The swimming pool looked perfect, and not just because K Neon was swimming slow laps in it for exercise.
Feral, mouth breather that he is, leaned on his shovel and stared down at K in the pool.
“I could be a champion swimmer if I gave a fuck,” Feral said.
“You’re the worst swimmer and person that I know.”
The water was crystal clear. A coral reef-patterned tile, wavering below the surface, was barely disturbed by K’s perfect strokes. She told me she’d been a lifeguard at the college pool, that she’d been the captain of her high school swim team.
“I’m diabolical in the water,” said K.
We all can’t be that way, but watch us try.
Also: watch us drown trying.
The house had a bamboo shoot tiki hut with a kegerator in it. That made the job all the better. “Must be 5 o’clock somewhere” sign. Jimmy Buffett concert tickets in a frame. Corona beer souvenirs galore. All of us had red solo cups full of beer. The sun was just getting hot. It was 11 a.m. The cicadas were screaming in the trees. The flowers were fat and heavy. A boombox so loud, it was distorted and ugly. But the lemon sun was out and made everything beautiful.
I felt a little speck of happiness returning. My recent bruises were lightening, slowly, but at least it was something.
I had my shirt off and was getting a deep tan while I worked. Over on the deck, June was reading a paperback book in her red bikini that matched her dyed head. Beside her, on another chair, was Trish, who was leafing through a magazine. She was in a one-piece swimsuit with a dress bottom and resembled one of those hippos from Fantasia, which I only really realized because she kept saying it. She’s cool. She knows how to make fun of herself. We can all get better at that and become more beloved as a result.
Trish would yell out to Feral, “I’m reading about aphrodisiacs. Did you know that an Italian sub can be a turn on? Especially for a fat ass like me?”
“No, I didn’t know that, babe,” Feral said. “What’s your point?” He passed me another shovel full of cement.
“My point is, if you go and get me a sandwich from the deli, I’ll be, like, mad turned on, and maybe I’ll take you in the tiki hut and rock your world.”
Feral looked at his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch. He hadn’t had a watch on in many years. “It’s not lunchtime, yet.”
“I could go for a sandwich, too,” June said.
“Not me,” K Neon chimed in. But that was no surprise. She had never been hungry, not once in her entire life.
I was distracted but tried to get some work done. I’d taken down a section of white PVC stockade fence. It was easier that way; I could back the F-250 right up to the edge of the pool and drive across the lush lawn.
I finished stacking concrete blocks about two feet away from the bullnose paver edge of the pool, setting the blocks on a base of concrete “mud” with re-bar running up the middle to strengthen the whole thing. Feral was helping by filling up the space between the blocks with cement. It wasn’t quick work, but it was enjoyable work. That’s all you can hope for in life sometimes.
We were just emerging from our devastation. We were making efforts to return back to the land of the living. The birds chirped about sex and food and war, so we focused in on that.
I even felt bad for K and June, who seemed to be waiting around for me to come back to life. They just kept kissing me and bringing me more beers, more wine. They took turns listening to my heart.
“It sounds like you’re alive, but your eyes look so dead.”
“It’s a magic trick,” I said. “I’m operating this body remotely.”
“From where?”
“A secret chamber where the air is hyper-charged and vivid.”
“Rad.”
“Come outside. Let’s lay in the grass, darling.”
The sun felt good. I was in it. Needed it. It was treating me well.
When I built waterfalls into swimming pools, I liked to have people there with me. It made the job feel less like work. A party: that’s what I wanted. I liked them there, swimming in the pool, drinking, listening to the stereo. It felt good. Back then, I used to bid kegs of beer into the price of the job.
As per usual, I’d done the same at this mansion. It was one of those cookie cutter houses: big, boxy, and looming but lacking character. Beige vinyl siding. The streets lacked character. Not one chimney pushing back at the sky. No winter wood smoke in the air. A development of identical houses, not homes — crackerjack mansions occupied by investment bankers and low-level attorneys.
I hopped up in the bed of the pickup truck and shoveled yellow dirt against the back of the concrete wall. Feral jumped up and helped too. Little by little, we got all of the dirt out and relieved the springs. The body raised. That was over two and a half tons of dirt.
“That’s that,” Feral said, hopping down. He went and filled two red solo cups up in the tiki hut. When he came out, they were foaming over. We sat drinking with the girls for a while, letting the cement set.
“What’s next?” K asked as she came to the edge of the pool and looked up at me.
“Well, the world is your oyster, K Neon. Really … whatever you want.”
She laughed. “I know that,” she said. “I mean with the job.”
“Stone,” I muttered, grinning.
I kicked off my sneakers and lowered myself into the swimming pool.
“Now the work gets enjoyable,” I said.
Feral began to pass me flagstone from outside.
“No, man,” I said, “I need a boulder.”
“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.”
“No joke,” I said.
Feral went over to the pile of moss rock next to the tiki hut. He made me proud. He hefted a boulder, weighing at least 100 pounds, while grunting and turning red. He set it down on the ledge. I filled the gap with wet concrete mud, my fingertips already burning from the limestone.
Feral brought over two more boulders and set them down on the edge of the pool between the concrete block wall and the water. Feral must have felt bad for me. He was working too hard for it to be anything else. He felt bad for me. He passed me more flagstone. More scoops of cement from the wheelbarrow. He felt bad for me.
I doggie paddled into the cool, inviting water. The girls drank on the deck. It went like that for a while, with me just bobbing in the water, building the waterfall from inside the pool, and Feral helping as much as he could. A little while later, June Doom and K Neon drove my pickup truck across the grass and went to the deli down the street.
Trish sat forward in her chair, put her tabloid magazine down, and said, “I called Denise a few times. She doesn’t answer her phone.”
“She’s probably the most heartbroken out of anybody,” I said.
“She really liked Seth,” Trish said. “I was talking to her a lot. We were getting pretty close pretty quick. I thought she needed a friend. She’d call me at night, and we’d talk for hours.”
“That girl especially,” Feral said. “She liked the way coke smells just a little too much.”
Trish didn’t say anything.
“Look who’s talking,” I thought.
Feral said the concrete was done in the barrel. I hopped out of the pool. That was it till after lunch.
“I think she might be in rehab,” Trish said. “Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.”
I lay down on the grass, starting to feel fuzzy drunk. I looked up at the blue sky. The clouds were all there, suspended, not moving a single millimeter. Time was frozen. We were all trapped in amber. Or purgatory. Or worse.
I almost dozed off. When I opened my eyes, the girls were coming back in the pickup. They had two large, brown paper bags loaded with sandwiches and chips. Italian speciaclass="underline" cappicola, ham, salami, and provolone with extra vinegar, a little oil, salt, pepper, and oregano.