September Secret Agent #4

TITLE: THIS IS LIFE IN HALF-TERMS
GENRE: Adult Literary Fiction

Every year it comes down to the wire, the feeling of metal taunt against flesh before somewhere down the line, eventually, it relaxes. There are acres of lawns to trim, gardens to plant fresh every summer, cosmetics to worry about before opening day. If the director could afford it, he would have his staff repaint the wooden decks attached to the cabins before the campers arrived every year. Winter is hard on the property.

The director’s right hand man is inside the little head counselor office, sorting through moldy paperwork from last summer. The director’s daughter, his headache, is moving her things into her fiancé’s home, three miles up the road. The new girl, the director knows is named after a flower. The new girl, although named after a flower, will never know that her father, the one who made her inside her mother, loved midnight, ice caves, cathedral windows, all the lilies that weren’t white and that’s how she was named, to honour, to remember, to hold tight to that love even after it dried and crumpled from the stalk.

It’s a skill the director prizes that even after all these years he still knows where everyone is. The director’s right hand man is brushing droppings, those little flecks like dirt, from the surface of last year’s staff evaluations. The ones the director has fired over the years, five or six a summer, sometimes more, sometimes a bumper crop, work somewhere else now: golf courses, day camps, in retail.