by William Boyd
“But it’s hot, man. Anyways, we don’t get no winter in L.A.,” she argues.
Patiently I explain that, four seasons or no, every pool has to winter. A period of rest. What you might call a pool-sabbath. I’ve lowered the water level below the skimmers, surchlorinated, and washed out my cartridge filter. A pool, as I explain several times a day to my clients, is not just a hole in the ground filled with water. Wintering removes constant wear and tear, rests the incessantly churning pump machinery, allows essential repairs and maintenance, permits cleansing of the canals, filter system and heating units. You can’t do all that if you’re splashing around in the goddam thing. Most people realize I’m talking sense.
We walk around my pool. It’s small but it’s got everything. No-Skid surrounds, terrace lights, skimmers, springboard, all-weather poolside furniture, and a bamboo cocktail bar plus hibachi. I’ve got to admit it looks kind of peculiar stuck in my little backyard. (In this part of the city it’s the only private pool for seventeen blocks.) But so what! I busted my balls for that little baby. I got me a new vacuum sweep last month. I’m aiming for a sand filter now, to replace my old cartridge model.
I stand proudly behind the bar and pour Noelle-Joy a drink. She’s wearing a yellow halter-neck and tight purple shorts. Maybe if she were a little thinner they’d look a bit better on her … I don’t know. If you got it, flaunt it, I guess. Her legs are kind of short and her thighs have got that strange rumpled look. She stacks her red hair high on top of her head to compensate. She lights a Kool, sips her drink, sighs and hugs herself. Then she sees my hibachi and screams. I drop my cocktail shaker.
“My God! A hibachi. Permanent as well. Hey, can we barbecue? Please? Don’t tell me that’s wintering too.”
I ignore her sarcasm. “Sure,” I say, picking up ice cubes. “Come by tomorrow.”
***
I work for AA1 Pools (Maintenance) Inc. We’ve also been ABC Pools and Aardvark Pools. I tell my boss, Sol Yorty, that we should call ourselves something like Azure Dreams, Paradise Pools, Still Waters—that kind of name. Yorty laughs and says it’s better to be at the head of the line in the Yellow Pages than sitting on our butts, poor, with some wise-ass, no-account trademark. The man has no pride in his work. If I wasn’t up to my ears in hock to him I’d quit and set up on my own. TROPICAL LAGOONS, BLUE DIAMOND POOLS … I haven’t settled on a name yet. The name is important.
GREEN WATER
Down Glendale Boulevard, Hollywood Freeway, onto Santa Monica Freeway. Got the ocean coming up. Left into Brentwood. Client lives off Mandeville Canyon. My God, the houses in Brentwood. The pools in Brentwood. You’ve never seen swimming pools like them. All sizes, all shapes, all eras. But nobody looks after them. I tell you, if pools were animate, Brentwood would be a national scandal.
The old Dodge van stalls on the turn up into the driveway. Yorty’s got to get a new van soon, for Christ’s sake. I leave it there.
The house stands at the top of a green ramp of lawn behind a thick laurel hedge. It’s a big house, Spanish colonial revival style with half-timbered English Tudor extension. A Hispanic manservant takes me down to the pool. “You wait here,” he says. Greaser. I don’t like his tone. One thing I’ve noticed about this job, people think a pool cleaner is lower than a snake’s belly. They look right through you. I was cleaning a pool up on Palos Verdes once. This couple started balling right in front of me. No kidding.
The pool. Thirty yards by fifteen. Grecian pillared pool house and changing rooms. Marble-topped bar. Planted around with oleanders. I feel the usual sob build up in my throat. It’s quiet. There’s a small breeze blowing. I dip my hand in the water and shake it around some. The sun starts dancing on the ripples, wobbling lozenges of light, wavy chicken-wire shadows on the blue tiles. What is it about swimming pools? Just sit beside one, with a cold beer in your hand, and you feel happy. It’s like some kind of mesmeric influence. A trance. I said to Yorty once: “Give everybody their own pool to sit beside and there’d be no more trouble in this world.” The fat moron practically bust a gut.
I myself think it’s something to do with the color of the water. That blue. I always say that they should call that blue “swimming pool blue.” Try it on your friends. Say “swimming pool blue” to them. They know what you mean right off. It’s a special color. The color of tranquillity. Got it! TRANQUILLITY POOLS … Yeah, that’s it. Fuck Yorty.
