Turn left and head home

As much as you hate to break tradition and bail on the guys you just don’t feel like hitting the bar tonight. That decided you turn left and head for home. While your parents weren’t supper loaded they were pretty well off and they had bought the house before the market had gone nuts and driven the prices crazy. As such you lived in a nice two story house that backed onto a forest preserve.

Somehow you had talked your parents into turning the walk out basement into your own little apartment. You had a good sized bedroom and living room type area as well as your own bathroom down there. You still had to go upstairs to cook anything, more than a microwave burrito, but hey you weren’t about to complain. Especially since there was a sliding glass door in the living room area that opened onto a patio and allowed you to come and go as you pleased.

You park in the driveway and head on in. You check the fridge and grab some cold chicken before going downstairs. Once you get there you check your voicemail and see you have one new message.

You punch in your code and select play. “Hi John its Bob” says a familiar voice. Bob is the beach captain, basically the head beach manager. He’s been working for the park district since before you were born. He’s probably the nicest guy on the planet, if a bit clueless. At least once a year the guards have snuck into the beach after close the night before a morning drill and turned the place completely around; putting the shore stands on the front lawn, messing with the buoy lines, putting canoes on top of the stands on the deep water rafts, and stuff like that. Yet every year Bob was surprised when this happens and never thinks to blame the guards for it. “I was just calling to tell you that the preseason meeting was going to start half an hour early tomorrow. Katie is getting promoted to manager this season and we are going to announce her replacement as senior guard. Hope this isn’t an inconvince.”

You turn on the computer and grab a beer out of your mini fridge as you log on to the net.  A quick check of the inbox shows that you have four new messages from Cecile, which you promptly delete.  Also there are emails from a few of the people you’ll be guarding with this summer.  

There’s one from Erin, she’s been kind of like a kid sister since you meet her two years ago. She lives on the other side of the forest preserve and has been bumming rides to guard drills ever since you meet. When you asked her why she hadn’t bought her own car she explained that she was saving all her money for when she went off to college. Sure enough she is wondering if you’ll still be picking her up for drills and asks if you could pick her up for the preseason meeting.

The next one’s from Jessie. She had just moved into town last summer and last year had been her first at the beach, but she had quickly become friends with Erin and become a regular part of your group. She’s wondering if you heard about the new time for the meeting and if you know who the new senior guard is going to be.

Finally there’s one from Mike saying that Andy had told him that you were going to have the house to yourself this summer and is wondering when the first party was going to be. You make a mental note to punch Andy in the head as you delete the email.

After you return Erin’s email and tell her you’ll pick her up at 6 you grab your mp3 player, its docking station and a cigar and head out to the patio. It’s a pleasantly warm night and you move your chair to the edge of the patio so you can see the stars that would be obscured by the deck off the kitchen otherwise. You set the mp3 player to run your zone’en out play list and settle in to get nice and mellow. As the time begins to pass you can’t help but think about how you and your ex had planned to spend the summer shacking up. “Oh well”, you think, “maybe I’ll take the folks advice and find hottie at the beach to hook up with.” The truth is there were always hot girls hanging out at the beach working on their tans, and more than a few had let you know that they wouldn’t mind getting to know you. The only reason you hadn’t taken advantage these opportunities had been that you had been in a relationship for the past couple of years.

You’re contentedly puffing smoke rings as Love and Rockets “So Alive” is into the second chorus when you hear a voice from the side of the house.

“Look at this morose mother fucker, sitting in the dark smoking a cigar listing to this goth shit.”