by Peter Harmon
Usually Charlie had to restock once or twice a week, but it had been a full fortnight since he re-upped. They just weren’t doing business since Bill died.$$$
Charlie and Roheed stood at the snack bar window, surveying the nearly empty pool grounds. A flag waved at half-mast. Judas walked by the window.
Charlie called out to him, “Hey, Rude Jude.”
“’Sup?”
“Did you put the flag at half-mast for Bill’s death?
“Who’s Bill?”
“He owned the pool.”
Judas looked back at Charlie blankly.
“He just died.”
Still nothing.
“You were at his funeral.”
A lightbulb. “Oh, that guy? I was just there for the free beer.”
“You brought your own beer,” Charlie replied. “Anyway, Jonathan will really appreciate the gesture.”
“What gesture?” Judas asked. “My arms got tired while I was hoisting it. My ’ceps are still sore from a killer set of curls I knocked out last night.”
Charlie shook his head in disbelief. Florence approached them with a sheet of paper. Roheed immediately perked up. Unfortunately, so did Judas.
“Hey, babe,” he said.
Florence was disgusted by both of them so she directed her attention toward Charlie, which he thought was a good thing, until he further analyzed it and came to the conclusion that she thought of him as a sexless automaton, thus nonthreatening. “Here’s the deal: I wouldn’t normally talk to you, like, ever, but have you seen this?”
Charlie gave the sheet a quick once over. “The Tri-County Relay Race sign-up? Sure.”
“The prize money could buy a new diving board. First place is ten thousand dollars and a frozen margarita machine.”
“You’re right,” Roheed added. “Plus it’s being held here at Yellow County Community this year. The revenue could make up for our past couple years’ losses.”
“That too, I guess,” Florence unenthusiastically responded.
“Why do you care?” Charlie asked.
“If the pool gets shut down, I’ll have to finish my community service restocking clothes at a thrift store…ew.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but even if we did make enough on ticket sales and concessions to pay our debts, we still wouldn’t win the prize money, and the safety inspector would still shut us down for having a dangerous board.”
“Why?”
“The team over at Brown Town always wins. They’re run by a management company, so technically they can bring in swimmers from any of their conglomerates in the Tri-County area. I swear they hire ringers and give them menial jobs just so they can swim.”
“Whatever, bro,” Judas contended. “I have friends that work at Brown Town. It’s totally legit.”
“Brown Town?” Florence didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“You’ve never heard of the Brown Town Hall and Recreation Relay Race Team?” Charlie asked, already knowing the answer. “The BTH and Triple RT?”
“No.” Florence acted like Charlie had just asked if she’d ever eaten some doo-doo.
“A few years ago, Jonathan wanted to beat them so bad he did some reconnaissance on them. There’s a tape in the office.”
Minutes later, Charlie, Florence, Roheed and Judas piled into the guard office. Judas pressed eject on a small TV/ VCR combo, and OMG, a CPR training tape popped out. Charlie handed Judas an unlabeled tape. Judas put in the tape and pressed play.
On the TV screen there was a moment or two of snow, and then a shaky home video camera image emerged and showed, sometimes obscured by out-of-focus bush branches, the Brown Town Hall and Recreation state-of-the-art pool facility.
There were diving boards of varying heights and fountains and large floating foam lily pads (for the kiddies). The lifeguards were chiseled male model types and sexy youngish girls with short shorts that said “Guard” on the butt. There was a row of vending machines and a microwave in lieu of a snack bar.
“That place is awesome,” Judas said, eyes glued to the monitor. “Look at those chicks.”
Florence quit texting for the moment to focus her attention on the video. “This looks like a lame version of a country club I got kicked out of once for wearing a thong-brero.” Roheed looked at her with confusion. Florence rolled her eyes. “A thong/ sombrero hybrid, duh.”
