the pool. He watched, rapt, as she appeared out of the trees, jogging evenly across the manicured grass. She scorned the footpaths, but always approached the pool from the same route, apparently choosing the steepest path up the little hill towards the entrance. She ran in blue cotton shorts and a matching tank, her hair pulled back in a thick ponytail, bouncing loosely against a small backpack. She doesn’t know how good she looks, he thought.
    She slowed to a walk and circled the fence once, breathing deeply. Garret heard the hollow slap-slap of her steps on the wooden deck that wound from the parking lot into the locker rooms.
    The Fish kids–only two boys and a girl, but loud enough for a crowd of ten--ran out onto the deck. Howling from the cold cement, they