But the only trouble with this particular pool is it’s green. The man’s got green water.
“Hey!” I hear a voice. “You come for the pool?”
I’m only wearing coveralls with AA1 POOLS written across the back in red letters. This guy’s real sharp. He comes down the steps from the house, his joint just about covered with a minute black satin triangle. He’s swinging a bullworker in one hand. Yeah, he’s big. Shoulders like medicine balls, bulging overhang of pectorals. His chest is shiny and completely hairless, with tiny brown nipples almost a yard apart. But his eyes are set close together. I guess he’s been using the bullworker on his brain too. I’ve seen him on the TV. Biff Ruggiero, ex-pro football star.
“Mr. Ruggiero?”
“Yeah, that’s me. What’s wrong wit da pool?”
“You got green water. Your filtration’s gone for sure. You got a buildup of algae. When was the last time you had things checked out?”
He ignored my question. “Green water? Shit, I got friends coming to stay tomorrow. Can you fix it?”
“Can you brush your teeth? Sure I can fix it. But you’d better not plan on swimming for a week.”
“… and this stupid asshole, Biff Ruggiero—you know, pro footballer?—he hangs around all day asking dumb questions. ‘Whatcha need all dat acid for?’ So there I am, I’m washing out his friggin’ cartridges with phosphate tri-soda, and all this crap’s like coming out. ‘Holy Jesus,’ says Mr. Nobel Prize-winner, ‘where’s all dat shit come from?’ Jesus.” I laugh quietly to myself. “He’s so dumb he thinks Fucking is a city in China.”
I watch Noelle-Joy get out of bed. She stands for a while rubbing her temples.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she says.
I follow her through to the bathroom.
“It just shows you,” I shout over the noise of the water. “Those cartridge filters may be cheap but they can be a real pain in the nuts. I told him to put in a sand filter like the one I’m getting. Six-way valve, automatic rinsage—”
Noelle-Joy bursts out of the closet, her little stacked body all pink from the shower. She heads back into the bedroom, towels off and starts to dress.
“Hey, baby,” I say. “Listen. I thought of a great name. Tranquillity Pools.” I block out the letters in the air. “Trang. Quill. It. Tee. Tranquillity Pools. What do you think?”
“Look,” she says, her gaze flinging around the room. “Ah. I gotta, um, do some shopping. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”
Noelle-Joy moves in. Boy, dames sure own a lot of garbage. She works as a stapler in a luggage factory. We get on fine. But already she’s bugging me to get a car. She doesn’t like to be seen in the Dodge van. She’s a sweet girl, but there are only two things Noelle-Joy thinks about. Money, and more money. She says I should ask Yorty for a raise. I say how am I going to do that seeing I’m already in to him for a $5,000 sand filter. She says she wouldn’t give the steam off her shit for a sand filter. She’s a strong-minded woman but her heart’s in the right place. She loves the pool.
“You look after this pool great, you know,” Ruggiero says. I’m de-ringing the sides with an acid wash. We cleaned up the green water weeks ago but we’ve got a regular maintenance contract with him now.
“I never realized, like, they was so complicated.”
I shoot him my rhyme.
“That’s good,” Ruggiero says, scratching his chin. “Say, you wanna work for me, full time?”
I tell him about my plans. Tranquillity Pools, the new sand filter, Noelle-Joy.
I come home early. An old lady c
alled up from out in Pacific Palisades. She said her dog had fallen into her pool in the night. She said she was too upset to touch it. I had to fish it out with the long-handled pool sieve. It was one of those tiny hairy dogs. It had sunk to the bottom. I dragged it out and threw it in the garbage can.
“No poolside light, lady,” I said. “You don’t light the way, no wonder your dog fell in. If that’d got sucked into the skimmers you’d have scarfed up your entire filter system. Bust valves, who knows?”
Wow, did she take a giant shit on me. Called Yorty, the works. I had to get the mutt’s body out of the trash can, wash it, lay it out on a cushion.… No wonder I’m red-assed when I get home.
Noelle-Joy’s out by the pool working on her tan. Fruit punch, shades, orange bikini, pushed-up breasts. There’s a big puddle of water underneath the sun-lounger.
“Hi, honey,” she calls, stretching. “This is the life, yeah?”
