Zero-Turn Radius (1/3)
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The roll up door clangs loudly when Spencer pulls it open. The square of early morning sunlight is pale on the concrete floor of the garage/office and Gerard is on the phone, making faces that the person on the other end will never see, and doodling a picture of someone being impaled by a forklift.
“No, I get it Debora,” Gerard says and wrinkles his nose in a sort of half-smile, half grimace in Spencer’s direction. Debora’s bird-like voice screeches down the line. Spencer maybe catches something about a football and a tutu, but then Gerard is pinching his eyebrows together and saying it won’t happen again.
“Gabe was working by himself again last night,” a voice near the ceiling says.
Spencer jumps. Vicky is on the schedule for that day (Spencer always looks because he doesn’t like surprises. Surprises involving Vicky and Gabe don’t often end pleasantly), but he hadn’t seen her in the office area yet. The yellow stripes of her extremely reflective, extremely Safety-Committee-approved t-shirt are glowing, but Spencer thinks with a shudder that her teeth might be brighter, white in her smile against the shadows on top of the lockers where she’s perched.
“Um,” says Spencer and tries to ignore her gleeful grin as he busies himself with stowing his lunch in the fridge and rubbing sunscreen on his nose. Gerard makes a pained expression and waves his hand in their direction, a gesture that says “I can’t hear the blood-sucking harpy from head office yelling at me; please shut up.” Debora is still flipping out. Spencer can hear her all the way across the room.
Vicky jumps down from above the lockers. Her steel-toed boots are done up tight, all the way to the top eyelets. She winks at Spencer before tugging on her work gloves and grabbing a litter rake and heading out into the dewy grass to pretend to clean up the public’s mess.
+++
The summer staff at the park begins working in waves. The park attendants are the first to arrive, raking up the leaves that still cling damply where the terrain dips and that gather in the corners of the buildings. Spencer likes the park best when it’s quiet and empty, and the mornings are still cool enough to make his nose tingle and run.
The snack bar starts opening soon after, though just on nights that baseball or soccer plays, and then on Saturdays when people begin bringing their children down for picnics. It’s still cool in the mornings, when the snack bar staff starts filing down to the park in their stripy shirts and ice-cream stained khaki pants. By mid-summer, they’ll be open every day.
Ryan tips his hat down over his eyes. He’s got a collection of scarves around his neck even though it’s beginning to warm up outside. He’s glaring at the grill pit where a tall guy with a bandana wrapped around his leg is bobbing his head to music no one else can hear.
“Spencer,” he says when Spencer sits across the picnic table and digs into his lunch bag for his sandwich. “Spencer, Bob gave Bill Beckett a job. Bill Beckett, Spencer.”
Spencer turns to study the guy. He looks harmless enough, even if he is trying to juggle the knife, the grill tongs and a raw hotdog. Or well, as harmless as anyone working in the park ever is.
“You know each other?” Spencer asks when Bill Beckett drops the hotdog and Bob appears out of nowhere to scowl. Bill Beckett does not appear intimidated, which, okay, is probably an indicator of insanity or maybe just sheer stupidity. Spencer thinks it might be a combination of the two.
Ryan shrugs and returns to his lunch which consists of a yogurt and an apple. He once claimed yogurt was good for low weight maintenance and that fruit had all sorts of natural sugars. Spencer called Ryan a huge girl and then shoved him into a wall. It was a win-win situation. Now, Spencer drips mayo down his chin from his turkey sandwich and licks at the crumbs clinging to his lips. “He was in my history of modern languages class,” Ryan says and sets about delicately cutting his apple into quarters and then eighths.
“Right,” Spencer says and moves on to his brownie. He doesn’t question Ryan, just sits with the sun at his back and Ryan across the table from him and enjoys the half hour they both have before Spencer has to return to pruning and ignoring his co-workers, and Ryan has to return to giving guided tours to bored Scout groups and deaf old people who contradict him at every display.
+++
Ryan works at the community museum, which is located in the middle of the park, oddly enough. It’s not a real museum. It doesn’t have a security guard or laser motion detectors with grates the slam down if someone breaks into one of the display cases (the only real display case they have proudly contains a necklace made with a lock of hair. No one is going to steal that). It does have a little guy with lots of hats and a shy smile that goes around and fixes the windows the local kids break on a daily basis and who sometimes weeds the gardens around the front.
It’s a good summer job for Ryan. Spencer had tried once to get Ryan into the other jobs at the park. Gerard owes him a favour and even Ray kind of loves Spencer in ridiculous amounts because Spencer cleans up the broken beer bottles on the pool deck and helps him chase down the hooligans who like to spray paint dirty words on the side of the change building. Ryan wrinkled his nose at both suggestions though and had gone an entire summer answering telephones and filing his nails in some downtown dentist office before Gerard’s brother Mikey suggested the museum.
Ryan loves it.
For Spencer, it means that they can ride the bus together on days Spencer works the morning shift. More importantly, though, it means that when Spencer gets invited to awkward and boring work parties, he’s not standing alone in the corner, waiting for the perfect moment to slip out and still be able to claim utter drunkenness the next morning (he also spends a great deal of time at these parties avoiding Gabe, who can’t seem to grasp to concept that not everyone wants to make out with him). Spencer kind of hates these parties.
+++
“So, whose party is this?”
Ryan is sipping a ginger ale, eyeing the crowd of people littered across someone’s backyard. There’s a fountain along the far side. It bubbles and gurgles and there’s a splash when Bill Beckett falls in some time near midnight.
Spencer shrugs. He’s never been to this house before. Last year, everyone usually just crowded in Ryland’s backyard, but he had gone to the east coast for school in the fall and hadn’t returned in the spring. There were rumours of an elicit love affair with someone named Alex, but Spencer suspects these rumours originated with Gabe, and he’s had an unhealthy obsession with the number of Alexes working at the snack bar this year so Spencer doubts its validity.
Spencer snags an unopened Coke from the cooler at his feet and watches Gabe molest the littlest Alex. Vicky wanders past, wearing a t-shirt that goes past her knees and flip-flops that slide off her feet with every step. By the fountain, Bill Beckett is shaking his hair, while Greta laughs and then hands him a High School Musical towel.
“Um,” someone says at Spencer’s elbow. Spencer jerks and manages to slop Coke over his hand. He hadn’t known anyone had noticed them lurking in the shadows. The same voice chuckles and then someone’s warm hand is rubbing clumsily at Spencer’s, only managing to smear the sticky stain further up his wrist instead of wiping it off.
“So, my clothes have disappeared,” the guy says when he finally releases Spencer’s hand. Ryan makes a choking little wheeze beside Spencer, and that’s when Spencer looks down and realizes this new guy is only wearing a pair of grey boxer briefs.
“Um,” Spencer says. The guy laughs again.
“Apparently I’m really bad at strip beer pong. But I kind of need at least my pants back.” He palms the back of his neck and ducks his head so that he’s looking at them from under his eyelashes. “A girl has them. About this tall. Cute?”
Spencer darts a glance at where Vicky is beating Bill Beckett with an over-large flipflop, and still managing to appear disaffected by everything. Her t-shirt falls off one-shoulder. One of the Alexes makes the mistake of adjusting it, and then he’s on the receiving end of the sandal-abuse.
The almost-naked guy follows Spencer’s eyes. “Oh, hey, there she is!” He watches her for a second. When he seems to be done, he turns and gives a sloppy, slightly drunk grin to Spencer and Ryan. “I’m Jon,” he says, and then weaves around the overturned lawn chairs and the pile that turns out to be a different Alex and some guy Spencer doesn’t know.
“So um,” Ryan says quietly, and long fingers are clutching at Spencer’s elbow, tight enough to hurt. Spencer tips his head and watches Jon talking to Vicky. It’s a quiet conversation, and neither of them flails or jumps around, or tries to kill the other and that’s something. Vicky, however, appears to be unrelenting and Jon seems reluctant to throw her in a headlock and pry the clothes from her, unlike Gabe, who has no qualms about it at all.
“Yeah, that was weird,” Ryan says. Another little guy Spencer doesn’t know bounces over and climbs on Jon’s back and makes victory arms until they both fall over. Vicky kicks Gabe in the shins. Bill Beckett snags the sandals and jumps back in the fountain. Spencer pointedly doesn’t raise his eyebrow or cock out his hip.
“Yeah, yeah,” Spencer says quietly. “They are definitely weird.”
+++
+++
Everyone is hung over at work the next day. Spencer maybe feels a little smug as Gabe whimpers through the loud roar of the phone ringing on its lowest volume. Vicky is more subtle about her horrific pain, but she still gives death glares to everyone who speaks louder than a whisper, and there’s a drawing pinned on Gerard’s bulletin board of a stick person being run over by a lawn mower. Gerard looks at it, takes it down and hands it to Spencer.
