Don’t Tell the King

Monitors, plebeian subjects of the deified, rusty gorilla, clean the Jungle Golf Kingdom. Or face the wrath of sweaty King Jim’s potato-chip beard and brown-tinged buckteeth.

But the managers haven’t come in yet today.

The fate of the kingdom is left in the hands of the plebeians and I.

A monitor walks into the office. “A kid threw up on the trashcan.”

I look up from a rainbow crate of golf balls.

“You mean in the trashcan?”

“Nope.”

He sighs, shoves the stool in the corner, and trudges off towards the synthetic, mildewy golf greens.

I should mention that I’m a cashier. Not exactly nobility, I know. I count the tiny pencils, hand out scorecards, direct golfers to the entrance and politely remind them of their lefts and rights.

“Where was it?” I shout through the door.

“Hole twelve in Solomon’s Mine. Under the waterfall.”

I walk out to the middle of the boardwalk. Mass at the 12th street peer just ended. People rising from the blue wooden benches sodden with salt water. Tonight they’ll take up their “Have you texted Jesus lately?” signs, pass pamphlets to the teenagers wearing torn shirts and cut-offs in line to mini-golf, ask if they’d spare a minute of their day for a quick save-your-soul survey. But right now they smooth their white knit sweaters and click their low heels across the boards toward Uncle Paul’s Pancake House. I hit the button that makes the gorilla sing Mony, Mony.

The monitor returns to the half-office, half-bathroom with a glower and a bucket. He pumps foam soap into the bottom and sets the bucket on the toilet. And runs the sink.

“No hot water.” I grab the stool for myself and open lime-green Gatorade.

“So— you wanna help or something?”

“I cleaned up the stairwell when that kid peed last week.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Have you seen a woman with a bunch of tattoos?” 

I’ve spent the last twenty minutes watching a seagull perched on the gorilla’s finger dodging bubbles blowing from the north end of the boardwalk. Didn’t even notice when the pale apple-shaped man with snakes slithering up his arms walked up to the counter.

“No, sorry.”

I glance down. His right hand holds a tinfoil-wrapped bottle. His left encompasses the small hand of a wide-eyed towhead boy. The son holds on to the tail of the snake as the two walk down the boardwalk to check Pirate Putt.

“So, what are you gonna do?” I ask the monitor.

He pulls a bottle of Windex out from under the sink and sprays into the bucket a good fifteen times, then looks up with a grayish sponge in one hand and the confused concoction in the other.

“Well, we were out of hot water.”

And, believing this to be decent logic, goes off on his vile mission. I wash my hands for no real reason and return to my post. My boss told me to stay at the front at all times, but very few people wake at 7:30 a.m. on a sunny Sunday morning to miniature golf in a damp, plastic cave.

I take a swig of Gatorade. The monitor yells to me through plastic palm fronds.

“Don’t tell Jim about this if he comes in.”

“He probably wouldn’t hear you over the potato-chip crunching anyway.”