Waterslide

About the slide. I figure that I'm the one to explain. It was my idea to use that little hill behind our convenience store to try to bring in more of a crowd, the cross-country, car-trip family crowd. The thing is, every day I watch hundreds of mini-vans drive past on the highway, each loaded with kids, their hands and faces pressed against the glass windows, pounding with their fists or making puffer-fish faces. I sit on my stool behind the counter, stare out past the rows of cigarettes and lottery tickets, and think, Poor little things. The mothers turned around in the front seat, on their knees, pointing fingers and yelling complete names. The fathers, doing their best to pay attention to the road and be impassive drivers, knuckles white, biting lower lips, every once in a while threatening to pull this car over, I'm warning you. I see all this and I say to Mitch, Mitch, why don't we do something with that hill out back, put something on it so that these families will get off the highway and stop at our store, make it a place for the grown-ups to rest and the kids to run off all that energy? Let's do something that these kids will like. Mitch starts to shake his head—I know he's thinking money—so I add, And something that'll increase our revenue and profit margin. Loreen, Mitch says, leaning back in his chair and folding his hairy arms, that's a pretty good idea, coming from you, pretty good idea, that is.

So it took a couple of months and many long talks with a contractor and a designer and some city officials and a white-faced man from the bank, but we finally did with the hill what we wanted to do with it. We put in a slide, a waterslide, like they have at those big waterparks in Los Angeles. It started at the top of the hill and made its way to the bottom, going side to side like mountain trail switchbacks, emptying into a shallow pool. During the construction I'd get customers asking me what all the trucks and people in hard hats were doing, why they were digging in the hill and laying out blueprints on the front of their trucks. Every time they'd ask I'd try to act coy like I didn't know what they were talking about, or I'd say something about putting in new pipes. I'd never last long. Excitement for the waterslide, for the life that it would bring us, was too much and I'd break from my act and let them know that we, Mitch and Loreen, were installing a full-fledged waterslide. They would tell me that it is a great idea, to have a waterslide in the middle of the desert like this, for all the traveling families to cool off and calm down, to escape the California sun.

I looked forward to all the smiling, splashing kids, and Mitch said it was a sure thing to bring in more business. Drinking beer we'd talk about simmering Dodge Caravans swerving into our parking lot, the side door pulling open, and red-faced boys and girls swarming out in their little swimsuits and kids' goggles, their tired mothers yelling after them to slow down, we need to put some lotion on you so you don't get burnt—aw, what the hey, you kids just go and have fun while Dad and I enjoy the various chilled beverages and freshly-prepared sandwiches in this shop. Finishing our beers and opening new ones we'd talk about how this would increase our revenue and our profit margin. We'd discuss how with this waterslide, it being the only functioning waterslide within two hundred miles, we'd certainly be the preferred rest stop on the I-15, and we'd be able to save up more money and buy one of those motor homes with the kitchen inside, and Mitch would drive and hum to...