The morning of day one is when teachers and school employees can bring as many family members as they’d like, and we set up a few fun children’s golf games with prizes, followed by recognition of all the teachers under the tents we set up, and then everyone eats lunch Dockside Eddy’s caters. After that, all minors leave, including anyone under the age of eighteen who still attends Summersweet Island High School who we employ at SIG.
For so many reasons, one of which I’m sure is about to be explained to me as the bell above the pro shop door chimes, and I look at the clock and realize it’s been over four hours since lunch.
“There are two golf carts that need vomit washed out of them, someone also puked in the 12th hole, and all the cart girls on the back nine are out of beer,” Mallory, one of the cart girls in question, says, popping her head in the pro shop door.
I look up from the counter, where I’m giving Mr. Flannigan, my third grade teacher, change from the bag of tees he needed to buy. Mallory holds the door open wider for him as he rushes out to the course for the Closest to the Pin competition starting in a little bit that I’m already running late setting up for.
“Again?” I sigh, grabbing the walkie-talkie from the counter.
“Which thing? The vomit or the beer?” Mallory laughs.
At this point, I don’t even know. This is now the third time since lunch someone puked on the 12th hole, although not actually in it. But it explains why the cart girls on the back nine have now run out of beer in the three golf carts that have been remodeled so it looks like the big silver industrial carts New York City hot dog vendors push around have been attached to the back end of them, minus the wheels. Those three beer carts can hold enough bottles and cans to hydrate this entire island, and they’ve now been emptied twice since lunch.
This is one of the main reasons why all minors or anyone who attends the school where these teachers mold their young minds absolutely cannot be at Summersweet Island Golf Course right now. These people, God bless their souls for what they put up with and do, completely lose their shit every year during this three-day event as soon as their own kids or the kids they teach are off the course grounds. They’re like stay-at-home moms getting out of the house for the first time with other adults, like Amish teenagers on Rumspringa, and like anyone ever on their twenty-first birthday in Vegas. It’s nothing but complete debauchery until the sun sets on the third day, awards are handed out, all photos and videos are quietly erased from devices, clothing is gathered from whatever hole it was discarded on, and everyone walks away saying “See you at work at the end of summer, Bob,” like Bob wasn’t just on the practice putting green four hours ago with his pants around his ankles, letting people try to chip balls at his crotch where he drew a big red circle with someone’s lipstick on his tightie-whities.
Pressing the button on the side of the radio as Mallory gives me a sympathetic smile, backs out the door, and it closes with a swish behind her, I let Murphy know about the vomit while I move out from behind the counter and head to the bar to take care of the beer.
When Murphy’s constant stream of cursing through the staticky radio gets to be too much for even me to take, I click off the walkie-talkie in the middle of his tirade right as my cell phone vibrates in my other hand. Looking down as I walk faster into the bar where a bunch of non-golfing school employees are hanging out, I see a text from Palmer.
Palmer: Hurry up. We’re not paying you to sit there and do nothing all day, sweet cheeks.
That’s just one more thing to add to the long list of things driving me crazy today.
I love that things are relaxed, comfortable, and easy between us just like old times, and seeing his name pop up on my phone again makes me a little giddy.
I also hate that things are just like old times, because just like in the olden days of long ago, Palmer still just wants to be friends when I’ve got hearts in my eyes, and no one is getting laid. We’re so relaxed, comfortable, and easy at this point I’m doing that stupid shit I spent years doing that I told myself I wouldn’t do again, where I analyze every little interaction with him, thinking I saw something I didn’t. I’m pretty sure I imagined the ear nuzzle, and the heat in his eyes, and that thing he said to me when I asked him what he was doing behind the Dip and Twist. What was it again?