“We’ll stay away from Vicky today,” he says, already drawing a more accurate version, complete with blood spurts and a horrified expression on the decapitated figure’s face. “You want to go help Ray with the pool? They’re getting ready to open it.”
Spencer does not want to help with the pool. Helping with the pool involves a lot of standing around on the deck with the sun beating down on his neck while Greta checks the water slide and Ray makes sure the filter is covered securely and everyone tries to make awkward small talk with him. It also involves a lot of keeping Gabe on the other side of the fence so that he doesn’t run through the wet paint marking out the edges of the deep end.
“Okay,” Spencer says and spares one last glance at Gerard’s improved drawing. He doesn’t think there would be that much blood if someone actually got caught in the blades, but he’s not about to try it. It’s with a sigh that he trudges across the park to where the lifeguard chairs stand sentry over an empty pool.
He’s expecting Greta to be waiting for him at the gate with both a smile and an expectation of some sort of heart-felt chat. She’s not. It’s someone else, someone Spencer has only seen once before, and then he was mostly naked.
“Oh,” Spencer says and Jon grins.
+++
Greta is, as expected, fiddling with the slide. She’s already checked the fibreglass for snags and breaks and now she’s working on the screws. Ray, however, is not doing the filter. He’s standing by the pool toys with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s also staring down a tiny version of himself.
“Um,” Spencer says, when Jon pats him on the back and hops into the pool to do what Ray usually does. Ray glances up, gives a half wave and then his attention is back on the kid in front of him.
“This,” Ray says without looking at Spencer, “is Ian.”
Ian also doesn’t look at Spencer, but he doesn’t look nearly as trepid as Ray. In fact, he looks positively delighted, if his huge smile is anything to go by. Ray’s mouth twitches downward and Ian tucks his grin away until his face is blank and stony. Spencer would believe it if it weren’t for the betraying twinkle in Ian’s eyes.
“Okay. Two new lifeguards this year?”
Ray flaps a hand. Ian’s eyes follow the movement. Jon pads around the bottom of the pool. It’s he that answers. He’s crouched over the filter with the pool’s mismatched toolkit spread out over the blue painted concrete. “That new housing development nearby,” he says and it’s muffled even though it still seems to echo in the empty pool. “More kids, more lifeguards.” He finishes and dusts his hands off on his swim shorts.
Spencer is about to ask if he can help in any way when a shadow spills over the edge of the pool to fall crookedly along the side. “Hey Spence.” It’s Greta. She’s in a swimming suit too, and her little cotton shorts hang low on her hips. There’s a tiny piece of skin high on her hip, where the leg of her suit is above the waist of her shorts and Spencer remembers what it felt like under his hands…“My face is up here,” she says, laughing gently and then promptly ignores Spencer’s blush at being caught looking. “I need help with the diving board and Ray’s a little distracted at the moment.”
“Nff,” Ray says. Ian bites down a grin. The stare-down continues.
+++
“So,” Greta says, when Spencer is getting ready to let himself out of the pool enclosure for lunch.
“So,” Spencer says and cocks a hip. Ray is in the lifeguard office, working on paperwork or something. Ian’s hanging around the closed door playing air guitar and glancing up every few seconds as if Ray would somehow slip out and past him without Ian noticing.
Greta sighs. “Spencer,” she says. Spencer knows. He doesn’t want it to be weird or anything either. He lets his eyes drift past her and all that smooth skin on display, the delicate lines of her neck, the gentle swell of her breasts. He pretends he doesn’t know what it feels like against his fingertips and instead focuses on Jon who’s setting up his lunch on the deck and dangling his feet into the empty pool.
“Yeah,” Spencer says. He’s going to be late for lunch and Ryan’s going to be furious. “I’ll just…I’ll be back after lunch to help with the drains? Probably?” He shifts so that the tilt of his hips changes. It feels less angry-jilted-pre-teen-emo to him. It probably doesn’t look any different to Greta. Or maybe it does.
“You’ll find someone new,” she says and her hand hovers over his crossed arms before falling away as though touch would maybe remind him of what he can’t have anymore. “Someone better for you than me.”
It’s a lie, but Spencer doesn’t call her on it. It’s not ill-intentioned and maybe one day he’ll be able to look at her and not miss what he never should have had in the first place. He glances at her face once more before turning and fleeing...right into a sweaty and dirty Gabe.
“Dude,” he hears through the ringing in his ears. “I totally wedged the z-turn between two trees and now you need to get it out before Vicky cuts off my very essential man parts. Don’t make me lose a part of my soul.” Spencer doesn’t have to think about it when he follows Gabe to where the lawn mower is, in fact, stuck between a couple of trees, but also happens to be half-way disassembled. It takes Spencer the rest of the day to put it back together, and if it takes longer than necessary, he doesn’t think about that too much either.
+++
“Patrick found that Jon kid lurking around the museum garden yesterday after work.”
Spencer looks up from reading the graffiti on the back of the seat in front of him. The bus rattles past the lady with the stroller who had just gotten off.
“Yeah?”
Ryan nods and picks at his scarves. He’s back to wearing the fingerless gloves, but Spencer had been able to talk him out of the flock of birds he wanted to paint down his cheek that morning.
“Yeah. The one from the party last week. The naked guy.”
“Half naked.” It’s a correction, but at the same time it’s not. Ryan doesn’t comment and just taps his fingers against the metal pole beside them.
“And he was with the creeper that’s always pestering Patrick. The guy with the hoodies?”
Spencer has never actually seen hoodie-guy. He has, however, heard lots about him. He nods. Ryan doesn’t continue. Spencer picks at the plastic covering on the seat until the little crack isn’t so little.
“Jon’s a lifeguard,” Spencer says at last and ignores Ryan’s “I know” until Ryan knocks their knees together.
“Jon’s totally cute,” Ryan says before the bus gets to their street. “You should go for it. I mean, yeah he’s friends with creepy hoodie-guy, but he’s also pretty hot.”
Spencer presses his knee against Ryan’s. “Yeah maybe,” he says. He doesn’t mean it and Ryan knows it but neither of them says anything else about it. Instead, Ryan digs his fingers into Spencer’s arms and starts a tirade about Bill Beckett who was showing some new kid the ropes today and managed to set the grill on fire.
“Seriously, Spence,” Ryan says with his eyes huge and his mouth set in an angry line. “The flames were huge. That poor kid almost lost his eyebrows.”
Spencer tries not to laugh, and then tries not to laugh any harder when Ryan punches him in the arm. “Yeah, okay, whatever, dude,” Ryan grumbles but he is still smiling around his fake frown when he pulls the bell to request a stop.
+++
+++
There’s a kid sitting on the pavement outside the work office when Spencer arrives in the morning. He’s plugged into his iPhone and bobbing his head to the music that spills out of his earbuds and into the early morning air.
“Uh,” Spencer says, and tries to edge around the guy without actually touching him. He’s got a sort of raggedy beard going, like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his hoodie is on inside out. The kid doesn’t acknowledge Spencer.
“Hey, can you just…shift over?” Spencer says, this time louder. He’s ten minutes early for work, but Gabe’s working the evening shift and it’s Vicky’s day off, so Spencer kind of wants to get in there before Gerard accidentally sets fire to the place or something. The kid changes the song to something a little dancier and kicks his legs out in front of him.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Spencer grumbles, and yanks the earbud cord closest to him. The kid yelps and flails and falls over onto his unzipped backpack, accidentally getting his elbow stuck in the tangle of clothes leaking out.
“I need in that door,” Spencer says, grumpily and taps his foot while he waits for the kid to gather himself up enough to slide out of the way. The kid doesn’t move.
“You’re that Spencer guy,” the kid says, and his eyes go wide for a second. “Alex says you like, never talk to anyone unless you have to. He says you’re like, some sort of repressed emo guy who’s just getting angrier and angrier at the world until one day you just snap and, Bam! Blow us all away with your sawed off rifle thing.” When he finishes, he’s watching Spencer not with fear, but with a sort of morbid adoration.
Spencer shifts uncomfortably. “I talk to Ryan,” he says and shuffles around, hoping the kid gets the point. “And the lifeguards.”
The kid scrambles to his feet, but unfortunately does not seem to notice Spencer’s burning desire to get past him. His bag is still unzipped and a pant leg dangles out. “Dude,” he says. “You totally don’t ever, Alex said.” He pauses and then gets really close to Spencer’s face, squinting and then poking him in the nose. “And you never denied being the guy who’s going to come in and wipe us all out.”
Spencer stares.
