by Anne Pfeffer
A dark-haired counselor was bending over a table helping some kids. Her tempting backside snapped me to attention.
"Excuse me?" I said.
The girl looked up. Although my mellow exterior never faltered, my girl-finding sensors went on full alert.
Her eyes were like dark fudge, her lips like the cherry on a sundae. As she straightened up to meet me, we locked glances and my charm reflex kicked in. It was automatic with me, particularly when confronted with a girl like this one, with a perfect ass and lips you wanted to bite.
"Hi, I'm Travis." I amped up the smileage to about 80% of full operating capacity. Warmly interested, but not overeager.
"Hi." She gave me a look that managed to say you're hot and don't get your hopes up at the same time. The look of a true ballbuster.
"Did you need some help?" she said.
As I explained what I was looking for, I assessed the challenge before me. Most girls, even ones like this, would have had that funny half-smile going, would be touching their hair, nodding at everything I said. This girl just listened, not even trying to make an impression on me.
"You need to speak to the Camp Director." She called out to a nearby counselor, who had her back to us, a girl with an amazing long river of platinum ponytail.
“Zo? Can you manage for a minute? I'll take him over to Bob's office."
“No problem.” The girl waved without turning around.
Now we were getting somewhere. She could have just pointed me in the right direction. Giving me a personal escort to my destination had to mean something, didn't it?
Yet she was just walking along, not saying a thing, while I worked for it. "What's your name?" I asked.
"Kat."
Kat. What an awesome name, a name that put all kinds of ideas into your head. Kat was a girl who fought with you then gave you the greatest make-up sex of your life. A girl you laid down on her back and undressed little by little.
"What's your middle name?"
She gave me a doubtful double take, then seemed to decide I probably wasn't a hack saw murderer.
"It's Destiny."
For a split second I thought she meant us. I gave her what had to be this idiotic, shit-eating grin, looking deep into her eyes, which returned only polite disinterest. That's when I realized she meant her middle name.
"Destiny? Is your middle name?"
"Yes." She honored me with a smirk. "My parents like it, anyway."
"What's your last name?"
"Do you ever stop?"
"No. Not until I know every single one of your names."
She lowered her eyelashes and raised them. "Two are enough for one day," she said and dropped me at the Director's office door. When I came out ten minutes later, my request for employment had been blown off, and the beautiful Kat Destiny had gone home.
Peeping Toms
Our crew of misfits spent the next morning hacking bushes back from a fence that protected a cheesy imitation of the Taj Mahal. Some pompous ass called this monstrosity his home. By eleven o'clock, as my sweat poured and blisters broke open on my hands, the idea of fire taking the place down didn't seem so bad to me.
Rammer stretched his back and jerked his head toward the hillside. "Lunch time! You guys want to go scouting?"
"I'll pass." Brian was going home to his hot shower and his wife.
"Yeah, sure." Tiny was already following Rammer up the steep slope. We were above a row of large homes, all fenced, and backed up to the hillside. The thing was, the hillside angled up so sharply that only a minute of climbing took you high enough to look right over the tops of all those fences.
This was some security system these people had. They obviously hadn't earned their millions through the use of their giant intellects.
Rammer gazed across the fence through a pair of binoculars. "Aw right!" he said to Tiny, staring through the binoculars. "She's there."
Was this what they did at lunch every day? Spy into people's homes?
Tiny grabbed for the binoculars but Rammer fought him off. “Come on, baby!” he urged in a low voice. “Take it off!”
I looked down into the yard. By a lounge chair stood a woman who was rocking a red bikini. But not for long. As she peeled the top off, her fake, over-sized breasts sprang out like two beach balls.
"Awesome!” Rammer could hardly contain himself.
“Lemme see!” Tiny launched himself at the binoculars, wrenching them away. But the woman had dived into the pool, obscuring their view for the moment.
I ignored a low-lying sense of depression that I was fated to work daily with these two apparent cases of brain death. “I’m leaving.”
“I missed it!” Tiny pulled a joint from his pocket.
