What we do with Snake is this-someone gives her a leg-up, usually Jimmy-and then we drop her over the edge, and she slithers down under the heating and refrigeration units, she undoes the wires, runs lift straps under them, and then pushes the unit from underneath, and we all lift it out.

I think she's amazing. Jimmy says I just have a hard-on for her, but it's more than that. I've never known a girl like Snake before. First off, Snake is 6½" tall-when she's lying down. No one believed her when she first joined the crew, because she looks like "POW"-J. Lo style, all out to here and shit, but she says tits and ass squish.

Harvey didn't believe her, either-he's the crew boss-so he brought out this old bed frame and tells her, "Let's see what you can do-"

She sucks everything in, turns her head to the side, and slides under it. It did squish her boobs some, but he says, "Yup-if you can lift, you're on the crew."

So he makes her lie down on the ground and puts this big friggin' box of I don't know what on her hands like she has to bench press it. She makes this noise like Monica Seles when she serves and lifts the box, then it starts to fall back on her, but Harvey grabs it off her hands and says, "I don't know-"

"C'mon," Matt breaks in-"She only has to lift for a second-the rest of us have the straps."

Harvey rubs his chin like he's thinking real hard, but we know it's all for show because he can't agree too fast with Matt since he's the boss and the rest of us are working in an at-will state.

So Matt throws in, "And we're never gonna find a guy who can fit under there."

Harvey turns his palms up, shrugs, and says, "Okay."

A few people clap, Matt shakes her hand and says, "Welcome to the crew." Snake flashes this smile. It's like the end of a teen movie where the girl is named prom queen or the guy wins the big game, but this is just the beginning.

So that's how Snake joined us for the summer renovating Golden Corrals and Shoney's and other buffet restaurants.

Of course, Matt was wrong. There are guys who could fit under there. Every crew has a Snake-they're usually Mexican, and if you see them somewhere you'd swear you'd seen that guy on HBO or Showtime busting someone's face for a flyweight title. But I'm glad we have Snake. Not everyone is, though. Some people-mostly Jimmy and Ted-think she's a spy. See, Snake is the boss's son's girlfriend-not Harvey, the crew boss-No-Mr. J. P. Hamilton of Hamilton Construction, LLP.

Apparently Jackie (what they call J. P. Junior) asked his dad if his girlfriend could have a summer job, and he said she could apply for one of the construction crews just like anyone else! He must really hate her being with his son, heir to the Hamilton fortune. That's how they'd say it on TV, right?

So Jackie is studying art in Japan, and his girlfriend is working with us and sleeping in a camper (if she draws a long straw) or a tent (if she draws a short straw) at KOA campgrounds all over the Midwest. It sounds pretty fishy and damned unfair if you ask me.

I think Hamilton's trying to get rid of her 'cause she's poor, and he thinks she's not good enough for Jackie. Chris says Hamilton should pay her to marry the little faggot because then there will be someone who knows at least something about construction to leave the company to. Ted and Jimmy think she's been sent to narc on us when we sneak a few steaks or tubs of potato and macaroni salad from the walk-ins at the restaurants. Carlos-who is Mexican but way too pudgy to be the crew's Snake-thinks it's a set-up to get her out of the way-put her in a tent or camper for three months with a crew of ten guys, and something's bound to happen-then WHAM-O, outta the Hamilton family. I think it's a good theory, but everyone else thinks Carlos spends too much time watching novellas. He even raises his eyebrows like those guys on the Telemundo soap operas when he's trying to prove a point, so the influence is definitely there.

One day when we were at the KOA pool (because we work at night when the restaurants are closed and the buffets are broken down, and Snake and I aren't good at sleeping during the day, we go to the pool or to the campground office and play Ms. Pac Man) I asked her, "Snake-why'd you take this job? This isn't what you had in mind when Jackie asked his dad, right?" She smiles at me and her blue eyes match the sky and her dark blue Speedo one-piece all at once (she must have been on a swim team or something), and she says, "This is even better."

And, of course, I'm surprised because what girl, what really pretty, really smart girl, who's going to what must be a really good college because she's dating a millionaire's son, thinks climbing inside buffet tables and coming out covered in grease and dead gnats and then sleeping in a tent with a smelly construction crew is better than working in an office?

