Chapter 11

The Fourth of July was over. Nick’s laser show went over well. Old people had written positive comment cards, which were a big deal to Summer Lake’s management. Since lasers were just fancy lights apparently they were non-threatening and the noise-sensitive souls even said they much preferred it to fireworks, but requested they be brighter next year. Nick made a note to ask NASA to get right on it, as he rather doubted that light shows were the intended application of these things.

His boss Laura Ballard was pleased with him when they drove back to the city to return the equipment. Oh the things he could tell her now – that her supposedly perfect cousin was dating the redheaded stepchild of the resort – but Nicole had kept her end of the bargain so far and stopped bullying them, and she seemed to be making Abby happy.

Back in Alabama, he didn’t encounter any openly gay people. But it seemed to him like it wasn’t that complicated, there’s no way they’d choose to be that way. Any more than he’d choose to be gay himself, which he’d considered as a thought exercise. There was no way he could just decide he’d start enjoying suck Eric’s dick, for example. Yet he knew lots of gay guys would love getting their hands (and mouth) on that big redhead. They felt about guys the way he felt about girls on a biological level.

Perhaps some of it went back to rooting for the underdog. Being gay meant you were going through life as even more of an underdog than if you were a nerdy Mexican from Alabama like him. So they naturally had his sympathy. He’d thought less about lesbians than gay men, and he had to admit he’d assumed they were all stereotypes like on TV, heavyset butches who hated men and had guy haircuts. Abby said if that was ever true it was some outdated junk from the 1970s kept alive by dumb sitcoms. Abby and Nicole were definitely sporty and strong, but they were also feminine and even girly, with long hair, and although Abby did dress somewhat boyish, Nicole sure dressed like any popular modern girl.

At any rate, he had found it easy to accept that Abby was gay. It was unfortunate, at least from his biased perspective, but there was no sense moping about it. She wasn’t going to change. She was a wonderful person and had created the group, so he was happy to try to get back to the way things had been. At least maybe that way the rest of the summer wouldn’t be miserable.

But getting the group going again was proving to be hard. Nicole and Abby were off doting on each other. Lacey had offered to let them use the room whenever they wanted, although she told Nick she was starting to regret that since the couple wanted the room an awful lot.

Meanwhile, Eric and Esmie were not having such an easy time accepting the lesbian relationship. He’d thought Eric would support his sister through anything, and to be sure, Eric wasn’t abandoning Abby, he just had somehow not realized she was a lesbian. Eric came from the world of football and all of that macho bullshit where everyone joked about homos and nobody questioned it too much. Eric had even told nick some awful joke about homos. Now his sister was a homo.

Eric wasn’t dumb, he knew that AIDS wasn’t a realistic concern for lesbians, and he could see that Nicole and Abby had a monogamous, caring relationship. Still, he was worried, and had told Nick the last thing his sister needed was even more to set her apart from the mainstream and make her life harder.

The weekend after Independence Day, though, it was “out of sight, out of mind”. Abby and Nicole were off with the swim team at a meet at some far-flung resort. They’d left Thursday morning and wouldn’t be back until Sunday. When Lacey had teased them about all the steam that would be coming out of their shared hotel room that weekend Abby had clarified with some annoyance that they were still very much incognito and would definitely be assigned to different rooms. Abby said they’d be lucky if they even found an opportunity to peck each other on the lips.

There were no big guest events scheduled at Summer Lake that weekend and room bookings were light, so it was the perfect time for a staff dance in the main ballroom on Saturday night. Perhaps with half the lifeguards away it was something of an attempt to let the not-so-beautiful-people of the resort have a party, Nick thought cynically. It was called a “Mixer” which he found to be one of those quaint words from the fifties that was still only in use at places lost to time like Summer Lake. Posters all over the staff level promoted the Summer Mixer and everyone on staff was excited.

Normally he wouldn’t want anything to do with an event like this but he’d been asked to DJ it (and more importantly, he would be paid for it). Laura Ballard didn’t like him, but she was used to supervising teenage idiots who couldn’t wire a three-way switch if they were spotted two of the ways, and Nick had been exceeding expectations all summer with some fairly difficult work, culminating with the laser light show the weekend before. She’d said he could set up the sound and lighting however he liked and he’d get even paid overtime for it since he’d been busting his butt all week with a convention of department store Santa Claus impersonators (that one had been ridiculous even by Summer Lake standards).

“You’re not gonna play that Sonic Youth crap are you?” Eric had asked when Nick told his roommate he’d be deejaying the dance.