“You should see it on the weekend,” Charlie said. “People from DC swarming all over the place, a different set of lifeguards every day, and the only food you can get is high-priced microwaveable diet meals and quinoa. It’s so impersonal.”
“Yeah, how are they supposed to get food poisoning?” Judas sneered.
The camera panned along the pool, surveying the lap lanes. A set of twins, a boy and girl (but you could hardly tell because of their beautiful Michael Pitt from Funny Games haircuts) were in one lane. They both looked to be in their late teens, and they wore matching brown swimsuits. They treaded water facing each other with their arms completely out of the pool.
“That’s Channan and Shannon Twinsley,” Charlie explained.
“Twins that are both named Shannon?” Florence guessed she had heard of stranger.
“No, Channan and Shannon. Pronounced the same, spelled differently.”
“Homophones,” Roheed added.
The twins got out of the water and hugged.
“And they’re creepily close,” Charlie said.
“Weird.” Florence was indeed creeped.
Channan stretched Shannon’s legs for her as a mysterious woman watched in the background.
Charlie pointed at the screen. “That looks like June. Pause it.”
Roheed paused the tape, but since it was a crappy VHS, they couldn’t make out any of the mysterious woman’s features. She was just a blurry smudge.
“Inconclusive, bro,” was Judas’s verdict.
Roheed hit play and the camera panned over to the next lane, where a young man was swimming. He blazed through a lap in record time and got out at the other end of the pool, not even breathing hard.
He was clad in only a brown brief-cut bathing suit. He looked remarkably like Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps but with a thick, dark mustache.
The camera zoomed in on his rippling six-pack.
“That’s Carmichael Schmelps, the fastest swimmer in the Tri-County area,” Charlie said.
“Carmichael Schmelps?” said Florence. “He looks an awful lot like Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps. Well, except for that thick, dark mustache, of course.”
Judas responded, defensively, “He’s definitely not though. Brown Town can prove it. They’ve got his birth certificate and everything. Plus look at that thick, dark mustache you mentioned!”
Charlie and Roheed looked at Judas.
“Just saying is all,” he added quietly.
The camera panned over again to the next lap lane. A fin cut through the cool blue water, making little ripples on either side of it.
“What is that?” Florence asked.
A woman reached the end of her lap lane and got out of the pool. She had a broad, flat face, a manly body, and a fin-shaped protuberance on her back covered by her brown one-piece swimsuit.
Again, Charlie had the answer. “That is Susan Hark. She underwent experimental surgery that put shark cartilage into her back to help stabilize her as she swims.”
“She has a dorsal fin,” Roheed clarified.
Florence was sort of getting into it. “That can’t be legal!”
“The official Tri-County Relay Race rules state that anyone with corrective surgery is still allowed to compete,” Charlie explained.
“Adding a dorsal fin is corrective surgery?”
“She has scoliosis.”
The camera zoomed out, and all four of the Brown Town team members swam furiously down their lap lanes. Overheard on the tape’s audio track Jonathan said, “Crap, they’re fast.”
Jonathan walked into the guard office an
d saw what they were watching; he whistled, “Crap, they’re fast. What are you guys doing?”
“Surveying the enemy in their natural habitat so we can better understand them,” Roheed answered.
“We’re going to get creamed again this year,” Jonathan stated.
“I want to try to win,” Florence said. “I don’t want to sort clothes that people died in for the rest of my community service.”
Roheed saw her vigor and found himself saying, “I would like to join the team as well.”
Florence gave Roheed a look that wasn’t purely one of disgust for the first time.
Judas noticed. “Yeah, I’ll join, too.”
“Charlie?” Jonathan said.
“No thanks. I don’t swim. I wish you the best though.”
“I guess that just leaves me,” Jonathan supposed. “I’ll practice with you guys, but only because we’re probably going to lose the pool. I’ll get in all the lap swimming I can before they give me the boot…plus our usual anchor, Matt Hedge, has a hernia.”
“How’d that happen?” Charlie asked.