“Awesome,” says the guy and then sticks his hand out to shake. “I’m Cash. I’m having a work party this Friday. You should totally come and like, be social so you don’t snap before your plans to kill that Gabe guy are fool-proof.”
Spencer blinks. Cash is moving now, dusting off his jeans and turning to wander down the path that leads to the lookout over the creek. “You don’t even work here,” Spencer says, but his voice is weak. He feels like he just had a conversation in Latin.
Cash spins around to walk backwards a few steps. He grins before giving Spencer his back once more. “My house, Friday night!” he calls and disappears around the corner.
+++
Gerard is flapping his hands a little when Spencer pushes into the office. His hair is messy, like he’s been pulling at it or maybe didn’t brush it before coming into work, or this week at all. There’s a guy Spencer doesn’t know sitting in Gerard’s usual chair - the one with all the padding picked out of the arm and the questionable stain down the back.
“Um, this is Joe?” Gerard says and his eyes flicker frantically around the office. Spencer stares at Joe. Joe stares back for all of three seconds before grinning wide and lazy.
“Is he always this overwhelmed?” Joe says and laughs when Spencer wrinkles his forehead. “I’m new. They sent me over from the gardening crew downtown.”
Gerard makes a little noise in the back of his throat. It might be Japanese for “Debora is sending over her minion spies because she doesn’t think I’m a capable foreman, what am I going to do?” It could also be Gerard’s not-so sudden profound lack of vocal acuity kicking in. Joe raises his eyebrow.
“Debbie’s on a ‘redistribution of employees’ rampage,” Joe says and then leans toward Spencer conspiratorially. “I kind of convinced her that the new housing development called for more park staff. I’m a genius, aren’t I?”
Spencer looks at Gerard, who is flailing at the supply locker and throwing various pairs of new work gloves onto the desk, followed by different styles of safety glasses he keeps on hand because Vicky won’t wear anything but her brand, and Gabe switches daily to match the color of his shoelaces (which he also changes daily but never bothers to tie up).
“Um,” Spencer says, and Joe waggles his eyebrows at him.
“Yeah, I am totally the smartest genius ever. This is the best place to work in the entire city. You should bow to my brilliance.”
Gerard shoves a pair of ear muffs at Joe, along with a hardhat, which Joe takes with a quirk of his mouth. “Do you own chainsaw pants? I should make sure you have chainsaw pants,” Gerard says and scampers off somewhere, leaving Spencer with a grinning Joe.
“There’s a party on Friday,” Spencer says at last and hands Joe the training books for the riding lawn mowers and their Madvac. “Um, Cash’s house? I think?”
“Cool, cool,” Joe says and smiles again, bobbing his head excitedly. Spencer tries his best not to groan outwardly.
+++
Ryan is busy picking apart the crust of his sandwich. It’s white bread, - the kind that just sort of melts unpleasantly in Spencer’s mouth and tastes a little like glue - but Spencer is willing to take any number of baby steps if it means Ryan will start eating real food. Their picnic table today is peeling and old, hiding behind the office where the public doesn’t usually venture. The grain of the wood grates against Spencer’s palm.
“So, Bill Beckett tried to have a hotdog sword fight with the new kid,” Ryan says and takes a nibble of his jam sandwich. He wrinkles his nose and sets it aside in favour of slicing his peach into tiny bite-sized pieces. “And the new kid just, like, laughed and played along. Seriously, Spence. Seriously.”
Spencer stabs at his cold steak, left over from supper the night before.
“And then one of the Alexes totally jumped in and saved the new guy’s virtue. Because Bill Beckett is a big virtue stealer.” Ryan has peach juice dripping down his chin. He dabs at it daintily with his napkin, and then waits patiently for Spencer to say that Bill Beckett was, in fact, behaving less than admirably.
The bench beside Spencer dips a little, before he has a chance to reply, and then Ryan’s eyes are narrowing.
“So, the gossip is that you hate everyone at work,” Jon says as though he isn’t interrupting anything, and settles further into his new place beside Spencer, like an invitation had actually been extended to him. Someone is lurking just behind him, vibrating and twitching. “Hi, I’m Jon,” he says to Ryan. “We met the last week.” Surprisingly, Ryan lets Jon shake his hand and even refrains from making some snarky reply about dirty fingernails or the lingering smell of chlorine (he does hand Jon his little bottle of hand sanitizer, which Jon takes with an easy grin).
“You were naked the last time I saw you,” Ryan says flatly. The guy behind Jon barks out a surprised laugh and then bounces around to sit beside Ryan. His snack bar uniform is bright and painful in the sun.
“Half naked,” Spencer says.
“Dude, dude, when that chick stole his clothes?” the other guy says, and jiggles his leg until it shifts across the dirt under the table and bumps against Spencer’s, where it continues to vibrate. “Dude, that was epic. He had to wear my hoodie home!”
Ryan stares. Spencer tightens his hand around his fork.
“Lavender is my color, Bren, what can I say?” Jon says, laughing. He’s unpacking a lunch of crackers and cheese and what looks like leftover vegetable lasagna.
The other guy (Bren?) smirks and then pulls half of Jon’s lunch toward him. “It totally is Jon Walker. It totally is.”
+++
Spencer ends up training Joe for the rest of the week. He plans on starting out slow with the handheld equipment and then moving on to the riding machines. It’s Friday morning and Spencer had worked Gabe’s Thursday night shift because Gabe “had this thing, dude, that I can’t miss because Vicky-T can be vicious when I miss things that I can’t miss.” Spencer is tired and Joe has almost decapitated the marble statue in the fountain for the fourth time in an hour.
“Maybe, uh, maybe we should go back to the hoe and the rake?” Spencer says, and pries the gas hedge trimmer from Joe’s hand. Joe bobs his head placidly and sits on the ledge surrounding the fountain. His foot taps an idle rhythm against the gas can Spencer had the foresight to bring with them.
Joe is watching Mikey and Ryan, who in turn are standing on the front steps of the museum studying the new sign Patrick had put up the night before. ‘Space Odysie Rox’ is spray painted cheerfully across the operating hours. It’s pink. It’s kind of hard to miss.
“So, the rake?” Spencer says, and Joe actually giggles and swings his head around to smile up at Spencer lazily.
“Dude, I was on the gardening crew,” he says and the words are slow. “I’ve used a rake. I’m also pretty handy with a hoe.” He pauses to pick at the chainsaw pants Gerard had given him that morning and had insisted he wear despite there not being any chainsaws in the tool closet. Spencer folds his arms across his chest.
Across the park, beyond where Patrick has joined Ryan and Mikey in staring down the vandalized sign, Bill Beckett is building a fort from the little wooden french-fry forks. The new guy, Bren, is laughing and bouncing on his toes, and occasionally adding a straw to Bill Beckett’s creation.
“So,” Joe says, and stretches out to trace his fingers through the water. Spencer narrows his eyes but doesn’t comment about the sign asking park patrons to keep hands and feet (and bodies) out of the fountain.
“So,” Spencer says.
Joe grins.
+++
The last thing Spencer has to do before going home for the day (and he doesn’t have to be in again until Sunday night when women’s soccer needs the lights turned on over the field) is collect the garbage the lifeguards have put out from the change rooms and chuck them in the big garbage bin. The Gator rumbles and creaks, because Debora won’t spring the cash for a new one, no matter how many times Gabe has snapped the axle or dented the roll bar. Greta’s with Ian, when Spencer rattles up to the back door. A few kids from the swimming pool look up, but Jon’s admonishment to “use the bathroom, please, if you have to pee. I can see you, you know” draws their attention and mostly it’s just Greta, Ian and Spencer staring at each other over a small pile of garbage bags.
“Hey, Spence,” Greta says and it’s gentle and careful. He looks away from the smile that curls around her mouth. He pretends he can’t see the softness in her eyes. He focuses on Ian, who’s kicking at one of the black bags with a sandaled foot and watching Ray, who’s prowling the pool deck in his supervisor tank top and bright red swimming trunks.
“Yeah,” Spencer says. His hands itch in the gloves he’s wearing, and he hefts the first bag into the back of the Gator. It’s light, - probably filled entirely with paper towel and Band-Aids - and when he reaches for the second one, Greta’s already tossing it in with the first.
“I got it,” he snaps. Ian sucks in a breath, quick and sharp, and manages to pull his gaze from where Ray’s berating some kid for pushing some other kid off the diving board.
“Dude,” he says, and his eyes flicker between Spencer and Greta, wide and surprised. “Dude,” he says, and Greta waves her hand at him dismissively.
Spencer throws the last bag into the Gator. He doesn’t look at either of them. His face burns hot. His eyes burn too, but from something entirely different, and he bites his lip and stares across the park to where Patrick is scrubbing at the vandalized sign in front of the museum.
