Eric was running some errand late one night when some rich spoiled brats, drunk off their privileged asses came by the main indoor pool. They did the classic
strip naked and chase each other around the pool
that I had been attempting to clean. To them, my irritation was worth some mockery and little else. Well, they kept drinking, pool policies be damned so I called the night manager.
He took one look at the menagerie's leader, told me to do my job somewhere else and then departed. I was putting the equipment away when said rich moron woke up and decided to take a trip off the diving board. He busted his fool-head open in the attempt and flopped face first into the pool. I was half tempted to walk away. He wasn't trying to right himself.
I may have been a thug-in-training, but I wasn't sadistic, or brain damaged. Not only didn't I plan to let the dummy drown, I knew that he was a VIP and I was the LIP (least important person) on the scene. Letting him die would have been a poor life choice. I dialed 911 as I kicked off my shoes giving the operator the bare bones, put my phone down and dove in.
I had pseudo-CPR training courtesy of TV and movies. I did manage to flip him face-up and swim us over to the pool's edge in the proper manner. By dint of good instincts, some luck and a smidge of knowledge, I got his heart going and his lungs somewhat free of water. I saved his life. I would have gladly walked away except I had failed to inform the manager of what happened before I dove in and I couldn't leave the dying kid until the real EMT's arrived.
By that time, it was too late for me to get away from the publicity I didn't desire. Two police officers were on the scene along with the ambulance. The police called the kid's parents before the night manager could save his own career. The cameras showed the whole story, including my boss letting the rich boys both drink on the premises and hang around a large body of water while they did it.
Despite my heroics (and maybe because of my juvie record), the officers kept me around until the lawyers showed up. Maybe one reason I went into the medical field was that those two paramedics laid out in no uncertain terms that I'd saved the boy's life ~ so I was ruled out as an attempted murder suspect. After six hours of investigation by a surprising number of detectives, the surveillance tapes verified my version of events. They let me go.
When we showed up the next afternoon for work, Eric was sent off on our daily routine while I was called to the manager's office. The old night manager was...no longer associated with 'our' organization so I was talking to the 'weekend' supervisor. It was now his duty to keep the facilities running until a new night manager could be hired and trained.
Later I heard something 'nasty' happened to my old boss - a hit and run resulting in a ton of injuries and no health insurance and, oh yeah, the dummy's father sued his ass. That 'dad' was Lloyd Pharris, one of Las Vegas' most powerful lawyers and chief partner of the most prestigious legal firm in the American Southwest. I had saved his only son and oldest child. He was beneficent.
I also got to meet his new trophy wife, Georgianna, and his other child, a daughter named Wynn. The boy, Ford Parrish, was my age - 16, while Wynn was 14 and Georgianna was 22. Lloyd was 39 at the time. For whatever reason, he decided that I deserved a reward. I could become his personal house boy/pool cleaner. Since the pay was three times more than I was making and a third of the work, I took it.
The assignment was really an eye-opener to how the better half lived. It turned out that Ford was an okay guy when he wasn't trying to impress his prep school crowd. I wisely put up clearly defined sexual barriers with Wynn on my second day - I liked the job that much. Georgianna - 'G' - was okay, just way too sizzling hot to be hanging around in a micro-bikini, sunbathing while I was trying to work.
No, nothing happened. No pool boy fantasies for either of us. I did note that Lloyd liked to parade her around in...ah...highly flattering clothes. Ford and I became cautious friends. I was smart enough to know that becoming a sycophant for him and his friends would only end badly for me. I took their condescension and flirting in stride. I was surprisingly self-confident at that age.
I didn't want to fly down to Cancun to be some rich girl's plaything, not matter how sexy she looked. I was getting plenty of tail in my own neighborhood and my high school. I chose another way to get in trouble. I became Ford's spine. Lloyd was the coldest, smuggest, most manipulative Bastard of all Bastards. I didn't like him from the moment he offered me the job.
It was obvious to me that he was giving me a handout and I had better be damn happy with his largesse. After watching the Pharris household dysfunction for two weeks, I hated him. Georgianna was his property and she had best not forget it. He psychologically undermined his kids whenever the mood took him. I had hoped it would never be aimed my way. I was wrong to hope.
