Tom Simpson - Sink

The crystal clear water cascading down the side of the manmade mountain sparkled like expensive jewels in the midday sun. The roar, as the water hit the churned up surface of the lagoon was quite audible even in the velvet green meadow where Paul Zangalio chewed on a blade of grass as his head laid quite comfortably in Becky’s denim clad lap.

“You know Beck, when we get married we could build a house right in the middle of this meadow, raise kids, and live happily ever after.”

“Paul, let’s be serious for a change. You don’t make enough money to support yourself, more less raise a family and besides the corporation that owns the resort would never sell a beautiful place like this.”

Rebecca McClelland, though only seventeen, was a lot more mature than most of her friends and especially a lot more than her nineteen-year boyfriend, fiancé, Paul. Her practical nature allowed her to build a substantial nest egg toward her future marriage even though she had been working only three summers for the corporation. Her father, as an executive for the company since its beginning, brought her into the office at fourteen years of age to do miscellaneous filing and acting as a gopher. Her early maturity and quick thinking impressed the president of the company so much, he rewarded her with a sizable salary and a promise of full time employment upon graduation from high school. She already had her own desk and was the assistant to his personal secretary, who adored her to no end. Becky could operate any of the computer equipment and already was acting as part-time purchasing agent for most of the corporation. With her bubbling personality and cute looks, everyone who came in contact with her, always wanted to go out of their way to help her, enabling her to handle just about any task set before her.

Paul Zangalio, hired thirty days before the grand opening of the resort, was working as the main lifeguard at the Olympic size swimming pool in case a clumsy or drunken guest got into trouble while enjoying the water pleasures at the resort. The resort opened two months previous to the grand opening and after thirty days, due to the influx of more than the expected number of guests, decided to implement as many safety precautions as they could. They equipped the pool and the lake with lifesaving stations, a pole with a life preserver and safety rope and call phone in case any emergency arose but, they felt the presence of human safety people would enhance their credibility to be a modern fully equipped resort.

Paul, the youngest of three brothers, had been an outstanding athlete in school and had gotten chosen to represent the state in the baseball playoffs. His precise pitching ability had been fully documented in the local paper and with his muscular build and former first aid training, the resort picked him out of his graduating class to be the top safety person to represent the resort. There were three other lifeguards employed by the resort and he was the lead person who arranged the schedules and time offs allotted to the guards. His pay was high for the field but, was not quite enough to raise a family. He hoped his baseball ability would allow him a chance to prove that he could be a good family provider.

“I have dreams Becky, big dreams.” Paul replied in a faraway type voice. “You know I’ll be picked up by one of the major league teams and before you know it, Ill be a starting shortstop and my name will be a household word. Everyone will want my autograph and you can come and pick me up at the ballpark or the airport in our new Mercedes SUV after I clench the winning home run in the last playoff game before the World Series. I’ll be great! Just think of all the fame and fortune and the way you will be running around with the other star player’s wives going on shopping sprees and eating in fancy restaurants and stuff.”

“Come on, lighten up Paul.” Becky scolded. “Just because you got a college scholarship and was chosen all county doesn’t mean instant career. It takes a lot of work and a lot of luck and besides you would have to spend quite a bit of time in a farm camp and then play for a while in the minor leagues. That still doesn’t guarantee you a spot on a big league team. That’s a shot in the dark and you know it.”

“Just you wait Rebecca. I’ll prove myself. You just wait and see.”

Marvin Schumaker was a self-proclaimed ladies man. He thought he was God’s gift to womanhood. In reality, most women thought he was a real dud with a capital D. He not only was egotistical, he was downright boring. Marvin, at five foot five, wore lifts in his shoes. His drastically receded hairline was supplemented with an ill fitting toupee and his facial features, pock marked since adolescents from a severe bout of acne, added to a slumped shouldered pot bellied structure that was almost comical to look at. Five minutes in animated conversation with Marvin was all it took for most women to realize this person was a real loser. He told any women he met, so many different stories about who he was and what he did, of course, better than anyone else, that he sometimes forgot who he was supposed to be at any given moment. One night he was a jet fighter test pilot. Another night he was a world-renowned cardiac specialist. He even went so far as to tell a very enticing redhead he was a CIA agent on special assignment for the President. This immediately backfired when; she asked him who his superior was because she told him she had been an agent stationed in Argentina for the last three years. This was a complete fabrication by the redhead because she recognized a bullshit artist right away. Marvin stammered a muttered reply and immediately headed for the rest room, from which he peeked out sporadically until her back was turned and quickly snuck out the back door.

In reality, Marvin Schumaker was a technician trained to monitor the dials and gauges controlling the input and output of the equalization system of the manmade lake. He spent eight hours a day watching the same instruments for any deviation from the norm. He was busy in the restroom staring, at what he thought, his handsome image in the tiny mirror, when the first glitch appeared. It wasn’t much but a trained eye, such as the one Marvin possessed, would have picked up the irregularity immediately. Unfortunately, his narcissus complex kept him from noticing what, could have been an early warning of a potential disaster. The input sensors detected a tremendous drop in the level of the lake over a one-half hour period of time. By the time Marvin returned to his workstation, the pumps produced enough pressure to restore the lake to its normal level and no one was the wiser. The sudden loss of water would have indicated a potentially dangerous situation but, Marvin was too busy monitoring himself instead of the lake and the loss went undetected. The grand opening scheduled for Saturday relaxed the schedules of the technicians because, everything was going so smooth since the inception of the monitoring system, and the corporation didn’t feel the need to pay overtime over the weekend. If something was going to go wrong they reasoned, it should have happened way before now. If Marvin had done his job correctly, someone would have kept at least a skeleton crew working throughout the weekend but because of his lack of warning, everything seemed to go smoothly.

Marvin liked the idea of having the weekend off. He could scope out the babes and have his way with any he chose. His awkward thinking deteriorated his mind so much, he thought he could really score with any woman he met. Well, the big party was tomorrow and Marvin was destined to get his just rewards.