“I’ll see you tonight?” Greta asks, and doesn’t punctuate the question by touching his arm like she used to do often. Spencer doesn’t answer. He looks at Ian, who’s now waving cheerfully at Ray (who is pointedly ignoring him) through the fence enclosing the pool. “Spencer,” she says. “Tonight?”
Spencer climbs back into the Gator, feeling it vibrate awake as he turns the key. For a moment the engine growls too loudly; it’s going to die again and Gerard will have to explain to Debora why they can’t keep it functioning for more than two weeks at a time. “Tonight,” he says finally and pushes on the gas pedal before Greta has a chance to reply.
+++
Joe’s happily hacking at the garden when Spencer drives past him on his way to the garbage bin. Joe waves lazily and kills a daisy with more enthusiasm than Spencer’s seen him display so far. Gabe is watching contemplatively and twirling a blade of grass between his teeth. Spencer hopes Joe doesn’t give Gabe the hoe, and doesn’t look over his shoulder to see if he should be worried. He has less than half an hour and then he’s free until Sunday night. He’s mentally running through the list of things he and Ryan can do on Saturday night, and he’s at making candles (because Ryan likes that sort of thing for some reason. Spencer doesn’t ask questions) and watching old Three Stooges episodes, when he pulls up next to the bin and kills the Gator engine.
He tosses the first bag up and over the side, holding his breath the whole time because it was Vicky’s turn to clean the rotting bits that somehow ended up outside the bin and that means there are more maggots and less cleaning than usual. He doesn’t hear the muffled protest until he throws in the second bag.
“Um,” Spencer says and freezes. He hears it again, this time coupled with rustling and a large clang as though someone is kicking the wall of the bin, from the inside. “Hello?” He feels foolish. He feels ridiculous. It’s a racoon or a seagull or a cat. Maybe a squirrel. But squirrels don’t curse and he’s pretty sure a racoon would not be returning his tentative greeting with actual words.
“Oh, oh!” someone says from inside the bin, and Spencer takes an involuntary step backwards. “Someone’s there! Someone, finally! Thank God.”
Spencer twitches. He still has the last garbage bag to throw in, and it dangles from his gloved fingertips.
“Are you stuck?” he asks, and then wants to punch himself in the face, because of course the person is stuck. There’s a grunt in reply and more scrabbling at the sides. “Okay, okay, hold on,” he says and scans the area. There’s a ladder they keep there, for the expressed purpose of when Gabe throws his keys in the bin by accident. The person in the bin has not been trained on ladders, Spencer is sure. Debora was very instant that no one use one until trained properly - something about injuries and lawsuits. Spencer briefly considers going through the various parts (this is the foot, this is a step) and maybe a quick safety run-through (three points of contact at all time, if you need to move it get off, don’t try to hop it over while still on. That leads to ladders tipping over and then inevitable injuries, just ask Gabe).
“I think there are rats in here,” the voice says and Spencer ignores safety rules and tips the ladder over the side. A second later, a head of messy brown hair pops into view and then bright smiling eyes. “Hi!” Bren says and scrambles out of the bin. There’s a banana peel on his shoulder, running perpendicular to the stripes of his snack bar shirt.
“Dude,” Bren says and hops on the ground and tugs valiantly on the ladder until Spencer helps him pull it out. “Dude, thank you so much! I was in there for, like, ever. I thought I was going to starve to death.”
Spencer folds the ladder and eyes the guy. He’s tiny and bouncy and words keep spilling from his mouth like he doesn’t know how to stop them. Spencer narrows his eyes.
“What were you doing in there in the first place?”
Bren shrugs and kind of dances on his toes for a second. “I wanted to see how full it was and I kind of fell in.” He kicks at a pop can until it clatters against the side of the bin, clanging dully on the metal. “Dude, I reek.”
“Yes,” Spencer said, shortly, although he couldn’t smell anything but the possibly rotting bag of hotdog buns someone had left beside the bin instead of throwing it in. He tosses the last of his own bags in and settles into the Gator. Bren is staring at him with hopeful eyes and a grin that shouldn’t be so wide considering he has a smear of some questionable substance across his chin.
“Oh, whatever,” Spencer groans and Bren’s grin widens even further. “Get in, I’ll drive you back. Bob’s going to kill you.”
+++
Bob doesn’t kill Bren. He gives him a weird look when Spencer drops him off at the snack bar and then fixes his gaze on Spencer for a second. Spencer shrugs and Bob turns back to Bren.
“Brendon,” Bob says (and oh, thinks Spencer, Bren is short for Brendon). “I’m not going to ask because I’m a patient man.” Bren (Brendon) beams. Bob narrows his eyes. “And I do have Bill working in my employ. So…Just…go clock out and go home. And shower. Please.”
Brendon grins and stretches up on his toes to smack a kiss to Bill Beckett’s cheek as he passes on his way inside. He gives Spencer a jaunty little wave and Spencer throws the Gator into gear and wonders why he hung around so long in the first place.
+++
Spencer almost gets out of going to the work party, even though everyone expects him there. He’s settling onto the couch in his most comfortable Sponge Bob pyjama pants and reaching for the remote when Ryan flutters into the room and dangles three different scarves in front of Spencer. “Which one?” he asks.
After the scarves, it’s choosing which pair of pants - pinstripes or solids, cuffs or no, trousers or slacks (and what’s even the difference, Spencer wonders) - and after that it’s a choice of fingerless hobo gloves. That’s where Spencer draws the line and just shoves Ryan out the door, anything to get out of deciding which feather for his hat.
That is how Spencer ends up back in his corner at the house with the fountain. Cash’s house, he corrects himself when Cash appears with a tray of jello shots and one of the Alexes clinging and giggling on his back.
“Spencer!” he hears and then something collides into his side. Ryan raises an eyebrow and sips at his cherry Coke. “Spencer, Jon said that Ian said that Ray said that Greta said…” Brendon pauses, licks his lip. “Jon said you probably wouldn’t come! But you did! And I showered!”
Spencer twists until Brendon slithers off him, and there’s a least a tiny sliver of space between them. “Um, good for you?”
Brendon opens his mouth in a sort of shout that sounds kind of like a laugh. “Jon sent me over with drinks but Greta took them away from me. And then Bill drank them. Oooh, is that Alex over there?”
Brendon wanders about three steps and then jerks back as though Spencer had him on a leash or something. One of the Alexes squirms away from where Bill Beckett and Gabe have sandwiched him into an awkward sort of dance. Ryan grumbles something about drunks and grabs onto Spencer’s elbow. Spencer is sure the circulation to his arm is in danger of being cut off, but he doesn’t shake off Ryan.
“Um, Brendon,” Spencer says, when Brendon takes another abortive step toward the make-shift dance floor. Jon’s currently grinding playfully against Joe’s hip, who laughs and hands over the joint. “Um, do you like working at the park?”
Brendon takes a step back toward Spencer and smiles so brightly Spencer thinks the patio lanterns are no longer needed.
“Dude, Bob’s like this totally chill boss,” Brendon says. He’s bouncing again and Spencer reaches out and presses a hand down over Brendon’s shoulder until he settled into stillness. “He’s absolutely terrifying but he’s cool too. And Bill’s totally cool. He lets me eat the pickles when no one’s looking. And I get to eat lunch with Jon sometimes and that’s pretty cool too.” Brendon toes at the grass with his bright red sneakers and grins.
Ryan looks blankly at Brendon. “So you’ve got a pretty cool job,” he says and Brendon bites his lip around his smile. “Huh.”
Spencer hears the sarcasm and the amusement. It’s leaking from Ryan in little waves, just like the smell of alcohol is oozing from Brendon’s skin. Without realizing what he’s doing, Spencer takes a step forward until Ryan can no longer see Brendon’s manic grin.
“So, uh,” Spencer says and watches Vicky steal Jon and Joe’s joint, only to corner Gabe for a round of shotgunning each other in the shadows beside the porch. “You like your job, then?”
Brendon nods. It’s rapid and enthusiastic and Spencer feels dizzy just watching it. Brendon tips a little and steadies himself on Spencer’s arm. Apparently it made his dizzy too. “The best part is the people,” he says. He looks like he’s going to say more but Bill Beckett turns on Britney Spears and Brendon’s off, bouncing at Jon and flailing at Vicky and Gabe until they give him the last hit from Joe’s joint.
“Okay, these work parties are weird,” Ryan says. Bill Beckett is dancing with Ian now, but he glances over their direction and maybe waggles his eyebrows before doing something lewd with his hips, but it’s too dark to see for sure. It’s also too dark to see Ryan’s blush, but Spencer doesn’t need to see to know it’s there.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Spencer says. “They might not be so bad.”