(Earlier that day, Matt Hedge had sat on the can in his bathroom. In the midst of a very satisfying bowel movement, he sneezed. His face wrenched in pain.)
Standing proudly was the newly formed YCCSRC Relay Race Team…and Charlie.
Jonathan stretched out his hand. “Let’s start training tomorrow. I know I’m free. Maybe we can save this pool yet. Hands in.”
Charlie shrugged and put his hand in the middle. “Good luck.”
Florence put her hand kind of in the circle but not close enough to touch the others. “Don’t touch my hand.”
Roheed put his fingers into the live long and prosper symbol and put it on the hand pile.
Judas, not to be outdone, added a Dane Cook “superfinger” to the mix.
Jonathan puffed up his chest. “I think that if Bill hadn’t died in that freak accident, he’d be here with us, smiling. Who knows, maybe Ghost Bill is here with us right now, screaming out in a futile effort to warn us that this is going to be a huge waste of time because as a ghost he has privilege to see the future, yet no power to communicate with the living. Or maybe he’s scheming on chicks in the women’s locker room because that’s what he always used to say he was gonna do when he died. At any rate, for Bill.”
They all, even Florence, raised their hands in the air and said, “For Bill!”
Judas’s hand grazed Florence’s breast in the downswing. She glared at him. He put up his hands in defense. “Totally an accident.”
CHAPTER 12
IT WAS ABOUT that time of the Earth’s rotation when you could not quite be sure if it was very late at night or very early in the morning, and much like the glass half-full/ half-empty conundrum, no one really gave two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
The combination lock on the YCCSRC’s front gate latch was unlocked as Roheed slipped quietly through to the pool grounds. He reached the pool’s edge and slipped off his shirt, revealing a very skinny body and maybe three chest hairs if we’re being generous here. He took off his shoes and dipped a toe in the water. He was in the deep end near the fallen high dive, which was inadvertently serving as a monument to the club that used to exist when Bill was still around.
Roheed tried to cautiously lower himself into the water but slipped and fell all the way in, making a huge splash.
He bobbed to the surface and thrashed wildly. He went back under and swallowed water; his wet hair clung to his face and covered his eyes.
In the guard office, Jonathan bolted upright in the cot that served as his makeshift bed. “Danger!!” he said as he kicked off the sheet and ran out the door.
Yep, Jonathan lived secretly at the pool. In his tenure there, this was not the first time he was awoken in the middle of the night by unexpected guests. Usually it was teens, breaking into the pool for a drunken night swim. One of them would be an employee who knew the combo for the tennis gate, and they would all sneak in 40s of OE, or neon-colored Mad Dogs, or poorly mixed cocktails from their parents’ liquor cabinets. And Jonathan would have to hide under his cot, because he couldn’t expose his secret.
But this time was different. Jonathan ran to the pool deck. Roheed was barely keeping his head above water long enough to gasp some air.
“Hang on, little buddy!” Jonathan cried as he ran down the stairs. He tore off his polo and dove into the water. He grabbed Roheed around the chest and swam him to safety, hoisting his small frame out of the water and onto the pool deck.
Roheed coughed up a mouthful of water immediately.
Jonathan looked down at him warmly. “You’re going to be fine.”
After Roheed stopped shivering, Jonathan sat on a metal folding chair, and Roheed sat on a cot with a towel draped over him wearing an official YCCSRC hoodie, size L, which fit Roheed like a size XXL, and it was providing him an XXL amount of warmth, too.
“How did you arrive so quickly?” Roheed was confused but grateful.
“I, uh, have super powers.”
“Were you sleeping in the guard office?”
“Of course not. That’s crazy talk. You’re a crazy person.”
“Have you been living in the guard office and keeping it a secret?”
“That’s crazy. You are the silliest little guy.”
