Wet
by Tim Hanson
Pool crew mop yarn sweeps across my still-Stoli-soaked snout the morning after I passed out poolside. I either crashed the Russian wedding party or it annexed me during its total occupation of the River of No Return Resort, somewhere along the receding banks of the ridden-hard-put-away-wet Colorado River. It was an unforgettable night of prodigious drinking and possibly exuberant dancing that I will never remember. Must have been a wild party else how to explain the pool crew’s mistaking me for a hazardous puddle. My eyes sting from chlorine and vengeful Mojave sunlight. My stomach heaves the rhythmic surge and retreat of the Sea of Cortés at San Felipe, the last place I vaguely recall seeing my wife and daughters. Their sea-salt-saturated heads of blond hair hung in shame as the patriarch of their summer-vacationing clan was led away in handcuffs by unsympathetic Policia Federales to the drunk tank reserved for pinche gringo borrachos. Hell, I wasn’t even drunk on those two six packs of Tecate when I attempted that swan dive from the roof of the motel office into la piscina para niños. Las cervezas had about as much effect on me as a Listerine rinse. It was just unfortunate that the Acuario padres had delegated childcare duties to the inadequately supervised wading pool. They were such niñitos pequeñitos that I didn’t see them until I was plummeting towards them. A chorus of horrified screams led first by my own family and then quickly joined by the startled Acuarios did strike me as unnecessarily alarming, pero cuando ya valió madre…que será será. Arm floats and splashers spared los Acuarioitos any injury but did little to break my fall, which explains the saturated plaster cast disintegrating on my right – or is it my left arm? Hard to determine from my puddle perspective. Damn! Why won’t they stop mopping me up as if I were Russian wedding vomit? I finally manage to swipe away the ends of the sopping mop with whichever arm doesn’t have a cast on it and raise my head high enough to behold a beautiful sight – the remains of the Russian wedding party, like pale abandoned rag dolls flung about on scattered pool furniture and every slab of poolside patio as far as my drunken eyes can see. “Nostrovia!” I toast to no Russian in particular, and, with a synchronicity that suggests they might have rehearsed this while I snored, a chorus of Russian revelers replies, “Na zdrovie, comrade!”
Tim Hanson lives in Santa Monica, CA. His work appears in great weather for MEDIA's 2014 and 2021 anthologies, Coffin Bell Journal, Cease, Cows, Funicular, and Into the Void. His audio drama podcasts can be found at https://aptfprods.podbean.com/.