She sees how my eyebrows must have flown off my head like the Smurfs' do when they're surprised, and she says, "I don't know how much to tell you guys 'cause I know you don't all like me."

She's right there. Well, Jimmy likes her as a file in his wack-off Rolodex, but that's about it. He claims that he's seen Snake naked, and he's been waxing it over her ever since, but we all know he's lying. We all saw the same thing. She was in the tent changing her clothes, and she accidentally left the camping lantern on in there, so we saw the silhouette of what Snake looks like naked. She was really embarrassed about it for a few days. But Jimmy's an ass like that. If you brought your mother to the site to show her where you worked Jimmy would tell you he was bending her over this machine or that, or that she gobbled his knob while he was sanding some boards.

I'm thinking all this, but I just nod.

Then she says, "This is better money than working in an office. This will pay for my books and meal plan all next year; an office job would pay for maybe one semester. Manual labor always pays better." She stretches her arms, and her deltoids stand out like little apples at the tops of her shoulders.

I never thought of it before, but how crazy is it that a poor girl can work hard enough to get a college to pay her tuition, but she has to pay for her books and food? Like, doesn't she need those things to go to college?

Then she says, "And traveling with you guys, I don't have to go home at night."

This is the part that gets me-how bad is home that sleeping in a tent and having to walk across a campground to pee and shower is better? I must be looking at her like she's crazy because she says, "I don't have my own bed at home."

This is when I feel really bad for Snake because I remember when I got my own bed-basically through trickery, but I still got it. See, my folks have six kids, so girls get one room, boys get another, and the bedrooms look like dorms with bunks or two twins, and the oldest gets his or her own room before going off to college-yeah, right-or work and an apartment-more likely. My little brother David was hell to sleep with. He'd toss and kick and then have bad dreams and cry or have good dreams and drool, and I'd complain to Ma, but she'd explain the system and say that we were still the two youngest, and there were three boys and two beds, so we shared. I know that Ma is stern but not mean, so I started buying that cheap lemonade that comes in a milk jug and hiding it in my closet and pouring a little bit on Davie and his side of the bed in his sleep. At first Ma bought him extra big diapers. Now that kids are obese, an XL diaper will fit a grown woman. Then she tried putting a rubber sheet under him. Then Marianna got in a fight with Dad over her curfew and moved out to live with her boyfriend-and BAM!-Michael's in Marianna's room, I'm in Michael's old bed, and Davie has his own, mysteriously dry bed. But a girl in college, coming home from having her own place where she can come and go as she pleases, and then having to share a bed with her sister? I didn't blame her.

"Girls in an office would be mean, too," she adds, "if they knew I was Jackie's girlfriend."

I nod. I know how mean girls can be. I have three sisters.

"Or they'd be nice, which is just as bad."

"Huh?"

"They'd want to go shopping or out to lunch-anything girls do as friends costs money. The only money I spend here is quarters playing Ms. Pac Man with you."

See? I told you this Snake was smart. Smart and sad.

So, I'm finding the sad part beautiful. I think guys do that because we think we can rescue the woman-blame it on movies or whatever you want. So I try to make her sadder, which sounds awful and is awful, but I can't help it.

"What's it like dating someone rich?" I ask this because in my neighborhood, you go out to a matinee movie with someone else's student ID after the food stamp money has been added to your FLEX card, and that's a date.

"It makes me feel poorer," she sighed. "J. P.'s dogs have an air conditioned kennel."

Yeesh-we didn't get air conditioning until that summer it was 100% for a week and Davie was a baby and almost died from asthma, and even then it was a window unit in the nursery.

"One time Mrs. Hamilton took me to spend a day with her. I watched her get her hair and nails done for $500."

Something caught in her voice, and I regretted making her sad so she'd be beautiful.

She's opening her mouth to give another example, but tears are welling up in her eyes.

Part of me wants to tell her that it's going to get better, but it isn't. You think his family's not going to make him serve her a pre-nup if they get engaged? You think the Hamiltons are going to sit down to buckets of KFC under a park pavilion at her family's get-togethers? Something in me wants to shout- "Me!-I'll make you happy! We can live in a trailer or a little house or have babies or not or drink Bud Light with our friends out on the porch while our dog goes crazy barking at the bug zapper," but I don't. I take her tight, shiny bicep between my thumb and forefinger and ask, "Where'd you get these guns, Snake?"