“Then what’s this?” Roheed pulled an issue of Swimgirl magazine from underneath the pillow on the cot. On the cover was a sexy girl in a one-piece bathing suit, a swim cap and a nose plug. The headline read, “You won’t believe how Kelly practices her laps.”
“Okay, okay, put that away. I live here. Happy?”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Roheed picked up the Swimgirl again, flipped to a random page, and began reading, “Kelly says ‘Divers that can splash me with their big cannonballs make me wet.’ ”
“Stop, alright. I’ll make a long story medium-length.”
“I have time.”
So Jonathan began.
•••
The Yellow County Community Swim and Racquet Club looked pretty similar in the ’80s: guard office, snack bar, tennis courts. But the girls wore legwarmers with their bathing suits, dudes dressed Miami Vice style, black guys had gold chains around their necks and shell-toed shoes. There were mustaches aplenty.
Young Jonathan spent a lot of time at the pool with his real dad. They splashed each other in the shallow end and ate ice cream sandwiches. Jonathan would marvel when his dad would do a one-and-a-half off of the high dive. They had the best times.
When he was about fifteen, Jonathan became a lifeguard. He patrolled the pool compound twirling his whistle one way until the red lanyard wrapped all the way around his pointer finger, then twirled it back the other way for the same result. Girls watched him out of the corners of their eyes, but he would always walk right past them to hang with his dad, who would just be coming from his night shift. They’d share an order of mozzarella sticks—Jonathan’s breakfast and his dad’s dinner due to their opposite schedules.
Only a couple years later, Jonathan’s dad would die in an industrial laundry press machine, The Mangler. Jonathan wept as he leaned on the closed casket at the funeral. Then, Jonathan was the man of the house for approximately one week, the time it took for his mom to meet his dad’s co-worker, Rick, who dropped by to pay his respects and see if she wanted to maybe share his twelve-pack of beer that he had brought or something.
On his eighteenth birthday, Jonathan moved out of the house as Rick moved in. Having nowhere else to go, or at least nowhere else he wanted to go, he snuck into the YCCSRC’s guard office. He set his box of belongings in the corner, thinking it was going to be a temporary solution, but days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and that box was still in the exact same place near the cot in the guard office as Jonathan told Roheed his life story.
Jonathan gestured to the club. “This was the only place that felt like home once my dad was gon
e.”
“A psychological projection of emotions for your father onto a physical place. Interesting.”
Jonathan looked at Roheed blankly.
“Never mind,” Roheed said.
“Why were you here? Did you come here just to drown, or…?”
“Alas, my strict upbringing and even stricter study habits have prevented me from learning how to swim. Now I must teach myself the art in order to participate in the relay race and woo my beloved.”
Jonathan said hesitantly, “Judas?”
“No, you moron. Florence.”
“Ahh, she’s kind of a b-word though.”
“I see her inner beauty shining through like a beacon. A lighthouse to my ship lost at sea.”
“Oh, alright. Well let’s make a deal. You keep my secret—”
“I’m listening.”
“And I’ll teach you how to swim. I mean, I used to coach the six and under swim team, and they were mostly stupid idiots.”
“Agreed. Shall we meet after the pool closes as to not arouse suspicion?”
“Yeah, and don’t come to our real practices for a while. I don’t want you to look stupid in front of Florence, because like I said, she’s kind of a b-word.”
Roheed shrugged and nodded.
“Now get out of here,” Jonathan said. “I need my beauty sleep.”
Roheed got up to leave.
Jonathan moved to the cot and draped Roheed’s towel over the chair.
Roheed was almost out the door when he stopped and turned around. “Jonathan?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
Roheed left the guard office. There was a soft clank when he closed the front gate. Jonathan fluffed up his pillow and lay back. He took out a picture of himself and Bill where he was smiling wide for the camera and Bill was slightly confused and wearing his headphones but being a good sport nonetheless and throwing up a rock-on devil’s horns.
The rest of the night, Jonathan slept peacefully, the picture rising and falling with his chest.
