Kelly Kristofferson returns exhausted from work, late in the evening, and is halfway up the narrow staircase to his room when his landlady barks from the kitchen, “That you, boy?”

Kelly hesitates a moment, then goes to the bottom of the stairs and cranes his neck around the bannister in Mrs. Weaver’s direction. She sits at the kitchen table sipping lukewarm tea and mouthing her gray teeth. She holds the telephone — the only one in their side of the duplex — out in front of her and says, “Your damn mother keeps calling my house.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Well, call her back, dammit,” Mrs. Weaver says. “Sick of hearing the phone ring.”

Kelly takes the phone, dials a number, puts the receiver to his ear, and when his mother answers, says in a drained voice, “Hey, Ma.”

Mrs. Weaver picks crumbs off the dining table, restless.

Kelly continues, “Good. Fine. Not yet. I will. Jesus. Ok.” He rubs his neck with his free hand. “Of course,” he says, softening. Then, finally, “Don’t let Dad gamble it.” He hangs up.

“What’d she want?” Mrs. Weaver asks.

“She says I ought to write my uncle and thank him for the summer job. Do you have any stamps, Mrs. Weaver?”

“I do if you fix the remote control like you said you would. Tonight’s Powerball.”

Kelly replaces the batteries in the controller and hands it to Mrs. Weaver, and in exchange she gives him a yellowed envelope and a stamp with a swooping dove on it. “You work tomorrow?” She asks.

Kelly shakes his head.

“Good. You look like hell. ‘Bout time they gave you a day off.”

Kelly goes upstairs to his room, sits at his small wooden desk, and takes out a white legal pad. He writes “Sunday, June 6th, 1996” at the top of the page, and then:

Dear Uncle Lewis,

Thank you for the job. You really came through for us this summer. I’m able to save a lot of money, which helps us out a ton. You’re a great uncle. Thanks again.

Sincerely, Kelly

He hears floorboards creak as Mrs. Weaver moves from the kitchen to the living room. She turns on the television, which starts blaring gameshow applause.

The writing takes up a fraction of the page. Kelly rips it from the pad, crumples it up, and starts again:

Dear Uncle Lewis,

Thank you so very much for the job this summer. I have learned so much, and have been able to save up a ton of money for myself and for my mother. She is really grateful, and so am I. I have made a ton of friends, and I love going into work each day, and yada yada, all great things, I am so incredibly full of it, etc. etc.

Sincerely, Your nephew, Kelly the jackass.

He tosses the pen onto the legal pad and stands up. He stretches, goes to the window, and opens it. Fresh air blows into the room, along with the smell of chlorine from the surrounding neighborhood pools.

They are mostly summer homes. Only the duplexes at the end of the street, like Mrs. Weaver’s, house people year-round.

Kelly closes the window and returns to his desk. He crumples the second letter, picks up the pen, and starts again:

Dear Uncle Lewis,

I am sorry for taking so long to write to you. I don’t know why it can be so difficult to write letters sometimes. Maybe it’s because I’m not a very organized person. I will start by saying thank you for getting me the job at the country club. It pays well, and I can make extra money when I work special events like parties and charity dinners. I started training at the end of April and worked part-time in May, but things got really busy after Memorial Day. That’s when Manny (the head of staff) put me at the poolside snack bar full-time and said, “Just give the members what they want.” That’s all I’ve been trying to do since.

Manny was also the one to set me up with a place to stay. I am renting a room from his mother-in-law about two miles down the road from the country club. The walk to the club every morning is a little long, but I always stop by this one restaurant called “Blue Heaven Diner” for fried eggs and coffee. If you ever get the chance to visit me here, I will have to take you to the diner so you can meet the other regulars and try the home fries.

My job at the snack bar is to take food orders, make drinks, and deliver refreshments to the club members sitting at tables or in big chairs by the pool. You can’t use the grill if you’re under 18, so I’m not allowed to cook anything, but there are two cooks named Quinn and Morgan who prepare the food. When I first met Quinn, I asked him how long he’d been a chef, and he burst out laughing. Every now and again he shakes his head, chuckles to himself, and says, “Chef...Chef Quinn, yessir.” Quinn is great because he always makes the employees food when there aren’t any orders in (as long as Manny isn’t looking).

Morgan is a bit younger and secretly my favorite co-worker. When he first met me, he acted all disappointed and said, “Saw your name on the schedule. Thought we were gonna have a hottie in the snack bar for once,” and all I had to say was, “Me too.” After that, he really liked me and has always tried to work the same shifts as me.

Quinn and Morgan are from the same hometown, a place called Bermwood (which they call “Wormwood”). Quinn moved away after high school, but Morgan still lives there, even though he hates it. He tells me a lot of stories about getting in fights at school. He always tries to get me to fight with him so he can teach me “how to be a man.” He says he wants me to be able to “defend myself” when the time comes, and he’s always getting worked up on my behalf, like when some of the members’ kids call me “Shelly.” I don’t really care, but Morgan gets really mad and messes up their food orders on purpose.

The two other snack bar attendants are OK, but they basically ignore me. They are what Ma would call “devilishly handsome,” and they spend a lot of time talking to their friends and other club members. You see, their parents are members who got them the job to look good on their college applications. They tell me that it’s not “what you do,” but “who you know” that makes you successful. They try to give me all kinds of advice, but even though they say things like “Let me spell this out for you,” it sometimes feels like they’re speaking another language from another world. Once, one of them told me how much his father was “worth.” I did the math, and I’d have to win the lottery three times to be worth that much.

