Like most days, he didn't need to actually do anything.
Now that's the best thing about this job. He looked around to see if anyone had spotted him and again he and Ahmed shared a smile.īoys in speedos with ice cream. He watched the boy follow his parents and sisters to a clear spot a little north, where the youngster finished off his treat with some precision finger licking and wiped his hands clean on the flimsy cloth covering his firm ass. The boy smiled and raised his cone in a toast of ice cream camaraderie and Ahmed grinned and toasted him back. As the ten-year-old in his red speedo laved his tongue across the milky chocolate, his sideways head tilt gave him a view of Ahmed holding his vanilla cone. And trailing the little group (mom with her picnic basket, dad with his cooler, and two teenage daughters) was a golden-haired boy lovingly licking an ice cream cone of his own. Boys in speedos diving for volleyballs.īut hold on, what was this? A family walked by, Ahmed instinctively knowing from their aura that they were tourists staying over in Millionaire Row. Boys playing golf in the putt-putt courses. Boys making friends with each other in that matter-of-fact way that happened on holiday. Boys playing on the beach, their sleek prepubescent bodies testing their new limits as they entered the last bit of childhood.
OK, maybe the best thing about the beach wasn't the ice cream.
As Ahmed bit into a cone, seated at the top of his lifeguard station, he wondered how he had ever survived the first fourteen years of his life without any. The best part of being a lifeguard at Mermaid Beach was the ice cream.