Lloyd liked to tear people down. He liked to do it in front of an audience to impress upon that everyone he was the man in charge. At the start, I was a servant; beneath his notice. Only when Ford and I began to hang together outside of my household duties did that change. It began when Ford, a buddy of his named Kristoff Declan (a good guy) and I went to a part of town those two shouldn't have been in.
Kristoff considered himself to be a playboy and would hit on every pretty girl he set his eyes on. Normally, it was flirtatious - he wasn't a man-slut. Our problem was that the girl he was talking up that night was with someone who took offense. He and three of his home-boys decided to teach him a lesson in the parking lot. Kristoff wasn't street-smart enough to know he should have taken their insults and run for the car.
No, they threatened Kristoff and he taunted them right back - it was fun and games to him. He wasn't used to people who resolved disputes with their fists. They jumped Kristoff, Ford ran for the car and I ran to help Kristoff. In our favor, Kristoff was in pretty great shape - he loved to play tennis and squash - and I was healthy for my age and a scrapper.
None of it was fancy. It was body blows, kneeing, low kicks and wrestling. It took a dozen scrapes and bruises for us to escape, but we did it with some of our dignity intact. Ford had taken his high performance auto and left us. Initially, Kristoff was furious with Ford. That faded as he came to rationalizing Ford's response.
Ford was chicken-shit because his father openly and vocally considered him to be a weakling and a cowardly failure without Ford ever getting a chance to prove otherwise. Ford was simply living down to his father's expectations. We walked off our pain for two hours before Kristoff called his mother to pick him up. She was an aeronautics engineer at the nearby Nellis Air Force Base.
I bumped into her a few years later on another air base, but we can't talk about it for the next 43 years, assuming those records ever got declassified. Once she picked us up, Kristoff told her the whole story. First she told him that she was happy to see him alive and not in the hospital. Then she told him what a fu-bbly fu-blup (her version of cursing without cursing) he was for not walking away from the fight.
She asked my opinion. I informed her I wasn't stepping into their family feud. She bitched out Ford in absentia...and ended up thanking me. She reminded Kristoff that his fight had not been my fight and I could have run off with Ford. Before Kristoff could reply, I informed Mrs. Minerva Declan that Kristoff wouldn't have left me either. At the time I didn't know if that was true, or not.
My words mediated the crisis. Kristoff shot me a grateful look. I suggested that they drop me off at the closest highway exit to my house. Mrs. Declan took me in anyway, so they got to see the rundown dump of an apartment complex I lived in. I could see the look in their eyes - they pitied me and my poverty. Mrs. Declan said they'd wait until I went inside.
I counter-offered and promised to wait on the sidewalk until I was sure they got back on the main road. Honestly, I didn't think a carjacking was in the offing, but I could tell it made them feel safer. Kristoff held off on talking to Ford until I came back to work at the Pharris household two days later. Initially, I wanted nothing to do with Kristoff's intervention.
Ford looked like he expected us to start kicking his ass over what had happened. With Kristoff in the lead, we three went over the events instead. He ran. Neither of us was happy with that, yet we jokingly said he'd done the smart thing. We did wish he'd circled back for us. Kristoff then regaled us with a vivid recounting of his dad ripping him a new asshole the next morning over the phone (his Dad was in the Philippines at the time).
Forward one month with Kristoff handling Ford in the mornings, me on the afternoons I worked and both of us on the occasional evening outing. It took some work and both of us acting 'bad' to coax Ford along. Despite what Kristoff thought, I was as influenced by TV as he was when it came to playing a 'tough guy'. I WAS a bad-ass in school; I didn't need to act like one.
So much of youthful free time revolved around shopping and malls. The lives of sixteen/seventeen year olds in Las Vegas were no different. Charli (Ford's GF) and her BFF Reagan talked Ford and Kristoff to go to some midnight sale. Reagan got in a tousle with another girl ~ it is too often women getting me in trouble. Blows were exchanged, Reagan won (she was sporty), had the girl tossed out (Reagan was a 'good girl') and they bought their stuff.