I go mad. “You been in the water?” I yell.
“What? … Yeah. So I had a little swim. So big deal.”
“How many times I got to tell you. The pool’s wintering.”
“The pool’s been wintering for three fuckin’ months!” she screams.
But I’m not listening. I run into the pool house. Switch on the filters to full power. I grab three pellets of chlorine—no, four—and throw them in. Then I get the sack of soda ash, tip in a couple of spadefuls just to be sure.
I stand at the pool edge panting.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she accuses.
“Superchlorination,” I say. “You swam in stagnant water. Who knows what you could’ve brought in.”
Now she goes mad. She stomps up to me. “I just swam in your fuckin’ pool, turd-bird! I didn’t piss in it or nothing!”
I’ve got her there. “I know you didn’t,” I yell in triumph. “ ’Cause I can tell. I got me a secret chemical in that water. Secret. Anybody pisses in my pool it turns black!”
We made up, of course. “A lovers’ tiff” is the expression, I believe. I explain why I was so fired up. Noelle-Joy is all quiet and thoughtful for an hour or two. Then she asks me a favor. Can she have a housewarming party for all her friends? There’s no way I can refuse. I say yes. We are real close that night.
OTO
OTO. I don’t know how we ever got by without OTO, or orthotolodine, to give its full name. We use it in the Aquality Duo Test. That’s how we check the correct levels of chlorination and acidity (pH) in a pool. If you don’t get it right you’d be safer swimming in a cesspit.
I’m doing an OTO test for Ruggiero. He’s standing there crushing a tennis ball in each hand. His pool is looking beautiful. He’s got some guests around it—lean, tanned people. Red umbrellas above the tables. Rock music playing from the speakers. Light from the water winking at you. That chlorine smell. That fresh coolness you get around pools.
One thing I will say for Ruggiero, he doesn’t treat me like some sidewalk steamer. And the man seems to be interested in what’s going on.
I show him the two little test tubes lined up against the color scales.
“Like I said, Mr. Ruggiero, it’s perfect. OTO never lets you down. You always know how your pool’s feeling.”
“Hell,” Ruggiero says, “looks like you got to be a chemist to run a pool. Am I right or am I right?” He laughs at his joke.
I smile politely and step back from the pool edge, watch the water dance.
“A thing of beauty, Mr. Ruggiero, is a joy forever. Know who said that? An English poet. I don’t need to run no OTO test. I been around pools so long I got an instinct about them. I know how they feel. Little too much acid, bit of algae, wrong chlorine levels … I see them, Mr. Ruggiero, and they tell me.”
“Come on,” Ruggiero says, a big smile on his face. “Let me buy you a drink.”
Sol Yorty looks like an aging country-and-western star. He’s bald on top but he’s let his gray hair grow over his ears. He lives in dead-end East Hollywood. I walk down the path in his back garden with him. Yorty’s carrying a bag of charcoal briquettes. His fat gut stretches his lime-green sports shirt skintight. He and his wife, Dolores, are the fattest people I know. Between them they weigh as much as a small car. The funny thing about Yorty is that even though he owns a pool company he doesn’t own a pool.
He tips the briquettes into his barbecue as I explain that I’m going to have to hold back on the sand filter for a month or two. This party of Noelle-Joy’s is going to make it hard for me to meet the deposit.
“No problem,” Yorty says. “Glad to see you’re making a home at last. She’s a … She seems like a fine girl.” He lays out four huge steaks on the grill.
“Oh, sorry, Sol,” I say. “I didn’t know you had company. I wouldn’t have disturbed you.”
“Nah,” he says. “Just me and Dolores.” He looks up as Dolores waddles down the garden in a pair of flaming-orange Bermudas and the biggest bikini top I’ve ever seen.
“Hey, sweetie,” he shouts. “Look who’s here.”
Dolores carries a plastic bucket full of rice salad. “Well, hi, stranger. Wanna eat lunch with us? There’s plenty more in the fridge.”
I say I’ve got to get back.
It looks like Noelle-Joy’s invited just about the entire work force from the luggage factory. Mainly guys, too, a few blacks and Hispanics. The house is crammed with guests. You can’t move in the yard. This morning I vacuum-swept the pool, topped up the water level, got the filters going well and threw in an extra pellet of chlorine. You can’t be too sure. Some of Noelle-Joy’s friends don’t seem too concerned about personal hygiene. Everybody, though, is being real nice to me. Noelle-Joy and I stand at the door greeting the guests. Noelle-Joy makes the introductions. Everyone smiles broadly and we shake hands.
I feel on edge as the first guests dive into the pool. I watch the water slosh over the sides, darkening the No-Skid surrounds. I hear the skimmer valves clacking madly.
Noelle-Joy squeezes my hand. She’s been very affectionate these last few days. Now every few minutes she comes on over from talking to her friends and asks me if I’m feeling fine. She keeps smiling and looking at me. But it’s what I call her lemon smile—like she’s only smiling with her lips. Maybe she’s nervous, too, I think, wondering what her friends from the luggage factory will make of me.
I have to say I’m not too disappointed though, when I’m called away by the phone. It’s from Mr. Ruggiero’s house. Something’s gone wrong; there’s some sort of sediment in the water. I think fast. I say it could be a precipitation of calcium salts and I’ll be there right away.
I clap my hands for silence at the poolside. Everyone stops talking.
“I’m sorry, folks,” I say. “I have to leave you for a while. I got an emergency on. You all just keep right on having a good time. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Bye now.”
Traffic’s heavy at this time of the day. We’ve got a gridlock at Western Avenue and Sunset. I detour around on the Ventura Freeway, out down through Beverly Glen, back onto Sunset and on into Brentwood.
I run down the back lawn to the pool. I can see Ruggiero and some of his friends splashing around in the water. Stupid fools. The Hispanic manservant tries to stop me but I just lower my shoulder and bulldoze through him.
“Hey!” I shout. “Get the fuck out of that water! Don’t you know it’s dangerous? Get out, everybody, get out!”
Ruggiero’s muscles launch him out of the pool like a dolphin.
“What’s goin’ on?” He looks angry and puzzled. “You ain’t a million laughs, you know, man.”
I’m on my knees peering at the water. The other guests have clambered out and are looking around nervously. They think of plagues and pollution.
In front of my nose the perfect translucent water bobbs and shimmies; nets of light wink and flash in my eyes.
“The sediment,” I say. “The calcium salts … didn’t somebody phone …?”
By the time I get back I’ve be
en away for nearly an hour and a half. She worked fast, I have to admit. Cleaned out everything. She and her friends—they had it all planned. I’d been deep-sixed for sure.
There was a note, YOU MAY NO A LOT A BOUT POOLS BUT YOU DON’T NO SHIT A BOUT PEPLE.
I don’t want to go out to the yard but I know I have to. I walk through the empty house like I’m walking knee-deep in wax. The yard is empty. I can see they threw everything in the pool—the loungers, the tables, the bamboo cocktail bar, bobbing around like the remains from a shipwreck. Then all of them standing in a circle around the side, laughing, having their joke.
I walk slowly up to the edge and look down. I can see my reflection. The water’s like black coffee.
***
Yorba Linda. It’s just off the Riverside Expressway. I’m working as a cleaner at the public swimming pool. Open air, Olympic-sized.
Yorty had to fire me after what he heard from Ruggiero. Sol said he had no choice. He was sorry but he would “have to let me go.”
I sold up and moved out after the party. That pool could never be the same after what they had done in it. I don’t know—it had lost its innocence, I guess.
Funny thing happened. I was standing on Sunset and a van halted at an intersection. It was a Ford, I think. It was blue. I didn’t get a look at the driver, but on the side, in white letters, was TRANQUILLITY POOLS. The van drove off before I could get to it. I’m going to file a complaint. Somebody’s stolen my name.
Killing Lizards
Gavin squatted beside Israel, the cook’s teenage son, on the narrow verandah of the servants’ quarters. Israel was making Gavin a new catapult. He bound the thick rubber thongs to the wooden Y with string, tying the final knot tight and nipping off the loose ends with his teeth. Gavin took the proffered catapult and tried a practice shot. He fired at a small grove of banana trees by the kitchen garden. The pebble thunked into a fibrous bole with reassuring force.
“Great!” Gavin said admiringly, then “Hey!” as Israel snatched the catapult back. He dangled the weapon alluringly out of Gavin’s reach and grinned as the small twelve-year-old boy leapt angrily for it.