Her smile was gone and a smirk took its place. “Connie says it’s low self-esteem. I say it’s bait and switch… guys on their best behavior when they meet you, but who aren’t really, you know…”
“What they seem?”
Suddenly she sat up, something obviously occurring to her. She checked her watch.
“Shit,” she said.
“Was it something I said?”
“No! No, no, there’s just…Look, there’s something I have to do, something that slipped my mind, I should’ve done earlier.”
“You need a lift somewhere? Your friend seems busy.”
Connie was flirting with a guy over by the jukebox, which was having the good if rare sense to play a Patsy Cline song, “Crazy.”
Janet was shaking her head, saying, “Well, you see, I’m sort of semi-housesitting…for some friends of mine? Anyway, I need to bring in their mail, and their dog’s probably half-starved…Somehow after last night, with Rick, I just…spaced out on it, today.”
“I see.”
She gave me a look that had some pleading in it. “I don’t want to bother Con. Would you mind…driving me out there?”
“Sure,” I said, getting out of the booth, and helping her do so, too. “But you’ll have to show me the way.”
Nine
She was a tad over-dressed, in that silk blouse, for watering the plants, but the plants didn’t seem to mind, and I certainly didn’t.
I followed her around as dutifully as a dog-she’d already fed the real dog, and put it on a leash and walked it, and I’d kept her company on those chores, too-and we’d already worked through a lot of small talk about the library and her friend Connie and a little bit about Rick, who she actually sort of felt sorry for (I let her get away with that) (for now) and currently she was filling me in on this beautiful house itself, which was as wood and stone inside as out, including a hall fountain that was like water rushing over mountain rocks.
I asked when the place was built, and she said, “In the fifties some time, by my friend’s father…my friend, Dave Winters-he owns the office furniture plant, that keeps Homewood going? This is his house now, his and Lisa’s…I met Dave at college.”
Following her to the next plant, I said, “I thought you weren’t a local girl.”
“I’m not,” she said, taking care not to over-water. She was using a little red watering can from the kitchen. “Dave’s on the library board-when my application came in, he recognized the name of course, and helped me get the job. His wife is great, too.”
“Lisa,” I said.
She frowned at me. “How do you know Lisa?”
“I don’t. You mentioned her, before.”
“Oh.”
And on to the next plant.
“Where are the Winters?”
She flicked me a longing little glance. “Nassau. A little month-long getaway.”
“Must be nice.”
Sighing, she moved to a corner where a palm-treelike number waited; from the size of it, this triffid could have walked to the kitchen to get its own goddamn water.
She was saying, “Hard not to envy Lisa and Dave- swimming and sunning and swimming and sunning and eating wonderful food and swimming and sunning some more.”
“Wouldn’t that suck,” I said.
She finished her rounds and I followed her to the kitchen, where she replaced the watering can under the sink. Turning to me with a lilting smile, she asked, “I bet you like to swim. You’re a swimmer, aren’t you?”
I frowned with my forehead and smiled with my mouth. “What are you, psychic?”
“No.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Maybe I’ve got you under surveillance…”
The swimming pool room seemed even larger when you were in there, an echoey cavernous dark-wood space with the lighted swimming pool a blue shimmering centerpiece.
Janet, in a light blue one-piece bathing suit, balanced at the tip of the diving board, bouncing a little, dark- blonde locks flouncing when I came in from the dressing room in a suit two sizes two small for me. Well, it made the package look bigger, anyway, even if it did cut off my circulation. Of course, cutting off the circulation would eventually not do the package any favors, either.
She didn’t say anything just grinned and bounced and laughed and bounced and laughed and grinned.
“Glad you’re having such a good time,” I said.
“Sorry…Dave’s not…not a big man.”
“Just in business,” I said, eyeing the vast chamber. I was standing at the edge of the pool like a guy on a building ledge contemplating suicide. I pointed casually toward her. “That Dave’s wife’s suit?”
“Yes. Lisa and me, we’re about the same size.”
“She has a nice figure.”
“Lisa thanks you, I’m sure.”
With this, she dove in, an admirable, even elegant dive.
Even so, she splashed me some, doing it; but I didn’t mind. The flecks of water were quite warm, really, even inviting.
I dove in.
The pool was as warm as a bath, lulling-actually, I prefer it a little crisper, but this was nice. Very nice.
For a while we swam, doing a few laps together, sometimes underwater or on our backs, and splashed and clowned around, the kind of capering kids get in trouble for from the lifeguard, only there was no lifeguard present. We laughed and teased and talked, enjoying the usual pleasing swimming-chamber hollow effect.
We were treading water, facing each other, when I said, “Nice perk, for semi-housesitting.”
“Swimming’s the best.”
“Oh yeah,” I agreed sincerely.
A little out of breath, face droplet-pearled, she could hardly have looked more lovely, even though the long hair was matted down with moisture, the makeup mostly gone from her heart-shaped face, an indicator of just what a striking woman this was.
Paddling there, blinking the big brown eyes, she said, “Nothing quite relaxes you like a nice swim. Really takes you somewhere else.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Treading doggedly, maybe a little tired now and having to work at it some, she said, “I mean, I don’t envy Dave and Lisa much, but to have this handy, right in your own house? To be able to-de-stress any time you like, and just feel…really free…”
“You know,” I said, a tiny bit out of breath myself, “you shouldn’t swim here by yourself. Dangerous.”
She laughed, treading water, more and more an effort. “What? You think I’m gonna dive in and klunk my stupid head?”
I plunge her head under water, my hand gripping the top of her skull and shoving her down, and holding her there; she struggles but can’t get anywhere, arms and legs flailing with fading force.
Finally, she is limp, dead weight, and I release her, and let her float to the surface, arms spread, reaching for nothing, tendrils of hair spreading like seaweed.
“Hey!” she said, bobbing there. “Aren’t you listening? Where did you go?”
“Somewhere else,” I admitted. “For a second.”
“I was just saying, I can fix you something, if you like. Have you eaten?”
