Crying Wolf (2 page)

That night Patti went to bed with him for the first time. They'd come close before but she'd always held out, not quite ready. After—in her bedroom, her dad in Denver at his brother's—she didn't cry at all. She said: “What were we waiting on?” Nat almost told her he loved her then. It was probably the right thing to do, but he still wasn't sure he really did. He ended up holding her tight instead.

There were plenty of tears in the weeks that followed.

 

O
ne funny thing about that mental bird's-eye view. At the end of the summer, when Nat flew out of Denver—second time on a plane—he looked out the window and saw his town, just as he'd imagined it on the Fourth of July. The mill, the high-school fields, the main street, even his street, even his house and the tiny backyard: he saw it all. No one in the backyard, of course. His mom, Patti, and Mrs. Smith would barely be out of the airport parking lot. Nat was thinking about what that drive would be like when, far below, a lake went by. There was no lake in his town. He'd been looking at someplace else.

All journeys fall into one of two categories, to home or from home, each unsatisfactory in its own way.

—From Professor Uzig's welcoming remarks, Philosophy 322

F
reedy 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.

This was what was going to happen. He would take off his work boots, his socks, his cutoffs, cross the patio while she was swimming the other way, lower himself in the pool, and just stand there in the shallow end, waiting for her to bump into him on her way back. Surprise. But a nice surprise. She'd look up, eyes wide, mouth opening, then see who it was. The expression on her face would change in some exciting way, and she'd say, “I was just thinking about you,” or maybe something subtler, like “What a coincidence.” Yeah, that would be it: she was subtle, educated, rich. Freedy remembered the money in his pocket and felt a little badly. No reason he couldn't toss it back in the Benz later.

Freedy reached the corner of the house and stopped. He heard rhythmic splashing sounds, and one soft, female grunt. He peeked around the edge of the wall. Just as he'd imagined. Bliss—right name, in terms of what was going to happen . . . not
psychic
but some word about the future like that—naked in the pool, swimming her laps, tan all over. This was happening. It was just like porn, except he was in it. Freedy started to get hard right away, really hard, andro hard. He had an important thought: this is going to be the best experience of my life, so far. That meant he should make it last, appreciate it, savor it.
Savor:
what a perfect word, a word most people wouldn't have come up with at a time like this, but he knew it well, from the cooking channel. He was intelligent. He had eyes like whatever his name was who had played Sherlock Holmes, according to his mother.

His mother would be five or ten years older than Bliss Sherman. Had she ever had a body like that? Not even on her best day. But enough about her. What the hell was he doing thinking about his mother right now? His mother's face, Bliss Sherman's butt, the spinning furry thing: he shook his head to clear away all that confusion and moved silently across the patio. Silent, not to scare her or anything; he just didn't want to spoil the surprise.

Freedy slipped into the shallow end. The water was cool and clean, made him tingle all over. Of course it was clean: he'd cleaned it himself. He'd made his bed, in other words, and now he got to lie in it—an expression one of his high-school teachers had liked using on him.
Look at me now, teach.

He stood in the shallow end, up to his waist, eyes on Bliss Sherman's ass, curving up out of the water as she touched the far end, turned. He saw she was wearing goggles; he hadn't imagined goggles, but they made it better somehow, like high heels on a stripper. Another sign of his intelligence, to make that connection. And now, with Bliss almost upon him, just two or three strokes away, he recalled a fragment of a strange cartoon he'd seen on TV, late-night Mexican TV and him maybe tweaked a bit on crystal meth, which was probably why it was no more than a fragment. Some cartoon animal, a duck or a cat, was swimming in a pool like this one, when all of a sudden from the filter outlet came slithering the arm of a giant squid, wrapping round the little critter in coils that left nothing but the webbed feet sticking out. Must have been a duck, then.

Freedy put his hands on his hips. Bliss took one last stroke, then touched. But she didn't feel that cold tile at the end of the pool, oh no. Her fingertips brushed his dick instead. Couldn't have been more perfect. Life was full of fascinating shit, if you just made a little effort. Forget about porn. This was better than any porn he'd ever seen: and he was in it!

Her head jerked up then, and as he'd imagined, her eyes, behind the goggles, opened wide, and her mouth opened wide too, and her face went through exciting changes. Everything as he'd foreseen. Freedy started to smile, a friendly, manly smile, as though they were sharing some mutual joke. Like:
hey, you were in the middle of daydreaming about ol' Mr. Dick here, and now—abracadabra.
That kind of joke. Sophisticated.

But she forgot to say
what a coincidence,
or even the less stylish
I was just thinking about you.
Instead she sprang back quickly into deeper water, deep enough so that her breasts floated on the surface, and sounded almost annoyed or something when she said, “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Sharing your dreams, babe.” Now if that wasn't smooth, if that wasn't cool, what was? Freedy knew very well it was the kind of remark that made women melt. He had said something like it to Estrella on their date last week, and she had melted, by God.

But Bliss didn't melt, at least not in any way he knew about. She raised her voice, not a pleasant voice to begin with, he now realized, and said: “Get the fuck off my property.”

Women were crazy and men were stupid—where had he heard that?
Hard Copy,
maybe. There was some truth in it, but not all men were stupid. Some were just the opposite, some knew that female craziness could be controlled by the use of the right physical . . . something. He couldn't come up with the right word, but he knew the right physical something to use in this case. Besides, he liked when women said
fuck
.

Bliss had moved back quickly, but it wasn't what would be called quick in terms of what someone like Freedy could do. He was quick on a big-league scale, quick like one of those NBA guards. And he was a man, after all—with andro and crystal meth in reserve-and men were plain quicker than women in the first place, weren't they?