Skeleton Crew

 We have the place to ourselves, The Celebrities and I.

All regular activities have been suspended for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. The pool is closed, the gym is closed, the weight room is closed, the classrooms upstairs are all closed, getting their beauty rest, so well-deserved.

The lifeguards are gone, the physical trainers are gone, the instructors are gone, and the receptionists are gone. The supervisors and coordinators, all long gone. It’s just us, the skeleton crew, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Howe Gelb and me.

I have the keys to the castle, the codes to the alarms, access to the secret rooms and hidden tunnels. Juan Pablo and Howe, of course, are in on the secrets. They know more than I do, more than anyone else. They sleep out back, in their respective encampments, in the recesses of The Park, deep in the brush. They see and hear things I do not.

Though we don’t exchange words, though we have never exchanged more than glances and nods, conspiratorial in nature, diffident, I am relieved that they came in from the cold, relieved for them, relieved for me.

The Big Boss was unequivocal. Her instructions were simple and clear. The common spaces were to remain open, but the pool, gym, weightroom, and classrooms were off limits to the public. All the locker rooms and bathrooms were to remain locked, with the exception of the small bathroom on the main floor, to the side of the entranceway, with its signboards and sliding doors.  

But the snow being so high and the temperature so low, the world being what it is, all edges, all teeth, and me being who I am, a dangerously overeducated janitor, the keeper of the keys, I just couldn’t follow the instructions.

Early on, the only ones in the building, the sunlight so delicate, streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I opened the locker rooms so that Juan Pablo and Howe could take their warm showers. Once they had showered, shaved, and shat, I closed the locker rooms again.

Juan Pablo and Howe then retreated to their respective spots, in front of the windows, at the foot of the vast park, with its giant trees, skeletal this time of year, and its footpaths, buried beneath expanses of snow, great swells of it.

I, too, have taken my spot, nearby but not too near.

It has been a long time since I was in The Community Center in the light of day. I forgot what it was like. Long, pointy spears of light pierce the side of the building and slant lavishly across the cement floor. As I wade in their golden waters, as I slosh around, I get the feeling that I am outside of time, outside of history, suspended in amber. Something has come to end without anything else having replaced it.

I didn’t go to The Dinner Party. I didn’t raise my glass, throw my head back, and laugh. I didn’t make amends. Couldn’t, for some reason. For so many months, I obsessed about closed doors. Yet, when a door finally opened, I refused to walk through it, refused to enter, refused the invitation. Worse, I ghosted Jean-Christophe, my Ally on the Inside, my lifeline, an only.

Now, The Celebrities and I wait. In the building, we wade, a building that isn’t really open and isn’t closed either. Suspended, in a shared silence, in shared sunlight, we wait for something. We don’t even know, perhaps, what it is. We don’t even know if it will come at all. The chances, it seems, are increasingly remote.

Meanwhile the sun gradually withdraws its rays from the cement floor, almost imperceptibly, as the shadows in the corner of the room grow darker, more impenetrable, more unruly. And the world outside, as unsolvable as ever, icicles hanging from the edges of the roof, poised for attack.

Illustration by Pablo Muñoz y Perez (on instagram @baster_xlll)