HOPEFUL FOR SUN

He’s old, this kid. Just ask him. To his right is a chalkboard where someone who works at the hotel has neatly printed the day’s weather. Rain is a possibility but the hotel is “hopeful for sun.” To his right is a man in a suit who is, with extended arm, shaking a can of spray paint at the woman behind the front desk. All morning the kid has been trading glances with this woman. She has smiled at him. She has asked him if he is interviewing for a job. She is small with hair that swirls up from her head like a soft-serve ice cream, and he says so. “It’s a beehive,” she says. “Don’t get stung.” He has entertained impure thoughts more than once—she is older than him, but he’s old, this kid—but now he can only watch as she is berated by the man in the suit. “This is the color he said he wanted,” the man says. “Not green or yellow or orange. This is the color I told you to order.” The woman begins to speak but the man jabs at her with the can. “I’m tired of your mistakes,” he said. “I want you to write me a note explaining why you can’t get anything right.” The man storms off. The kid expects the woman to say something to him, or to say something under her breath, or to burst into tears, or to laugh, but she doesn’t do any of these things. She sits still, like the man’s anger has drained her of any motive will, and then robotically slides a sheet of paper into her line of vision with her left hand while her right hand construction-cranes a pen. She begins to write. He stands and talks to the desk. His first thought is that he’ll stop her from writing. The pen would be better used taking the man’s eye. That’s what he plans to say. But he sees that she has already started. “Dear Mr. Samuels,” she has written. “I am very sorry to have made so may mistakes and also to have slept with you all summer.” The boy stares at the words. The handwriting is the same as on the weather board. He looks back and forth and back and forth. He laughs. He bursts into tears.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas