William Boyd - On the Yankee Station - Stories

“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 called 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.