Shell Fragments
I told Gill that I could fill this role. That even though I was a fresh implant in the community, roots were already spreading, as evinced by my pursuit of employment at his mini-golf course. And, sure, maybe these roots couldn’t take in Florida’s fine sand soil. But Gill didn’t know this. I didn’t at the time. And so we shook damp hands, and he handed over some employment forms.
I started that weekend. Our clientele, as I would learn, were tourists and teenagers on first dates. Occasional golden-years grandparents without their grandchildren. But that first weekend, Gill hosted a single moms’ night wherein their admission was free. He’d advertised it with fliers on telephone poles and bathroom stalls across town. He needed me to put in a double shift so he could entertain. He’d prepared some jalapeño poppers that he wanted to distribute on the greens. I would be responsible for determining whether ticket purchasers were moms (first) and single (second). He gave me a checklist of questions to facilitate the screening. Rapid-fire stuff like, “age of child?” followed with “date of birth?” And “full name of father?” followed with “reason for separation?” Things only a true single mother could know.
Halfway through the event, Nance showed up at the ticket hut with her son. She had hoop earrings and an airbrushed T-shirt depicting a pink sunrise over a candy-blue ocean. As soon as I started with the questionnaire, Nance interrupted, looking through me. She might have been chewing gum. “I’m going to stop you there. Call for Gill. Tell him his son’s here.” The kid was waving around a small American stick flag even though it wasn’t the Fourth of July. I called for Gill, and soon he appeared with a blender of frozen margaritas and an expression of exultant recognition. “Nance!” he said. “You made it!” He embraced her, sloshing some margarita onto her back, and then gave their son an unrestrained, overeager noogie. He grabbed three clubs and ushered the two of them out of the ticket hut and onto the course.
It came out that Gill had mostly planned the event in hopes that Nance would see his fliers, and, without letting on that he wanted to see his son, Gill could see his son. But the attempt to win the kid’s affection fell flat when, around Hole 3, Gill’s son fell into a water trap and nearly drowned before being saved by an off-duty paramedic, a man who had paid the full price for admission. Nance, in short, and according to Gill, was out of patience and this close to a restraining order.
*
Lacie believes that God, at the beginning of time, put us on Earth, and sometimes He will intervene if it’s something drastic bad, like when He told Noah to build an Ark. But most of the time, we are on our own. Lacie shared this with me a few days after I arrived in Florida, unprompted. We were eating soft-serve at a place shaped like a cone of soft-serve. I didn’t know Lacie was religious or even familiar with Bible stories. She looked at me like her statement required a response.
“Sure,” I said. “That seems reasonable. I don’t see why not?”
“You mean you never thought about it?” she said.
“What?” I said. Melted cream ran over my fingers.
“Never mind,” she said.