+++
+++
continue
The roll up door clangs loudly when Spencer pulls it open. The square of early morning sunlight is pale on the concrete floor of the garage/office and Gerard is on the phone, making faces that the person on the other end will never see, and doodling a picture of someone being impaled by a forklift.
“No, I get it Debora,” Gerard says and wrinkles his nose in a sort of half-smile, half grimace in Spencer’s direction. Debora’s bird-like voice screeches down the line. Spencer maybe catches something about a football and a tutu, but then Gerard is pinching his eyebrows together and saying it won’t happen again.
“Gabe was working by himself again last night,” a voice near the ceiling says.
Spencer jumps. Vicky is on the schedule for that day (Spencer always looks because he doesn’t like surprises. Surprises involving Vicky and Gabe don’t often end pleasantly), but he hadn’t seen her in the office area yet. The yellow stripes of her extremely reflective, extremely Safety-Committee-approved t-shirt are glowing, but Spencer thinks with a shudder that her teeth might be brighter, white in her smile against the shadows on top of the lockers where she’s perched.
“Um,” says Spencer and tries to ignore her gleeful grin as he busies himself with stowing his lunch in the fridge and rubbing sunscreen on his nose. Gerard makes a pained expression and waves his hand in their direction, a gesture that says “I can’t hear the blood-sucking harpy from head office yelling at me; please shut up.” Debora is still flipping out. Spencer can hear her all the way across the room.
Vicky jumps down from above the lockers. Her steel-toed boots are done up tight, all the way to the top eyelets. She winks at Spencer before tugging on her work gloves and grabbing a litter rake and heading out into the dewy grass to pretend to clean up the public’s mess.
+++
The summer staff at the park begins working in waves. The park attendants are the first to arrive, raking up the leaves that still cling damply where the terrain dips and that gather in the corners of the buildings. Spencer likes the park best when it’s quiet and empty, and the mornings are still cool enough to make his nose tingle and run.
The snack bar starts opening soon after, though just on nights that baseball or soccer plays, and then on Saturdays when people begin bringing their children down for picnics. It’s still cool in the mornings, when the snack bar staff starts filing down to the park in their stripy shirts and ice-cream stained khaki pants. By mid-summer, they’ll be open every day.
Ryan tips his hat down over his eyes. He’s got a collection of scarves around his neck even though it’s beginning to warm up outside. He’s glaring at the grill pit where a tall guy with a bandana wrapped around his leg is bobbing his head to music no one else can hear.
“Spencer,” he says when Spencer sits across the picnic table and digs into his lunch bag for his sandwich. “Spencer, Bob gave Bill Beckett a job. Bill Beckett, Spencer.”
Spencer turns to study the guy. He looks harmless enough, even if he is trying to juggle the knife, the grill tongs and a raw hotdog. Or well, as harmless as anyone working in the park ever is.
“You know each other?” Spencer asks when Bill Beckett drops the hotdog and Bob appears out of nowhere to scowl. Bill Beckett does not appear intimidated, which, okay, is probably an indicator of insanity or maybe just sheer stupidity. Spencer thinks it might be a combination of the two.
Ryan shrugs and returns to his lunch which consists of a yogurt and an apple. He once claimed yogurt was good for low weight maintenance and that fruit had all sorts of natural sugars. Spencer called Ryan a huge girl and then shoved him into a wall. It was a win-win situation. Now, Spencer drips mayo down his chin from his turkey sandwich and licks at the crumbs clinging to his lips. “He was in my history of modern languages class,” Ryan says and sets about delicately cutting his apple into quarters and then eighths.
“Right,” Spencer says and moves on to his brownie. He doesn’t question Ryan, just sits with the sun at his back and Ryan across the table from him and enjoys the half hour they both have before Spencer has to return to pruning and ignoring his co-workers, and Ryan has to return to giving guided tours to bored Scout groups and deaf old people who contradict him at every display.
+++
Ryan works at the community museum, which is located in the middle of the park, oddly enough. It’s not a real museum. It doesn’t have a security guard or laser motion detectors with grates the slam down if someone breaks into one of the display cases (the only real display case they have proudly contains a necklace made with a lock of hair. No one is going to steal that). It does have a little guy with lots of hats and a shy smile that goes around and fixes the windows the local kids break on a daily basis and who sometimes weeds the gardens around the front.
It’s a good summer job for Ryan. Spencer had tried once to get Ryan into the other jobs at the park. Gerard owes him a favour and even Ray kind of loves Spencer in ridiculous amounts because Spencer cleans up the broken beer bottles on the pool deck and helps him chase down the hooligans who like to spray paint dirty words on the side of the change building. Ryan wrinkled his nose at both suggestions though and had gone an entire summer answering telephones and filing his nails in some downtown dentist office before Gerard’s brother Mikey suggested the museum.
Ryan loves it.
For Spencer, it means that they can ride the bus together on days Spencer works the morning shift. More importantly, though, it means that when Spencer gets invited to awkward and boring work parties, he’s not standing alone in the corner, waiting for the perfect moment to slip out and still be able to claim utter drunkenness the next morning (he also spends a great deal of time at these parties avoiding Gabe, who can’t seem to grasp to concept that not everyone wants to make out with him). Spencer kind of hates these parties.
+++
“So, whose party is this?”
Ryan is sipping a ginger ale, eyeing the crowd of people littered across someone’s backyard. There’s a fountain along the far side. It bubbles and gurgles and there’s a splash when Bill Beckett falls in some time near midnight.
Spencer shrugs. He’s never been to this house before. Last year, everyone usually just crowded in Ryland’s backyard, but he had gone to the east coast for school in the fall and hadn’t returned in the spring. There were rumours of an elicit love affair with someone named Alex, but Spencer suspects these rumours originated with Gabe, and he’s had an unhealthy obsession with the number of Alexes working at the snack bar this year so Spencer doubts its validity.
Spencer snags an unopened Coke from the cooler at his feet and watches Gabe molest the littlest Alex. Vicky wanders past, wearing a t-shirt that goes past her knees and flip-flops that slide off her feet with every step. By the fountain, Bill Beckett is shaking his hair, while Greta laughs and then hands him a High School Musical towel.
“Um,” someone says at Spencer’s elbow. Spencer jerks and manages to slop Coke over his hand. He hadn’t known anyone had noticed them lurking in the shadows. The same voice chuckles and then someone’s warm hand is rubbing clumsily at Spencer’s, only managing to smear the sticky stain further up his wrist instead of wiping it off.
“So, my clothes have disappeared,” the guy says when he finally releases Spencer’s hand. Ryan makes a choking little wheeze beside Spencer, and that’s when Spencer looks down and realizes this new guy is only wearing a pair of grey boxer briefs.
“Um,” Spencer says. The guy laughs again.
“Apparently I’m really bad at strip beer pong. But I kind of need at least my pants back.” He palms the back of his neck and ducks his head so that he’s looking at them from under his eyelashes. “A girl has them. About this tall. Cute?”
Spencer darts a glance at where Vicky is beating Bill Beckett with an over-large flipflop, and still managing to appear disaffected by everything. Her t-shirt falls off one-shoulder. One of the Alexes makes the mistake of adjusting it, and then he’s on the receiving end of the sandal-abuse.
The almost-naked guy follows Spencer’s eyes. “Oh, hey, there she is!” He watches her for a second. When he seems to be done, he turns and gives a sloppy, slightly drunk grin to Spencer and Ryan. “I’m Jon,” he says, and then weaves around the overturned lawn chairs and the pile that turns out to be a different Alex and some guy Spencer doesn’t know.
“So um,” Ryan says quietly, and long fingers are clutching at Spencer’s elbow, tight enough to hurt. Spencer tips his head and watches Jon talking to Vicky. It’s a quiet conversation, and neither of them flails or jumps around, or tries to kill the other and that’s something. Vicky, however, appears to be unrelenting and Jon seems reluctant to throw her in a headlock and pry the clothes from her, unlike Gabe, who has no qualms about it at all.
“Yeah, that was weird,” Ryan says. Another little guy Spencer doesn’t know bounces over and climbs on Jon’s back and makes victory arms until they both fall over. Vicky kicks Gabe in the shins. Bill Beckett snags the sandals and jumps back in the fountain. Spencer pointedly doesn’t raise his eyebrow or cock out his hip.
“Yeah, yeah,” Spencer says quietly. “They are definitely weird.”
+++
+++
Everyone is hung over at work the next day. Spencer maybe feels a little smug as Gabe whimpers through the loud roar of the phone ringing on its lowest volume. Vicky is more subtle about her horrific pain, but she still gives death glares to everyone who speaks louder than a whisper, and there’s a drawing pinned on Gerard’s bulletin board of a stick person being run over by a lawn mower. Gerard looks at it, takes it down and hands it to Spencer.