I couldn't believe it. Benny lectured us every day about the danger of fire on these dry hillsides, about how a spark from a chainsaw could set off a disaster if we weren’t careful. Smoking, needless to say, was forbidden.
"You remember what Benny said?" I tried to keep a mellow tone as Tiny took out a lighter and slung the joint into the corner of his mouth. “Dude. Be cool, okay?" I hooked my thumbs into my jeans pockets, slouching, coming across as laid-back when I really wanted to flatten him.
“Mind your own damn business,” Tiny said, his eyes turning narrow and almost yellow in color.
“If you incinerate half the county, it is my business.”
His mouth set in a tight line, Tiny slid the joint back into his shirt pocket. He caught Rammer's eye and shrugged, making me think those two had probably almost started many fires before in search of a high.
He wasn’t actually tiny, I couldn’t help but notice. Muscles bulged out of a stained undershirt, while his shaved head shone with sweat. I shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet, moving my shoulders around and stretching my fingers. In my current mood, I’d have welcomed a chance to kick the shit out of him.
“You had a good idea a minute ago,” he said. “Why don’t you just get the fuck outta here?”
“Oh, I plan to. But if I hear about any fire in these hills, I’ll report you for arson.”
While Tiny swore at me, I got in my car and drove away.
Over the Edge
Wondering how my life had sunk so low, I barreled the Chevy through Liberty Heights, making turns on instinct, following the path that some deep, buried part of my mind had chosen. I still had three god-forsaken hours of lunch left.
The Ridge Highway ran from Santa Alicia northeast through the mountains for about thirty miles. Gas prices being so high, I’d have to skip dinner tonight to pay for this drive, but I needed it. I attacked the curving, two-lane road with our car, hurtling into turns, wheels over the center line half the time, only pulling to the right when it was either that or a head-on collision.
I might have talked to myself, too, railing about landladies, deadbeats, and the prospect of living in a cardboard box. I was going way faster than the posted limits. Only a motorcyclist passed me, whipping by my side view mirror in a blur of orange shirt and vanishing before I even really saw him.
Each turn in the road looked out at hillsides brown from the scorching heat of this last summer and autumn—mountains of tinder, waiting to ignite.
As I came around a hairpin turn, two cars, crumpled and sitting at weird angles, blocked the road in front of me. I smashed on the brakes. My car screeched to a stop, and I jumped out. Hands shaking, I pulled out my cell phone.
"There’s been an accident," I told the 911 operator. I gave her everything I knew about our location, then signed off and ran to help.
The alarm on one of the cars blared at full volume—the sort of piercing wail that would turn even the mellowest person homicidal within seconds. The car's dazed owner was sitting on its trunk, yelling into his cell phone. "Hello? I can't hear you! Hello? Hello?" It didn't seem to occur to him to move away from the noise, or maybe turn off the alarm.
A door opened on the second car. From the driver's seat, a man tried to rise, then sat back do
wn, blood pouring from a wound on his forehead. His face was a color I'd never seen, a scary kind of pale I wouldn't have associated with anyone living. As I ran over to him, he sat, eyes closed, but lifted one hand enough to point to the cliff edge. “Motorcycle,” he said.
“There was a motorcycle?” Right now I was more worried about him. His paleness and all that blood were freaking me out.
He didn’t reply, leaning his head back as if exhausted, but managed to point again. That's when I saw a dark, ugly single skid mark extending from the crash site across the road to the cliff edge.
I whipped around toward a knot of people that had gathered. "Any doctors here? Or nurses?"
"I know some first aid," a woman offered, moving forward.
In one movement I stripped off my t-shirt and handed it to her. "See if you can stop his bleeding."
I ran across the road and looked down. The cliffside rose up a good five hundred feet to meet the road. At the bottom lay hundreds of sharp-edged boulders that looked small from here but had to be the size of refrigerators and small trucks. Closer to the top, the cliffside was barer, but still studded with rocky outcroppings. I didn't want to think about a person falling here among all those boulders and protruding stones.