Besides Quinn and Morgan, I talk the most with the members’ kids. They like to hang outside the snack bar window and ask a ton of questions like, “Why do they call it a tequila sunrise? Are you going to college? Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” It’s funny because they don’t even pay attention to the answers. They just go onto the next thing that they want to do, and they don’t think about time very much, not like I do. Every day is just “Summer” for them.

The worst part about working at a country club (and I’m only telling you this because I know that you want “the whole story” and not just the good parts) is not being able to say “no” to the customers like you might in another job. Because here, they’re not “customers,” they’re “members” at $40,000 a year, plus $10,000 in required “club-related purchases” like golf lessons or fancy dinners in the dining room. Because they spend so much money, they don’t expect to hear “no” all that often. Believe it or not, the teenagers are the most demanding. The girls especially like to make me fetch all kinds of things for them. Tanning oil, extra towels, and ice-pops on really hot days.

Like today, this one girl, Childree, made me get something to “cool her and her friends off.” I brought them all ice-pops but she got really mad and said, “Too much sugar, Shelly. I’ll have a Diet Coke.” I remember sweating straight through my white polo shirt and thinking how I could’ve died for one of those ice-pops. Childree was tanning but had one foot dangling in the pool. Maybe that’s how she could bear the heat. I’ll be honest, being by the pool was nice at first, but I’m starting to hate it. They never let the employees go swimming, even the lifeguards (unless they’re saving someone). And the days just keep getting hotter and hotter. I don’t want this to come across as complaining, I really don’t. It’s just a part of the job.

So Childree rejects the ice-pops, but her friend (this girl Evelyn) says, “I’ll take one.” So I give her one, but then she starts playing games. She shakes her head real slow and says, “No...I want cherry.” So I break off a red one. “I meant grape,” she tells me. And before I can give her one she reaches over and breaks off a purple ice-pop, opens it with her teeth, and starts sucking on it. Then she starts asking me about my name, which, you know, gets to me. I try to leave, but Evelyn follows me into the snack bar going, “You can tell me about it in private, if you’re shy.” I try telling her I’m not shy, I’m just hot. She offers me her ice-pop, but I really didn’t want it anymore after it had been in her mouth. Thankfully, Childree came looking for her and she left.

I was hoping that would be the last I saw of Evelyn. But later this evening I had to work an event that her parents were hosting (some charity dinner to send low-income kids to private schools). The event was catered, which meant that Quinn and Morgan were off the hook. I didn’t mind being there, though. Events are usually nice because everybody is drinking so much and so focused on the party that it lets you kind of disappear into the background until someone wants another drink or a light for their cigar. I was just trying to do my job, but Evelyn found me when I was on my way to get a case of champagne from the main club house.

She climbed into the passenger side of the golf cart smiling without asking me if she could come. I told her that members couldn’t ride in the carts, but she goes, “That’s not true, we ride in them all the time.” I told her that I could tell her parents, but she goes, “You wouldn’t dare bother them at their own event, would you?”

I tried to make the trip quick. We drove to the clubhouse and she stayed in the cart whileI grabbed the case. I put it between us and drove back to the pool. The whole ride she’s just telling me how boring her parents are, how she never gets to do anything fun. She took a champagne bottle for herself and put it by her feet telling me all about how much she drank at her sister’s wedding. I didn’t mind listening to her, but then she started asking all these questions about me. What’s my favorite mixed drink? What do I plan on doing if I don’t go to college? Do I have a girlfriend? We get back to the pool and Evelyn keeps asking me to open her champagne bottle. So I go into the snack bar to get a bottle opener and she follows me in. The event is still going on, and I can hear the music and people popping champagne and clinking glasses, and then it’s just me and Evelyn in the snack bar with the lights out and the door locked, and I already told you the worst part about this job.

Later, I was helping clean up the party even though I didn’t have to. I don’t know why. All the members had gone, and I was just sweeping, and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop hearing Evelyn say, “You oughta thank me, you oughta thank me,” and I couldn’t stop thinking about how many times I’d have to win the lottery to get away from this place. I think Manny saw me and how bad I looked, and he told me to take the day off tomorrow, which was nice of him, but I don’t know how much work I should miss with Ma and everyone, and I don’t even remember walking home. I don’t know a lot, anything really, but I know that I’m not supposed to tell the members “no,” and that I’m supposed to “be a man,” that it’s not “what you do” but “who you know” that matters. I know that I have said “yes” to all of these things, and I know that I should be grateful, just as I know that I can never send this letter.

He puts the pen down and sets the pad aside. He feels warm, but he does not go to the window. Outside, in the dark, the water in a neighboring pool licks at its concrete walls.

A few moments pass before Kelly recovers the first draft from the floor. He smooths out its wrinkles by rubbing it back and forth over his thigh. Then he sets it on the desk and rereads it.

He’ll revise a bit more. Then it will do.

Downstairs, the television announcer greets Mrs. Weaver as she lowers herself onto the living room couch with a familiar groan. “Good evening, America, and welcome to Powerball. Tonight, we have an estimated jackpot of...”

Kelly can just see her rubbing the ticket between her thumb and forefinger as the screen’s spinning numbers cast a flickering blue light throughout the little room.

“I hope you have your Powerball tickets ready. Good luck, and let’s see how you did tonight!” says the announcer through bright white teeth.

Nicole Lynn Cohen studied English and Film at Tufts University. Upon graduating from college, she moved to L.A. and became a Coordinator at SpectreVision (Mandy; A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night). She won the 2021 Subnivean Fiction Award for her piece, "You should talk to someone." She writes screenplays and fiction. Learn more at nicolelynncohen.com