“Hey some of their songs have a really good beat,” Nick said, “But no, Laura said I had to play mainstream music that doesn’t have a parental advisory sticker. So, in other words, crap.”

“You know, stuff gets popular because it’s good and people like it,” Eric said in their now-established way of razzing each other, “And your stuff ends up in the bargain bin because nobody but you likes it.”

“Oh yeah, Milli Vanilli, the public’s taste is so sophisticated,” Nick shot back. But they were just joking with each other as always, he never got offended by Eric. He’d learned by now that his roommate was a true friend who had his back when it counted. It was nice to be able to make soup in the staff kitchen without worrying some jerks were going to knock the pot out of his hands the way they had last summer, or worry that jocks would come into his room and mess with him, and even take his tapes. They wouldn’t even look at him funny with Eric next to him.

Nick even got to hire his friends to help out with the mixer. Laura bought them pizza from town and they’d each get fifty bucks just for decorating the ballroom and lugging Nick’s gear around, then helping him break everything down after midnight. Nick was making a cool two hundred.

Esmie and Lacey made the decorating choices, hanging streamers, posters, colored lights, and having Eric blow up a few hundred balloons with the helium tank and arrange them decoratively. It was going to be very “high school dance” but if Eric was right, this stuff must be good since people wanted it, right?

“Ah real pizza,” Nick said after they’d gotten things reasonably set up an hour before doors opened and sat at the dais table to enjoy their feast overlooking the empty ballroom. “Unlike that crap you sell at the concession stand, Esmie.”

“Am I supposed to be offended? I agree our food’s awful,” she said, “That pizza comes frozen in boxes and looks like hubcaps. I hate all our food, I’d quit if I could.”

Everyone shrugged. They were all stuck there for the summer, realistically. If they quit they’d get kicked out of their lodging and have to buy a bus ticket back home, and none of them came from families that could afford a teenager loafing around on the sofa all summer because they didn’t like their job.

“Then we’d be separated though,” Eric said.

“I know, I’m not gonna quit, I’m a Mexican, baby. We’re used to working lousy jobs.”

Nick felt a strange surge of pride. Esmie never used to call herself Mexican, as if by not mentioning it then people might think she was white. But they were Mexican, if their brown skin didn’t give it away, their family’s lack of wealth and connections would eventually. Nick figured they might as well take pride in who they were rather than try to pretend to be something they weren’t.

“We’re all in the same boat except Nick, he always gets the best jobs,” Lacey said.

“Hey what can I say? You guys are all unskilled laborers, I’m skilled,” he said with playful smugness, and Lacey gave him the finger in return. Nick had been leaning into his role in the group as the group’s snob and ranter, but not in a mean way, it was just an act he put on now for laughs. Even Nicole liked it, although she was still new to the group and everyone was feeling her out.

“I don’t mind landscaping,” Eric said.

“Sweating in the sun all day for six bucks an hour,” Nick said, shaking his head, “Esmie, you managed to date the most Mexican white guy I’ve ever met.”

Esmie held her boyfriend’s hand in predictable solidarity. Those two were quite the couple. Nick was rather sure they had started having sex. She was his little sister and he could never be comfortable with that, but as guys at Summer Lake went, Eric was about as good as she could hope for. Eric wouldn’t cheat on her, in fact, he worshiped the ground she walked on. Almost every other guy on staff was a douche who’d say anything it took to get a casual hook-up, but Eric didn’t even look at other girls. And Nick was reasonably sure that they were using protection. This could be going a lot worse.

“I miss Abby,” Lacey said as they ate their pizza. “She was the one who brought the group together.”

“And almost took it apart too,” Esmie reminded her.

“Well, we’re past that now,” Lacey said, “I’d be pretty miserable without her and you guys. And she’s got a right to have a ... girlfriend.” Everyone giggled, still finding it all very novel. “What do you think she and Nicole are doing right now?”

“Flicking the bean,” Nick said, unable to resist.

“Munching the carpet,” Lacey said with a devilish grin.

“Mowing the lawn,” Esmie said with a guilty smile as she joined in on the juvenile euphemisms.

“Geeze guys she’s my sister,” Eric said, blushing, “Besides, she said they’re in separate rooms, and it’s a swim meet anyway. Abby takes those super seriously. She’s not there to hook up with a girl.”

Everyone dropped it, not wanting to actually upset a member of the group with their razzing.

“So how’s all this stuff work?” Lacey asked, gesturing to the DJ equipment after finishing with her second slice of pizza. Nick figured a change of topic was in order and he always liked talking about his equipment so he gave his friends a quick tour.