I scanned the hillside below where the skid mark ended. Nothing. No motorcyclist.
Then I saw him. Or it, rather—the spot of bright orange from his shirt. He lay on a ledge maybe a hundred feet down.
I strained to see him, then yelled, screaming at the top of my lungs. "Can you hear me?"
No response.
I called to him again, and this time I was sure I saw him raise his head just a little.
My heart started a slow, heavy pounding in my chest. "Can you hear me?" I couldn't be sure, but something about the way he lay there made me think he could. "We're sending help," I yelled. "Don't worry! We're coming!"
In the distance, the sound of sirens, bringing me back to the cliff edge. The fire trucks were arriving. As they pulled in I ran up to them. A firefighter exited in full heavy gear, but moving fast anyway. He was maybe early-fifties, my dad's age.
"A guy went over the cliff!"
Frantic, I ran, as he and a younger guy followed me. Reaching the cliff edge, I pointed down. My relief at having finally gotten help made me almost dizzy.
I wondered how they could possibly get him up from there, but the two were already strapping on harnesses and clipping them to ropes that attached to the truck. I overheard fragments: "probably spinal injuries... need a helicopter... "
Awestruck, I watched the two firefighters go backwards over the edge, rappelling down the vertical face of the cliff. These were big, fit guys, but within less than a minute, they already looked small compared to the huge rocks and obstacles on this hillside. A miscalculation could have impaled them on sharp stones or crushed them against a ledge, but they moved steadily down, making it look easy.
I looked around to see paramedics tending to the injured man, while a police officer talked to the driver of the other car. Someone had shut off the car horn. I turned back to the rescue going on below me.
It was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen. I hung over the edge as far as I could stretch, staring as the two guys worked their way down to the cyclist. I could see them checking the guy over and talking into their radio. It seemed they were waiting with him until more help arrived. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be down there, dangling on skimpy ropes four hundred feet above a boulder-filled chasm.
The steady beat of a helicopter rose in the distance. Closer and closer the helicopter loomed, until it was practically in our faces, the noise from its blades pounding my ear drums. A door opened, and I watched the machine lower a guy with a stretcher board down on a cable that looked about as thick as a strand of spaghetti. Some moments later, it pulled them back up, the cyclist now securely strapped to the stretcher board.
The ropes hauled my two firefighters back up over the edge to safety.
"How is he?" I asked, thinking these were the two coolest dudes I'd ever met. I couldn't imagine being them, or anything like them.
"He was conscious and pretty scared," the younger one said. "We told him jokes to take his mind off things."
I'll bet he was scared. I looked at the firefighter, who wasn't that much older than me, in his early twenties. He whistled as he pulled off his harness. Seeing me watch him, he shot a hand out. "Garret Hale."
"Travis Walker." I shook his hand.
"So, Travis, you know any good jokes?"
At that moment, I'd have given anything to be able to fire off just the right one. Instead, I choked. "I'll have to get back to you on that."
"Fair enough." He slapped me on the back and moved on.
The older guy had wavy, dark hair, a big mustache, and a tan that gave new meaning to the term Perma-Baked. "Garret collects jokes. He gives out points for contributions."
I wished again I'd had one for him.
"Since you were asking what we did, we stabilized his head and neck and kept him secured to the ledge until the helicopter came," he told me.
I couldn't believe it. These guys were beasts. They acted like it was completely normal to spend part of an afternoon dangling four hundred feet above the ground to save an injured man's life. And telling jokes while they did it.
"That's really cool."
The guy gave me a big, broad smile. “I'm Officer Tripp Perkins, the battalion chief. We need to get a statement from you."
"All I did was call 911."
"Don't be modest," a lady said. It was the one who had done first aid with my t-shirt. "This kid helped take care of the injured," she said to Perkins."He spotted the cyclist, called for help…."
Perkins eyed me with interest. "Good work!"
"Here's your shirt." She handed me a blood-stained wad, her face glowing. "The paramedics said we saved that guy!"
"Awesome! But you did it."
"Because you told me to. And you gave the shirt off your back!"
We gave each other mental high fives. It was amazing to feel like I'd done something good, helped somebody.
I turned back to Perkins, who'd been listening to our conversation. "Will the motorcyclist be okay?" I asked.
Perkins gave a short nod. "He should be."
"Well," I said. "I guess I oughtta go." It was already three o'clock and I was going to be late for work.
"Travis, c'mere for a second!"
I followed Perkins back to his truck. I'd never seen a vehicle so clean, its paint so perfect, every switch and nozzle gleaming. If I didn't know better, I'd think these guys didn't actually fight fires, but instead just sat around painting and polishing their trucks.
Perkins handed me a flyer. The headline read, "Santa Alicia Fire Department, Station #1 Community Open House." It was a few days from now, this coming Saturday.
"Why don't you come by? I'll show you around the station."
"Thanks!" I nodded to the officer, feeling that for once I deserved the space I occupied on this planet, for a little while anyway. "Maybe I will."
Dropout
Ms. Val had called me three times, leaving messages. "Travis Walker, get your butt down to this school – fast."
She called my mother twice. "Mrs. Walker, are you aware that your son has not been to school for the last two days?"
When I didn't call Ms. Val back, she put the heat on Benny, who was married to Ms. Val's sister. Apparently, sisters stuck together, because when I pulled up to the work site, Benny was waiting for me, pacing back and forth in front of his battered truck, a backwards baseball cap on his head.
"Man, what are you doing to me?" he yelled. "No green enchiladas for me last night!" His eyes accused me. "They're my favorite."
I hoped green enchiladas were the only thing Benny wasn't getting. "I'm sorry, Benny. But, for now, I gotta work."
“You tell me you already graduate.”
“I told you I wanted to work full-time. I can’t go to school
right now.”
"Don't be stupid! A white boy knows the value of an education!" Benny believed the dream, that America was the land of opportunity. A Mexican immigrant, he now owned a home, and his daughter had just transferred to UCLA from Perdido Community College.
I kept my voice mild and polite. “I’ll graduate from high school. But right now, I need money, and if I can’t get it from you, I’ll have to work for somebody else.”
"Yeah, well, you lucky I need good workers.” Benny was yelling again. “You show some respect! You call Maria back and explain now!”
I pulled out my cell, knowing I couldn’t change my decision, because fate had made it for me. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to drop out, after all.
As I dialed Ms. Val, I saw Mom in my mind, drifting zombie-like around the apartment in an old t-shirt. Tomorrow was Friday, the deadline Mrs. M had given me for the rest of the overdue August rent.
"Mom's not working," I told Ms. Val as I looked up at the thickly overgrown hillside above me. "I have to work time-and-a-half to cover the bills until she gets better."
"How long will that be?”
I told Ms. Val I’d talk to Mom about it that evening, but she was asleep when I got home. Something had to be wrong with her, and the thought scared the crap out of me. Time to call DJ and head for Chick's with our fake IDs. I tried to have a good time, but knowing I was a futureless dropout made it hard for me to worship womanhood in my usual whole-hearted way.
To me, women were like snowflakes--each one different from the others, but equally interesting and desirable. The minute you met one with a sexy whisky voice and a great ass, you'd find another with sea-green eyes and a wicked sense of humor. Some had warm, satiny skin; some hot, luscious lips; some perfect round bellybuttons. Deliciously curving breasts and legs, thighs you could bite into like a marshmallow.
I liked them all. But the memory of Kat was cramping my style at Chick's tonight. That girl was hotter than a sidewalk in July. After seeing her, no one else seemed really all that great.
At first, anyway.
After some shots and a couple of pep talks to myself, a few of the women around me began to look attractive. A redhead named Suki did the honors, taking me up to the roof of her four-story apartment building, where we smoked weed and did it on top of an old sleeping bag. I thought I loved her for about an hour. Then she wanted to hang over the edge of the roof naked and throw peanut M&Ms on cars as they drove by, and I got the hell out of there.