“We’ll stay away from Vicky today,” he says, already drawing a more accurate version, complete with blood spurts and a horrified expression on the decapitated figure’s face. “You want to go help Ray with the pool? They’re getting ready to open it.”
Spencer does not want to help with the pool. Helping with the pool involves a lot of standing around on the deck with the sun beating down on his neck while Greta checks the water slide and Ray makes sure the filter is covered securely and everyone tries to make awkward small talk with him. It also involves a lot of keeping Gabe on the other side of the fence so that he doesn’t run through the wet paint marking out the edges of the deep end.
“Okay,” Spencer says and spares one last glance at Gerard’s improved drawing. He doesn’t think there would be that much blood if someone actually got caught in the blades, but he’s not about to try it. It’s with a sigh that he trudges across the park to where the lifeguard chairs stand sentry over an empty pool.
He’s expecting Greta to be waiting for him at the gate with both a smile and an expectation of some sort of heart-felt chat. She’s not. It’s someone else, someone Spencer has only seen once before, and then he was mostly naked.
“Oh,” Spencer says and Jon grins.
+++
Greta is, as expected, fiddling with the slide. She’s already checked the fibreglass for snags and breaks and now she’s working on the screws. Ray, however, is not doing the filter. He’s standing by the pool toys with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s also staring down a tiny version of himself.
“Um,” Spencer says, when Jon pats him on the back and hops into the pool to do what Ray usually does. Ray glances up, gives a half wave and then his attention is back on the kid in front of him.
“This,” Ray says without looking at Spencer, “is Ian.”
Ian also doesn’t look at Spencer, but he doesn’t look nearly as trepid as Ray. In fact, he looks positively delighted, if his huge smile is anything to go by. Ray’s mouth twitches downward and Ian tucks his grin away until his face is blank and stony. Spencer would believe it if it weren’t for the betraying twinkle in Ian’s eyes.
“Okay. Two new lifeguards this year?”
Ray flaps a hand. Ian’s eyes follow the movement. Jon pads around the bottom of the pool. It’s he that answers. He’s crouched over the filter with the pool’s mismatched toolkit spread out over the blue painted concrete. “That new housing development nearby,” he says and it’s muffled even though it still seems to echo in the empty pool. “More kids, more lifeguards.” He finishes and dusts his hands off on his swim shorts.
Spencer is about to ask if he can help in any way when a shadow spills over the edge of the pool to fall crookedly along the side. “Hey Spence.” It’s Greta. She’s in a swimming suit too, and her little cotton shorts hang low on her hips. There’s a tiny piece of skin high on her hip, where the leg of her suit is above the waist of her shorts and Spencer remembers what it felt like under his hands…“My face is up here,” she says, laughing gently and then promptly ignores Spencer’s blush at being caught looking. “I need help with the diving board and Ray’s a little distracted at the moment.”
“Nff,” Ray says. Ian bites down a grin. The stare-down continues.
+++
“So,” Greta says, when Spencer is getting ready to let himself out of the pool enclosure for lunch.
“So,” Spencer says and cocks a hip. Ray is in the lifeguard office, working on paperwork or something. Ian’s hanging around the closed door playing air guitar and glancing up every few seconds as if Ray would somehow slip out and past him without Ian noticing.
Greta sighs. “Spencer,” she says. Spencer knows. He doesn’t want it to be weird or anything either. He lets his eyes drift past her and all that smooth skin on display, the delicate lines of her neck, the gentle swell of her breasts. He pretends he doesn’t know what it feels like against his fingertips and instead focuses on Jon who’s setting up his lunch on the deck and dangling his feet into the empty pool.
“Yeah,” Spencer says. He’s going to be late for lunch and Ryan’s going to be furious. “I’ll just…I’ll be back after lunch to help with the drains? Probably?” He shifts so that the tilt of his hips changes. It feels less angry-jilted-pre-teen-emo to him. It probably doesn’t look any different to Greta. Or maybe it does.
“You’ll find someone new,” she says and her hand hovers over his crossed arms before falling away as though touch would maybe remind him of what he can’t have anymore. “Someone better for you than me.”
It’s a lie, but Spencer doesn’t call her on it. It’s not ill-intentioned and maybe one day he’ll be able to look at her and not miss what he never should have had in the first place. He glances at her face once more before turning and fleeing...right into a sweaty and dirty Gabe.
“Dude,” he hears through the ringing in his ears. “I totally wedged the z-turn between two trees and now you need to get it out before Vicky cuts off my very essential man parts. Don’t make me lose a part of my soul.” Spencer doesn’t have to think about it when he follows Gabe to where the lawn mower is, in fact, stuck between a couple of trees, but also happens to be half-way disassembled. It takes Spencer the rest of the day to put it back together, and if it takes longer than necessary, he doesn’t think about that too much either.
+++
“Patrick found that Jon kid lurking around the museum garden yesterday after work.”
Spencer looks up from reading the graffiti on the back of the seat in front of him. The bus rattles past the lady with the stroller who had just gotten off.
“Yeah?”
Ryan nods and picks at his scarves. He’s back to wearing the fingerless gloves, but Spencer had been able to talk him out of the flock of birds he wanted to paint down his cheek that morning.
“Yeah. The one from the party last week. The naked guy.”
“Half naked.” It’s a correction, but at the same time it’s not. Ryan doesn’t comment and just taps his fingers against the metal pole beside them.
“And he was with the creeper that’s always pestering Patrick. The guy with the hoodies?”
Spencer has never actually seen hoodie-guy. He has, however, heard lots about him. He nods. Ryan doesn’t continue. Spencer picks at the plastic covering on the seat until the little crack isn’t so little.
“Jon’s a lifeguard,” Spencer says at last and ignores Ryan’s “I know” until Ryan knocks their knees together.
“Jon’s totally cute,” Ryan says before the bus gets to their street. “You should go for it. I mean, yeah he’s friends with creepy hoodie-guy, but he’s also pretty hot.”
Spencer presses his knee against Ryan’s. “Yeah maybe,” he says. He doesn’t mean it and Ryan knows it but neither of them says anything else about it. Instead, Ryan digs his fingers into Spencer’s arms and starts a tirade about Bill Beckett who was showing some new kid the ropes today and managed to set the grill on fire.
“Seriously, Spence,” Ryan says with his eyes huge and his mouth set in an angry line. “The flames were huge. That poor kid almost lost his eyebrows.”
Spencer tries not to laugh, and then tries not to laugh any harder when Ryan punches him in the arm. “Yeah, okay, whatever, dude,” Ryan grumbles but he is still smiling around his fake frown when he pulls the bell to request a stop.
+++
+++
There’s a kid sitting on the pavement outside the work office when Spencer arrives in the morning. He’s plugged into his iPhone and bobbing his head to the music that spills out of his earbuds and into the early morning air.
“Uh,” Spencer says, and tries to edge around the guy without actually touching him. He’s got a sort of raggedy beard going, like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his hoodie is on inside out. The kid doesn’t acknowledge Spencer.
“Hey, can you just…shift over?” Spencer says, this time louder. He’s ten minutes early for work, but Gabe’s working the evening shift and it’s Vicky’s day off, so Spencer kind of wants to get in there before Gerard accidentally sets fire to the place or something. The kid changes the song to something a little dancier and kicks his legs out in front of him.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Spencer grumbles, and yanks the earbud cord closest to him. The kid yelps and flails and falls over onto his unzipped backpack, accidentally getting his elbow stuck in the tangle of clothes leaking out.
“I need in that door,” Spencer says, grumpily and taps his foot while he waits for the kid to gather himself up enough to slide out of the way. The kid doesn’t move.
“You’re that Spencer guy,” the kid says, and his eyes go wide for a second. “Alex says you like, never talk to anyone unless you have to. He says you’re like, some sort of repressed emo guy who’s just getting angrier and angrier at the world until one day you just snap and, Bam! Blow us all away with your sawed off rifle thing.” When he finishes, he’s watching Spencer not with fear, but with a sort of morbid adoration.
Spencer shifts uncomfortably. “I talk to Ryan,” he says and shuffles around, hoping the kid gets the point. “And the lifeguards.”
The kid scrambles to his feet, but unfortunately does not seem to notice Spencer’s burning desire to get past him. His bag is still unzipped and a pant leg dangles out. “Dude,” he says. “You totally don’t ever, Alex said.” He pauses and then gets really close to Spencer’s face, squinting and then poking him in the nose. “And you never denied being the guy who’s going to come in and wipe us all out.”
Spencer stares.
