From “Spur Cross and Carefree” by Peter Turchi

From Spur Cross and Carefree

            Surveying the pool, Rachel saw couples, women with men, lounging around the shimmering blue—most of them older, one mother about her age standing in shallow water, arms outstretched, coaxing a little girl who stood resolutely on the first step, arms circled by inflated orange water wings. No sale. Even the daylight here surprised her: brighter, whiter, it made everything seem starkly exposed. She stepped forward, tipping the brim of her cap down to block the glare, even though she was wearing sunglasses, and checked again, body by body.

“Can I help you?” A man in khaki shorts and embroidered polo shirt, holding a tray of used plastic cups, appeared beside her.

“Hi! I was just—I’m looking for a friend,” Rachel said, smiling, hating it. But in choosing Arizona, this was one of the compromises she’d expected to have to make. “She told me she’d be at the pool.” With two drinks, the note had said, though the sun was not yet directly overhead.

“Did she say which one?”

Multiple pools. The possibility hadn’t crossed Rachel’s mind.

“This is the main pool,” the waiter continued. “There’s one near the clubhouse, and then we have the spa pool.”

“The spa pool,” Rachel said, knowing her girl. Then, to be sure, “Do they have bar service there, too?” She laughed.

They did. He gave her directions, offered to call the bell desk for a golf cart if she wanted a ride.

“Oh, no, that’s ok,” Rachel said, with that same little laugh, a sound she made involuntarily. “Thank you, though.”

She had walked eight miles already this morning, so a few hundred more yards would have seemed inconsequential if not for the fact that the temperature was now nearly 100 headed toward a late afternoon high of 107, according to her phone, which was hot to the touch. This place they were staying was even more beautiful than she had imagined from the website, despite the shocking heat, which felt like a dry sauna set on Dessicate, and despite the fact that the distinguishing feature of the resort was enormous rocks. As Rachel walked the sand-colored cement path alongside a boulder as large as a fairy tale cottage, down around an immaculately groomed putting green, and between casitas laid out like some sort of idyllic, luxurious, pueblo village, lizards flashed in front of her, quail bobbed their question mark head ornaments, and one bold rabbit only a few feet away stopped chewing long enough to determine that she posed no threat. What made massive rockpiles surrounded by plants projecting hooks and thorns so appealing? What drew her to this, when the sane response would be to stay indoors, or stay away? Sometimes Rachel suspected she had a perverse streak, an attraction to anything that made life difficult.