All journeys fall into one of two categories, to home or from home, each unsatisfactory in its own way.
Freedy heard a man’s voice from inside the house: “Better put your bathing suit on. The pool boy’s out back.”
Freedy stared up at the house, saw nothing but his own reflection in the glass sliders. He looked buff, ripped, diesel, a fuckin’ animal (except for the intelligence in his face, not visible in the distant reflection, but he knew it was there). The intelligence in his face-according to his mother, he had eyes like the actor, name escaped him at the moment, who played Sherlock Holmes in old black-and-white movies-that intelligence was what separated him from all the other fuckin’ animals out there and made him more of a lady’s man. Women liked brains, no getting around it. Brains meant sensitivity. For example, floating in the water near the filter was a little furry thing. Poor little fella, you could say to some woman who happened to come by the pool. That was all it took: sensitivity.
Combine that with the ripped part, the buff part, the diesel part, so obvious in the window-that bare-chested dude, wearing cutoffs and work boots, the skimmer held loose in his hands, was he himself, after all-and what did you have? The kind of dude women went crazy for, absolutely no denying that. Freedy squeezed the skimmer handle a little and a vein popped up in the reflection of his forearm. Amazing. He was an amazing person. But pool boy. He didn’t like that, not one bit. Would they say it if he was black? Not a chance. That would be racist, and none of these people in their big houses in the hills over the Pacific ever spoke a racist word. They were politically correct. Well, on the panel of the van he drove it said: A-1 Pool Design, Engineering, and Maintenance. So that made pool engineer the correct term, didn’t it? The pool engineer’s out back. That’s what he should have said, the asshole inside the house, Dr. Goldstein or Goldberg or whatever his name was. Freedy swept the little furry thing into the skimmer and tossed it over the ridge.
Thong. He turned back to the house and there was Mrs. Goldstein, Goldberg, whatever, walking across the patio in one of those thong bikinis. What a great invention! About forty, maybe even older, what with that sharp face and turned-down mouth, but the body: all these people with their pools, houses, cars, worked out like crazy, probably harder than he did. Except they didn’t have a bottle of andro in their pocket. Or maybe they did. Nothing surprised him anymore. That was one thing he’d learned almost as soon as he’d come to California, three or four years before, the precise number momentarily unavailable. He’d been in a bar down in Venice when a cigar-smoking guy beside him answered his cell phone, listened for a while, and then said: “Nothing surprises me anymore.” Right on the money. Freedy’d used the expression for the first time himself that very day.
The woman in the thong was talking to him.
“Excuse me?” he said.
She raised her hands to shade her eyes, bringing her breasts into play. “I said, are you new?”
New? What? He’d been doing this pool for six months. Three, anyway. “No,” he said.
“Sorry, I didn’t recognize you. Aren’t you a little early?”
“Columbus Day. Traffic was light.”
She nodded. “What’s your name again?”
“Freedy.”
“Nice to meet you, Freedy. This is when I normally do my laps.”
In a thong? You swim your laps in a thong? Then he got it: Put on your bathing suit. She swam them in the nude.
“Want me to come back some other time?” Pause. “Mrs…”
“Sherman. Bliss Sherman.” From the front of the house came the sound of a car door closing, a car driving off. Had to be hubbie off to work in the Porsche; the Benz didn’t make that throaty sound.
“Nice to meet you too, Bliss.” But Sherman? That was nothing like Goldberg or Goldstein. Freedy dug the schedule out of his pocket: Goldman, 9:00 A.M. He glanced around, noticed a familiar-looking pool house on the next hilltop, about a ten-minute drive away. The Goldmans. He’d come to the wrong house. These Shermans weren’t on the sheet at all. Had he ever been here before? He didn’t think so. They weren’t even clients. Some kind of mistake.
“How long will it take?”
“Take?”
She gave him a closer look; saw the body at last. Now was the moment to hit her with the sensitivity. Freedy checked the pool for more dead rodents, found none.
“To finish up,” said Bliss.
“The pool?”
“Exactly.”
He shrugged, a nice slow shrug to show her those delts, in case she’d missed them. “Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“I suppose I’ll have to wait till you’re done.” She turned and went back into the house, closing the slider. Freedy watched until she was out of sight: how could you not watch a woman like that in a bathing suit like that? Then he went to work, skimming, checking the pH, adding chlorine, oiling the pump. The whole time, his mind toyed with the image of her butt as she walked away; not quite the whole time-once or twice it occupied itself with the furry thing, spinning over the ridge. He didn’t like that exactly, didn’t like that I suppose I’ll have to wait.
Freedy gathered up the vacuum, skimmer, supply box, knocked on the slider. “All set,” he called. He listened for a reply, heard nothing. He knocked again, called, “Finito,” and walked around to the front of the house. Finito, being some other language, went with the sensitivity.
The van was parked beside the Benz in the driveway. He opened the side door, stowed the gear. While he was doing that, he glanced into the Benz and happened to see some money lying on the seat. That was them. He’d be the same way one day, with his intelligence. He’d own A-1 Pool Design, Maintenance, and Engineering himself. Or maybe a whole chain of pool companies, up and down the coast. Pools and California, they went together. Back where he came from, he didn’t remember a single pool in the whole town-excepting the one up at the college, which didn’t count. What opportunity was there for a person like him in a place like that? None. He knew that oh so well.
But here. Another story. He slammed the van door shut, took out the andro, popped one dry. He was going to be rich, so rich he’d never settle for a lousy 300-series Benz like this one. Was it unlocked? He tried the door. Yup. Unbelievable.
And these Shermans weren’t even on the sheet. He’d cleaned their goddamn pool for nothing, even finishing after he’d figured it out, like some kind of saint, or Martin Luther King Jr. Cleaned their pool like Martin Luther King Jr., while that bare-assed bitch had said exactly. Not even on the sheet. In a funny way, that meant none of this was really happening. What an awesome thought: it reminded him of The X-Files. None of this was really happening. That meant it was like a free play in football, where they throw a flag against the defense while the quarterback’s still dropping back, giving him a chance to throw the bomb with no risk. A free play. He wasn’t even there. The Shermans didn’t even exist, not in terms of A-1. Freedy reached into the Benz and grabbed the money.
Throw the bomb. It was that easy. He felt better than he had in months, better maybe than any time since the first few days after he’d come to California. Here on this hilltop under a huge blue sky, he felt huge too, the way he’d felt back then, before his crummy walk-up on Lincoln, the clunker that wouldn’t fucking start half the time, the rent he owed, the advances on his pay he’d already got, all the way to Thanksgiving. On the hilltop with the Valley on one side and the ocean on the other, he knew what it was like to have been one of those conquistadors who’d discovered the place; Spaniards-not the spics he had to work with, even work for, now.
As for the money, he’d earned it, if you wanted to be technical; he’d done the work. Freedy shoved it into the pocket of his cutoffs, down there with the andro. He took a deep breath, felt great. Sober, unstoned, and great. When was the last time that combo had turned up? And how sharp his senses were all of a sudden, even sharper than usual. He smelled a nice plant smell he couldn’t identify, saw a high-flying bird of some kind, heard a distant splash.
Maybe not so distant. Maybe from the other side of the house, where someone might be swimming her laps, back and forth, in a zone and possibly daydreaming about the so-called pool boy the whole time.
The so-called pool boy crept back around the house.