“Awesome,” says the guy and then sticks his hand out to shake. “I’m Cash. I’m having a work party this Friday. You should totally come and like, be social so you don’t snap before your plans to kill that Gabe guy are fool-proof.”
Spencer blinks. Cash is moving now, dusting off his jeans and turning to wander down the path that leads to the lookout over the creek. “You don’t even work here,” Spencer says, but his voice is weak. He feels like he just had a conversation in Latin.
Cash spins around to walk backwards a few steps. He grins before giving Spencer his back once more. “My house, Friday night!” he calls and disappears around the corner.
+++
Gerard is flapping his hands a little when Spencer pushes into the office. His hair is messy, like he’s been pulling at it or maybe didn’t brush it before coming into work, or this week at all. There’s a guy Spencer doesn’t know sitting in Gerard’s usual chair - the one with all the padding picked out of the arm and the questionable stain down the back.
“Um, this is Joe?” Gerard says and his eyes flicker frantically around the office. Spencer stares at Joe. Joe stares back for all of three seconds before grinning wide and lazy.
“Is he always this overwhelmed?” Joe says and laughs when Spencer wrinkles his forehead. “I’m new. They sent me over from the gardening crew downtown.”
Gerard makes a little noise in the back of his throat. It might be Japanese for “Debora is sending over her minion spies because she doesn’t think I’m a capable foreman, what am I going to do?” It could also be Gerard’s not-so sudden profound lack of vocal acuity kicking in. Joe raises his eyebrow.
“Debbie’s on a ‘redistribution of employees’ rampage,” Joe says and then leans toward Spencer conspiratorially. “I kind of convinced her that the new housing development called for more park staff. I’m a genius, aren’t I?”
Spencer looks at Gerard, who is flailing at the supply locker and throwing various pairs of new work gloves onto the desk, followed by different styles of safety glasses he keeps on hand because Vicky won’t wear anything but her brand, and Gabe switches daily to match the color of his shoelaces (which he also changes daily but never bothers to tie up).
“Um,” Spencer says, and Joe waggles his eyebrows at him.
“Yeah, I am totally the smartest genius ever. This is the best place to work in the entire city. You should bow to my brilliance.”
Gerard shoves a pair of ear muffs at Joe, along with a hardhat, which Joe takes with a quirk of his mouth. “Do you own chainsaw pants? I should make sure you have chainsaw pants,” Gerard says and scampers off somewhere, leaving Spencer with a grinning Joe.
“There’s a party on Friday,” Spencer says at last and hands Joe the training books for the riding lawn mowers and their Madvac. “Um, Cash’s house? I think?”
“Cool, cool,” Joe says and smiles again, bobbing his head excitedly. Spencer tries his best not to groan outwardly.
+++
Ryan is busy picking apart the crust of his sandwich. It’s white bread, - the kind that just sort of melts unpleasantly in Spencer’s mouth and tastes a little like glue - but Spencer is willing to take any number of baby steps if it means Ryan will start eating real food. Their picnic table today is peeling and old, hiding behind the office where the public doesn’t usually venture. The grain of the wood grates against Spencer’s palm.
“So, Bill Beckett tried to have a hotdog sword fight with the new kid,” Ryan says and takes a nibble of his jam sandwich. He wrinkles his nose and sets it aside in favour of slicing his peach into tiny bite-sized pieces. “And the new kid just, like, laughed and played along. Seriously, Spence. Seriously.”
Spencer stabs at his cold steak, left over from supper the night before.
“And then one of the Alexes totally jumped in and saved the new guy’s virtue. Because Bill Beckett is a big virtue stealer.” Ryan has peach juice dripping down his chin. He dabs at it daintily with his napkin, and then waits patiently for Spencer to say that Bill Beckett was, in fact, behaving less than admirably.
The bench beside Spencer dips a little, before he has a chance to reply, and then Ryan’s eyes are narrowing.
“So, the gossip is that you hate everyone at work,” Jon says as though he isn’t interrupting anything, and settles further into his new place beside Spencer, like an invitation had actually been extended to him. Someone is lurking just behind him, vibrating and twitching. “Hi, I’m Jon,” he says to Ryan. “We met the last week.” Surprisingly, Ryan lets Jon shake his hand and even refrains from making some snarky reply about dirty fingernails or the lingering smell of chlorine (he does hand Jon his little bottle of hand sanitizer, which Jon takes with an easy grin).
“You were naked the last time I saw you,” Ryan says flatly. The guy behind Jon barks out a surprised laugh and then bounces around to sit beside Ryan. His snack bar uniform is bright and painful in the sun.
“Half naked,” Spencer says.
“Dude, dude, when that chick stole his clothes?” the other guy says, and jiggles his leg until it shifts across the dirt under the table and bumps against Spencer’s, where it continues to vibrate. “Dude, that was epic. He had to wear my hoodie home!”
Ryan stares. Spencer tightens his hand around his fork.
“Lavender is my color, Bren, what can I say?” Jon says, laughing. He’s unpacking a lunch of crackers and cheese and what looks like leftover vegetable lasagna.
The other guy (Bren?) smirks and then pulls half of Jon’s lunch toward him. “It totally is Jon Walker. It totally is.”
+++
Spencer ends up training Joe for the rest of the week. He plans on starting out slow with the handheld equipment and then moving on to the riding machines. It’s Friday morning and Spencer had worked Gabe’s Thursday night shift because Gabe “had this thing, dude, that I can’t miss because Vicky-T can be vicious when I miss things that I can’t miss.” Spencer is tired and Joe has almost decapitated the marble statue in the fountain for the fourth time in an hour.
“Maybe, uh, maybe we should go back to the hoe and the rake?” Spencer says, and pries the gas hedge trimmer from Joe’s hand. Joe bobs his head placidly and sits on the ledge surrounding the fountain. His foot taps an idle rhythm against the gas can Spencer had the foresight to bring with them.
Joe is watching Mikey and Ryan, who in turn are standing on the front steps of the museum studying the new sign Patrick had put up the night before. ‘Space Odysie Rox’ is spray painted cheerfully across the operating hours. It’s pink. It’s kind of hard to miss.
“So, the rake?” Spencer says, and Joe actually giggles and swings his head around to smile up at Spencer lazily.
“Dude, I was on the gardening crew,” he says and the words are slow. “I’ve used a rake. I’m also pretty handy with a hoe.” He pauses to pick at the chainsaw pants Gerard had given him that morning and had insisted he wear despite there not being any chainsaws in the tool closet. Spencer folds his arms across his chest.
Across the park, beyond where Patrick has joined Ryan and Mikey in staring down the vandalized sign, Bill Beckett is building a fort from the little wooden french-fry forks. The new guy, Bren, is laughing and bouncing on his toes, and occasionally adding a straw to Bill Beckett’s creation.
“So,” Joe says, and stretches out to trace his fingers through the water. Spencer narrows his eyes but doesn’t comment about the sign asking park patrons to keep hands and feet (and bodies) out of the fountain.
“So,” Spencer says.
Joe grins.
+++
The last thing Spencer has to do before going home for the day (and he doesn’t have to be in again until Sunday night when women’s soccer needs the lights turned on over the field) is collect the garbage the lifeguards have put out from the change rooms and chuck them in the big garbage bin. The Gator rumbles and creaks, because Debora won’t spring the cash for a new one, no matter how many times Gabe has snapped the axle or dented the roll bar. Greta’s with Ian, when Spencer rattles up to the back door. A few kids from the swimming pool look up, but Jon’s admonishment to “use the bathroom, please, if you have to pee. I can see you, you know” draws their attention and mostly it’s just Greta, Ian and Spencer staring at each other over a small pile of garbage bags.
“Hey, Spence,” Greta says and it’s gentle and careful. He looks away from the smile that curls around her mouth. He pretends he can’t see the softness in her eyes. He focuses on Ian, who’s kicking at one of the black bags with a sandaled foot and watching Ray, who’s prowling the pool deck in his supervisor tank top and bright red swimming trunks.
“Yeah,” Spencer says. His hands itch in the gloves he’s wearing, and he hefts the first bag into the back of the Gator. It’s light, - probably filled entirely with paper towel and Band-Aids - and when he reaches for the second one, Greta’s already tossing it in with the first.
“I got it,” he snaps. Ian sucks in a breath, quick and sharp, and manages to pull his gaze from where Ray’s berating some kid for pushing some other kid off the diving board.
“Dude,” he says, and his eyes flicker between Spencer and Greta, wide and surprised. “Dude,” he says, and Greta waves her hand at him dismissively.
Spencer throws the last bag into the Gator. He doesn’t look at either of them. His face burns hot. His eyes burn too, but from something entirely different, and he bites his lip and stares across the park to where Patrick is scrubbing at the vandalized sign in front of the museum.
