For 30 days so far this summer my job as a lifeguard at Spankas County Country Club had sucked. Stuck with the early shift it was my job to watch the pool from 6AM to noon and clean the men's changing room and toilets both before and after my stint on the pool. Needless to say it wasn't quite what I envisioned when I applied for the job. All the hot girls in bikinis didn't show up until an hour or two after my turn watching the pool had ended and I was stuck with the middle aged office drones getting in an hour's swim before the office. Basically I was wishing I'd taken that job washing cars at the local dealership like my buddy Mark did.
Day 31 however was different. I wandered into the pool area at 5:05 confident that my boss would never catch on to my technically late arrival at work as he was as likely to be awake and at work at 5 in the morning as a polar bear was to be wandering down a beach in Hawaii. All should have been quiet, yet there was the unmistakable sound of someone swimming. I checked the gate and sure enough it was unlocked, with a key that wasn't supposed to exist hanging around the handle. I strode in to the fenced off area, the full force of my 19 years, high school diploma, one year of university and 30 days of employment at the Club my full claim to authority. A woman was doing laps in the supposedly of limits pool.
"Hey, you can't be in here, the pool is closed!" I shouted loud enough that the woman in the water would be able to hear me.
The woman stopped abruptly, shocked by the interruption, her head popping above the surface with a confused expression on her face. "Who are you? Where is Dave?" she asked.
I thought back to my first day on the job and what I'd been told about the guy who was the morning lifeguard last summer. "Dave graduated from University this year; he got a fulltime job as an accountant. What does that have to do with you having a contraband pool key though?"
She flushed red, whether from the exertion of treading water or from getting caught I don't know, before swimming over to the side of the pool and hauling herself out in front of me. With a single movement she removed her goggles and swimcap, shaking out her hair and smiling. "Dave and I had an arrangement last summer, I slipped him a 20 every week and he let me use the pool before it officially opened..."
I examined her closely. 40, 5'5, dripping wet and with long brown hair, she had a body that a woman half her age would envy. The black one-piece swimsuit she wore was both modest and revealing in equal measures, not showing nearly as much skin as any bikini, but clinging tightly to reveal her athletic body. Finally this job at the pool was providing the kind of sights I'd been dreaming about all summer.
"Dave was breaking the rules then too. Having someone in the pool without a lifeguard on duty is an insurance issue. He's lucky he didn't lose his job and I'm sorry but an occasional 20 bucks isn't enough to get me to risk mine," I said with as much conviction as I could muster.
She pouted, a playful gleam in her eye. "Well I suppose you'll just have to get here a little earlier to watch me while I swim, won't you Mr. Lifeguard?"
I thought about it for all of a millisecond. "Let's say you gave me a hundred dollars a week. I can guarantee to get to work a little early to supervise you while you swim. You understand however that as it's outside the pools normal operating hours I'll have to watch you very, very, closely at all times? Purely to keep the insurance company happy of course," I grinned.
For a moment my heart stopped with trepidation, but luckily she smiled back.
"That's fine with me; we wouldn't want to upset the insurance company," she winked.