The Resort Life

Dust rolled down a country road at the same time as a crew of florescently adorned workmen and workwomen painted a fresh white left turn emblem onto a newly paved suburban street. It wasn't so much that they were sweaty, it was that they were weary and wet, a difference as slim as the line separating a weed from a wild plant.

Jake Foote sat in an air conditioned metallic maroon SUV next to a flower garden loving, bicycle race enthusiast as they anxiously awaited the light in front of them to turn from red to green. The two had been made late by Jake's perpetual ability to get lost even if he thought he knew where he was going. The road ahead stretched out expansively like the bugs that covered the vehicle's windshield. Both occupants were lost in their own thoughts and their occasional conversation was suspended by a new rule they had agreed upon. Since Jake was wont to interrupt the driver's thoughts she told him he was to state, "Bookmark," as she would finish what she was saying and they would go back to whatever scattered theorem had meandered into his mind.

The car pinged for unidentifiable reasons (must be the octane Jake mused though he really didn't know what he was talking about). The driver wondered if it was more of a vibration than an agitation and it kind of sounded like the smoothie maker she had recently purchased from QVC, the cable shopping channel.

She didn't like anyone to think for her or to presume to do that much. She generally wasn't truly vain yet the scar on her accident prone leg caused her to rub Vitamin A and other ointments to hide the scar from a fall, a fall that led to a long, long and winding road much different from the one that they were now on (less metaphorically than realistically).

Over the years Jake had come to suspect that there was a whole other life out there that he knew nothing about. Of course it was more than a little futile to try to describe this suspicion due to its inherent nature but he sensed that some day he would stumble across this other place and his heart would palpitate (or vibrate or agitate) and his eyes would widen and still none of it would even then make much sense.

The SUV's CD player softly played the new Liz Phair CD, aptly named Liz Phair and the for the driver it was the first time hearing the new music. Jake had brought it along because he said he "needed" to hear it, that he couldn't stop listening no matter what the press said. The driver noted that it sounded synthetic yet she kind of liked it. Jake bopped to "H.W.C."

They finally arrived at the resort they were staying at, a mere hop, skip, and jump, down the country road from a larger resort that housed the county conference they were paid to attend. Further down another road lie an Indian owned casino next to an Indian history museum that told a story of sap gathering and wild rice jigging and of somehow surviving to the extent one desperately wanted to pass on the story to the next generation in hopes that it would somehow live on at the same time as its life was being drained like coins pouring into a slot machine's giveaway crevice.

The night after they arrived Jake and the flower loving, bicycle enthusiast, in-line skating disciple, arrived at the county conference they again hit the road in search of a lake house bought by someone that used to work in the same place they were employed. Their directions told them to turn off on the second dirt road off the highway, and look for the house two in from the left. In fact they ended up turning on a paved street in-between a couple gravel roads five houses to the right, the spiffy looking one with a semi-circle driveway.

They met their colleagues (most of whom Jake had never before met) on an incoming pontoon that splashed waves from a small for its size lake. The wife of the retired cabin recently retired employee asked Jake who was seated on the floor of the cruising pontoon if he was married, if he had kids, if he had a girlfriend. He wasn't sure of any of the answers to the questions but his mind raced back to his two recently adopted cats at home. Two cats with seven limbs between them he told any who would sometimes listen (or hear- he didn't like to talk much) even though the response raised more questions than it answered. Meanwhile back at the ranch the kitties were busy knocking over paper bags of plastic newspaper bags and spreading them all over a damp but cool basement thinking he'd never come back.