They were on the news by seven in the morning, the two dead kids. College students from one of the farming towns on the eastern plains. I had considered reporting them myself, but it was just a fluke of timing that I'd been the one to find them, I decided. Someone else would come along at about daybreak. Boulder's full of concerned citizens, people for whom it would be a rush to get involved.
Me, I was tired. We had two new bussers. You wouldn't think a couple of non-lifers that low on the food chain would change the dynamic of a kitchen that much, but dishes, they're our lifeblood. It had been chaos and emergency, from the first group reservation on. I deserved to just come home, watch some vapid cop drama until the sun came up.
The last bit of the news I saw was the weather.
The spring melt was coming down hard. Tonight the creek was going to be lapping at the concrete of the trail again.
Awake again by three in the afternoon, I clamped my bike up onto the rack by the breakfast bar—by what would have been the breakfast bar—and administered to its various needs. The same way soldiers in movies are always taking their weapons apart and reassembling them, old cyclists, we like to perform our own maintenance.
Old.