“Laura asked me a good CD player for events this summer and I said a Denon DN-2600F, just like as a joke, you know.” Everyone gave him blank looks. “Oh uh, this is what they use in clubs. Sticker price is a thousand bucks. Summer Lake seems to like setting money on fire. But combined with a good pre-amp and receiver, and mixed properly, it makes CDs sound almost as good as a proper record setup like I have, it’s amazing.”

“Boring!” Esmie said.

“That’s just what an unskilled worker would say,” Nick teased, and she made a fist and punched her brother’s shoulder.

“Anyway you guys all have middlebrow tastes, help me make a set list so the yokels don’t throw rotten vegetables at me for playing good music,” he said teasingly.

“Hey Eric’s gonna be on guard duty so nobody steals the Denim 36000 tonight,” Lacey said, “You oughta show some gratitude!”

“Nobody’s gonna steal the DJ equipment, this isn’t South Central,” Nick said.

Everyone laughed, then they got to work. That was the thing about his friends, Nick thought. They teased each other, but they were all workers, and they were all there for each other. He’d never met such people in his life. So he wasn’t going to get a girlfriend this summer. It was pathetic that he’d used to go through life feeling like an empty shell seeking a perfect soulmate girlfriend to complete him. No girl wanted to be thought about like that.

Anyway, it turned out the only thing he needed was a little group of real friends who liked and supported him, and now he had it.

As the start of the dance neared, Esmie and Eric went to their rooms to change into fancy clothes. Lacey decided to as well, coming back in a tight green sequin dress that showed little cleavage but she didn’t think it was too slutty. Nick, of course, was in his trademark jeans, white T-shirt and red flannel long-sleeve. He’d told her he considered suits to be bourgeois, or something ridiculous like that.

“Aren’t DJs supposed to be dressed all sharp?” Lacey said, joining him at the DJ booth just as the doors opened and teenagers began to file in. Nick was the DJ and would be busy with that all night, but his friends had no real duties during the actual dance, despite Lacey’s joking about Eric being security for Nick. Eric and Esmie were definitely planning on being a sappy teenage couple and dance with each other. Lacey didn’t particularly feel like getting groped by horny teenage boys who’d heard she was easy, and she’d never sat at a DJ booth, so she was giving it a chance.

“I am dressed sharp,” Nick said, putting on Opposites Attract by Paula Abdul to start the night’s music. “Flannel’s gonna be all the rage in the 1990s.”

“With people like your ex-girlfriend maybe,” Lacey teased.

“Oh man, we actually both wore flannel on our one date,” Nick said with a self-deprecating smile.

“That’s so perfect!” Lacey laughed. “God I love her but she is a total dyke. She’s in her element dating a girl ... I could never be that way myself, but it’s who she is.”

“Yeah, I get it now,” Nick said, “She’s a good person. Actually she’s amazing, that’s why I had such a big crush on her. I’ve never met a girl like Abby.”

“Me either,” Lacey said, “She’s unique. I wish we weren’t just summer friends. Her, and the rest of you guys too.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, “I’ve got my sister back home but that’s it. I’ve never had friends like this.”

“Me either,” Lacey said.

“What’s next on the set list?” Nick asked, and got the CDs out as Lacey read them off to him off the list. It was all pop hits and dance mainstays they’d picked earlier.

“Wow you’re actually doing this right,” Lacey said, “I thought you’d be playing REM and the Smiths to enlighten us all with your brilliant taste.”

“Believe me I’d like to,” Nick said wryly, “But I was hired to do a job. Besides, it looks like people are here for a cheesy teenage dance, so I guess we’d better give it to them. But I am going to sneak in one or two good songs without them even noticing it’s not MTV junk, you’ll see.”

Lacey nodded. The grand ballroom was steadily filling up with teenagers. This was the staff’s second and final promised dance of the summer, and the first had been a “getting to know you” sort of thing after opening week which she hadn’t even bothered attending, already tired by then of the only reason most boys at Summer Lake wanted to get to know her. There would probably be a final dance after this one, but in their infinite pettiness, Summer Lake management was dangling that out as a reward to the staff for good behavior through the dog days of summer, which were rapidly approaching.

Everyone looked to be taking full advantage of their one sure summer dance and was dressed up in formal outfits. Some of the girls had even gone to town to get their hair done up like it was prom. Boys from far-flung departments like maintenance and landscaping looked halfway respectable with their hair gelled fussed over, and wearing what was certainly the only suit they’d brought to Summer Lake. In the resort’s grand ballroom everyone managed to look halfway classy.