“I’ll see you tonight?” Greta asks, and doesn’t punctuate the question by touching his arm like she used to do often. Spencer doesn’t answer. He looks at Ian, who’s now waving cheerfully at Ray (who is pointedly ignoring him) through the fence enclosing the pool. “Spencer,” she says. “Tonight?”
Spencer climbs back into the Gator, feeling it vibrate awake as he turns the key. For a moment the engine growls too loudly; it’s going to die again and Gerard will have to explain to Debora why they can’t keep it functioning for more than two weeks at a time. “Tonight,” he says finally and pushes on the gas pedal before Greta has a chance to reply.
+++
Joe’s happily hacking at the garden when Spencer drives past him on his way to the garbage bin. Joe waves lazily and kills a daisy with more enthusiasm than Spencer’s seen him display so far. Gabe is watching contemplatively and twirling a blade of grass between his teeth. Spencer hopes Joe doesn’t give Gabe the hoe, and doesn’t look over his shoulder to see if he should be worried. He has less than half an hour and then he’s free until Sunday night. He’s mentally running through the list of things he and Ryan can do on Saturday night, and he’s at making candles (because Ryan likes that sort of thing for some reason. Spencer doesn’t ask questions) and watching old Three Stooges episodes, when he pulls up next to the bin and kills the Gator engine.
He tosses the first bag up and over the side, holding his breath the whole time because it was Vicky’s turn to clean the rotting bits that somehow ended up outside the bin and that means there are more maggots and less cleaning than usual. He doesn’t hear the muffled protest until he throws in the second bag.
“Um,” Spencer says and freezes. He hears it again, this time coupled with rustling and a large clang as though someone is kicking the wall of the bin, from the inside. “Hello?” He feels foolish. He feels ridiculous. It’s a racoon or a seagull or a cat. Maybe a squirrel. But squirrels don’t curse and he’s pretty sure a racoon would not be returning his tentative greeting with actual words.
“Oh, oh!” someone says from inside the bin, and Spencer takes an involuntary step backwards. “Someone’s there! Someone, finally! Thank God.”
Spencer twitches. He still has the last garbage bag to throw in, and it dangles from his gloved fingertips.
“Are you stuck?” he asks, and then wants to punch himself in the face, because of course the person is stuck. There’s a grunt in reply and more scrabbling at the sides. “Okay, okay, hold on,” he says and scans the area. There’s a ladder they keep there, for the expressed purpose of when Gabe throws his keys in the bin by accident. The person in the bin has not been trained on ladders, Spencer is sure. Debora was very instant that no one use one until trained properly - something about injuries and lawsuits. Spencer briefly considers going through the various parts (this is the foot, this is a step) and maybe a quick safety run-through (three points of contact at all time, if you need to move it get off, don’t try to hop it over while still on. That leads to ladders tipping over and then inevitable injuries, just ask Gabe).
“I think there are rats in here,” the voice says and Spencer ignores safety rules and tips the ladder over the side. A second later, a head of messy brown hair pops into view and then bright smiling eyes. “Hi!” Bren says and scrambles out of the bin. There’s a banana peel on his shoulder, running perpendicular to the stripes of his snack bar shirt.
“Dude,” Bren says and hops on the ground and tugs valiantly on the ladder until Spencer helps him pull it out. “Dude, thank you so much! I was in there for, like, ever. I thought I was going to starve to death.”
Spencer folds the ladder and eyes the guy. He’s tiny and bouncy and words keep spilling from his mouth like he doesn’t know how to stop them. Spencer narrows his eyes.
“What were you doing in there in the first place?”
Bren shrugs and kind of dances on his toes for a second. “I wanted to see how full it was and I kind of fell in.” He kicks at a pop can until it clatters against the side of the bin, clanging dully on the metal. “Dude, I reek.”
“Yes,” Spencer said, shortly, although he couldn’t smell anything but the possibly rotting bag of hotdog buns someone had left beside the bin instead of throwing it in. He tosses the last of his own bags in and settles into the Gator. Bren is staring at him with hopeful eyes and a grin that shouldn’t be so wide considering he has a smear of some questionable substance across his chin.
“Oh, whatever,” Spencer groans and Bren’s grin widens even further. “Get in, I’ll drive you back. Bob’s going to kill you.”
+++
Bob doesn’t kill Bren. He gives him a weird look when Spencer drops him off at the snack bar and then fixes his gaze on Spencer for a second. Spencer shrugs and Bob turns back to Bren.
“Brendon,” Bob says (and oh, thinks Spencer, Bren is short for Brendon). “I’m not going to ask because I’m a patient man.” Bren (Brendon) beams. Bob narrows his eyes. “And I do have Bill working in my employ. So…Just…go clock out and go home. And shower. Please.”
Brendon grins and stretches up on his toes to smack a kiss to Bill Beckett’s cheek as he passes on his way inside. He gives Spencer a jaunty little wave and Spencer throws the Gator into gear and wonders why he hung around so long in the first place.
+++
Spencer almost gets out of going to the work party, even though everyone expects him there. He’s settling onto the couch in his most comfortable Sponge Bob pyjama pants and reaching for the remote when Ryan flutters into the room and dangles three different scarves in front of Spencer. “Which one?” he asks.
After the scarves, it’s choosing which pair of pants - pinstripes or solids, cuffs or no, trousers or slacks (and what’s even the difference, Spencer wonders) - and after that it’s a choice of fingerless hobo gloves. That’s where Spencer draws the line and just shoves Ryan out the door, anything to get out of deciding which feather for his hat.
That is how Spencer ends up back in his corner at the house with the fountain. Cash’s house, he corrects himself when Cash appears with a tray of jello shots and one of the Alexes clinging and giggling on his back.
“Spencer!” he hears and then something collides into his side. Ryan raises an eyebrow and sips at his cherry Coke. “Spencer, Jon said that Ian said that Ray said that Greta said…” Brendon pauses, licks his lip. “Jon said you probably wouldn’t come! But you did! And I showered!”
Spencer twists until Brendon slithers off him, and there’s a least a tiny sliver of space between them. “Um, good for you?”
Brendon opens his mouth in a sort of shout that sounds kind of like a laugh. “Jon sent me over with drinks but Greta took them away from me. And then Bill drank them. Oooh, is that Alex over there?”
Brendon wanders about three steps and then jerks back as though Spencer had him on a leash or something. One of the Alexes squirms away from where Bill Beckett and Gabe have sandwiched him into an awkward sort of dance. Ryan grumbles something about drunks and grabs onto Spencer’s elbow. Spencer is sure the circulation to his arm is in danger of being cut off, but he doesn’t shake off Ryan.
“Um, Brendon,” Spencer says, when Brendon takes another abortive step toward the make-shift dance floor. Jon’s currently grinding playfully against Joe’s hip, who laughs and hands over the joint. “Um, do you like working at the park?”
Brendon takes a step back toward Spencer and smiles so brightly Spencer thinks the patio lanterns are no longer needed.
“Dude, Bob’s like this totally chill boss,” Brendon says. He’s bouncing again and Spencer reaches out and presses a hand down over Brendon’s shoulder until he settled into stillness. “He’s absolutely terrifying but he’s cool too. And Bill’s totally cool. He lets me eat the pickles when no one’s looking. And I get to eat lunch with Jon sometimes and that’s pretty cool too.” Brendon toes at the grass with his bright red sneakers and grins.
Ryan looks blankly at Brendon. “So you’ve got a pretty cool job,” he says and Brendon bites his lip around his smile. “Huh.”
Spencer hears the sarcasm and the amusement. It’s leaking from Ryan in little waves, just like the smell of alcohol is oozing from Brendon’s skin. Without realizing what he’s doing, Spencer takes a step forward until Ryan can no longer see Brendon’s manic grin.
“So, uh,” Spencer says and watches Vicky steal Jon and Joe’s joint, only to corner Gabe for a round of shotgunning each other in the shadows beside the porch. “You like your job, then?”
Brendon nods. It’s rapid and enthusiastic and Spencer feels dizzy just watching it. Brendon tips a little and steadies himself on Spencer’s arm. Apparently it made his dizzy too. “The best part is the people,” he says. He looks like he’s going to say more but Bill Beckett turns on Britney Spears and Brendon’s off, bouncing at Jon and flailing at Vicky and Gabe until they give him the last hit from Joe’s joint.
“Okay, these work parties are weird,” Ryan says. Bill Beckett is dancing with Ian now, but he glances over their direction and maybe waggles his eyebrows before doing something lewd with his hips, but it’s too dark to see for sure. It’s also too dark to see Ryan’s blush, but Spencer doesn’t need to see to know it’s there.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Spencer says. “They might not be so bad.”
+++
+++
continue