Nick got on the mic between songs and slipped into a radio voice, deep and confident as he introduced songs and encouraged guys to be “proper” with their dates, or chill to the mellow music, or some such DJ nonsense that was just right for his sort of dance.

“Damn Nick, you even have the voice,” Lacey said, “You’re good at this.”

Nick looked down bashfully. “I’m just being professional,” he said.

“You guys are so talented,” Lacey said, feeling emotional now, perhaps due to the song, which was the slow number Eternal Flame. “Abby’s a wonder woman, Eric’s a football star, and you’re an electronics wizard and suave DJ. And here I am just a trashy waitress from Florida. An unskilled worker, as you say.”

“Hey,” Nick said, with what Lacey thought was a genuine tone, not just a boy desperate to not have a girl start crying on him, “You’re a nice person. You work hard, you’re true to your friends. Most of the girls here are vapid and mean. I’m glad you’re sitting here with me. And you can help more if you want, there’s always work to do here.”

Lacey smirked then gave a little smile. “Thanks,” she said. “Let’s get the next songs queued up.”

“Oh right,” Nick said, “Time to let them have some fun for a while, then we’ll get into more slow numbers later.”

His sense of pace was good, Lacey thought. It was past ten and the fashionably late were starting to arrive. He had a long sequence of fast, fun songs – Brass Monkey by the Beastie Boys, We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel, Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson, even some MC Hammer which she knew he hated, but it was all popular stuff and the crowd went wild for it. He mixed in silly songs that were expected at dances like Everybody Dance Now, Love Shack and YMCA, and he slipped in some tracks he actually thought were good like Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order, Metro by Berlin, and some very funky song called Flashlight. She doubted the crowd knew the songs Nick liked but they had good beats for dancing and he put them in at just the right moment and people seemed to dig it.

Lacey helped him come up with things to say in between tracks and he showed her how to raise and lower the lighting and even shine the spotlight on featured couples, Nick toggled switches and hit buttons to keep the music sounding just right and almost as importantly, never let the beat stop for any reason. That was most important in a dance, Lacey thought, you had to get everyone into a groove and keep them there.

Nick went on again to speak between songs with a message from Laura Ballard that everyone was to be back in their rooms by 12:30, which got some laughter from the crowd.

“Your voice is so deep over the speakers,” Lacey said, “Are you using equipment to sound like a radio DJ?”

“Nah I trained my voice,” he said, “I might be a DJ one day. Gotta keep my career options open ... I’m not going to do manual labor, that’s for sure. I’m a bad Mexican.”

She giggled. “Everyone in my family does that kind of work though ... roofing, construction, whatever. The girls are waitresses like me mostly, or bartenders. Or strippers.”

She must have let out some of her sadness because Nick said, “You have a decent voice, have you ever thought about doing voiceovers?”

Lacey laughed. “No ... really? You think my voice is decent?”

“Yeah, it is,” Nick said, “I’ll work with you if you want.” He put on his big metal headphones and checked something with the audio before he played the next song.

“How do you hear headphones over all the noise from the speakers?” she asked.

“Oh, these are my cans,” he said, “They’re studio headphones, or as we call them in the business, cans. I have a second pair you can use.”

She laughed at the word “cans” but tried out his second set and sure enough, she could hear him playing different music over them despite the blare of the speakers.

Eric and Esmie came up about halfway through the mixer. Lacey had seen them dancing, looking so sappy and sweet. The big redhead held his little brown-skinned girlfriend and had some surprising moves, which Lacey supposed was because he was so athletic and some of that carried over to dancing.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Eric said over the music. With the speakers pointed out into the ballroom, it was relatively easy to hear each other at the booth as long as they spoke loudly.

“Okay,” Nick said with nervous precision, “Lacey’s a huge help.”

Lacey smiled softly.

“Just so you know, there’s some people sipping booze from flasks, and the punch has been spiked,” Eric said.

“Of course,” Lacey said with a sigh. Nick, and herself now apparently, were just the DJs, but Laura Ballard was at the door and nominally the responsible adult in charge. It hardly surprised Lacey that she was letting the staff get a bit wild and enjoy the party, that was Laura’s reputation still from when she’d been on the summer staff herself as head lifeguard for many years.

“Well I’m heading into the slow stuff soon,” Nick said, “Let everybody dance with their partners for an hour, that should calm everybody down then we’re outta here and they can go puke in the bushes like good trashy teenagers.”

“Good,” Eric said. “So um, you’ve got it under control here?”

“Yeah go dance with my sister,” Nick said, rolling his eyes. Eric didn’t need to be told twice. He and Esmie took off.