We rinsed off in the pool, then sat on the bullnose edge, sipping tequila.
“I’d be willing to give you some of the money.”
“Excuse me?” he said.
“The last straw was the reverse mortgage. He needs to pay. You can help me, can’t you?”
He took a long sip. “Oh, chica, this can be very dangerous.”
“It’s a lot of money, you even said that.”
“I know, but I—”
“You know how to make pools safe, right? So, you must know what makes them unsafe.”
“I can’t disconnect anything, but I can do something, make the wiring look frayed maybe.”
“No one will ever know you had anything to do with it. I’d never tell them how to find you. Why would I?” I ran my hand over his lower regions, said, “Ernesto, I would do anything to show you my appreciation for your efforts on my behalf,” and we went at it again.
Afterward I said, “I need a picture of us,” and reached for my phone.
“Oh, no,” he said, “I don’t like to take pictures.”
I leaned my face against his anyway, reached out my arm, and took a selfie. My breasts and his bare chest were in the shot. So sexy. A photo to keep me company on hot desert nights.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said as I licked a bead of sweat from his cheek.
“There’s more of this for you, whenever you like.”
He shook his head, kissed me hard, and said, “Tomorrow I’ll come over and play with the wires. Just don’t forget and jump in the water yourself.”
My brother took my mother out for breakfast, just the two of them. I did errands. When I returned, I dodged yappy Joey Bishop — maybe he’d get dizzy and faint from spinning as he barked — and stood before the pool. It looked so pristine, so very innocent. I dropped in a palm frond to see what would happen. It did not sizzle. It did not fry. I wasn’t going to jump in to test it. Hopefully Ernesto had been here and done his thing.
I was in the bathroom slathering on sunblock when Mom returned — shuffling down the hallway, followed by her frantic little pooch, and she said, “I’m going to rest.”
“Where’s Ben?” I called after her.
“Had to work.” And closed her door.
Work. What work?
When the sky turned lavender, the pool lights came on. I poured a drink and heard the front door.
Ben was here, using his key, striding through the house like he owned it, heading for the pool. I purposely didn’t turn on any lights in the living room so I could watch him.
The desert wind stirred up fronds and dust, sweeping them against the house and into the pool. The south end of town rarely got hit hard, but this evening the wind was wicked and sent a standing umbrella onto its side, missing Ben by inches. He jumped out of its way, then picked it up and leaned it against the stucco wall.
My mother’s bedroom door creaked open.
Shit.
Out scampered Joey Bishop, who sniffed my feet, barked, and ran out the open slider toward the pool.
“Don’t!” I called. He trotted back, spinning as he barked.
My mother moved beside me, watched my brother standing by the water. The room was freezing; she must have turned the air down to sixty-five.
“We saw Ernesto at breakfast,” she said.
“Who?” I responded, playing dumb.
“Your boyfriend,” she said. So, she’d seen us outside. “Ben took me to Cathedral City, some little restaurant. Your boyfriend was there, with his wife and kids.”
My brother dove in, began swimming laps.
I felt suddenly hot all over. “How do you know they were his wife and kids?”
“They called him Daddy.”
Ben slowed and seemed to struggle, as if an invisible force was pulling at him.
“Why isn’t he moving?” my mother asked, her voice quavering.
“Maybe he has a cramp.”
I felt awful. A mother shouldn’t have to watch her son die.
“Call 911!” she cried, flailing her hands about like startled birds. I found my phone and called.
Ben gestured toward the house for help, then stopped struggling, and was sucked under. He rose to the surface and lay inert on the water.
The sirens grew close and then the paramedics were here. I let them in and said the way a frantic person would, “My brother! He’s in the pool!” and three men rushed past. Joey Bishop spun like a top out of control, barking till he went hoarse.
I followed them out.
“Did your brother know how to swim, ma’am?”
“Of course!”
“Does he take drugs?”
“I don’t know! He comes over every night to swim.”
They mumbled among themselves, then one of them went over and unplugged the wiring and filter and whatever else was electrical; the other two used the leaf skimmer and a rope to pull his limp body from the pool. They administered CPR but Ben didn’t respond.
The carved dragon table, the Slim Aarons photos. Ernesto, with a wife and kids? The world was full of rats.
As they continued administering CPR on my brother, I rushed inside. I would give them Ernesto’s business card, give Ernesto to them. Mom sat in the dark of the living room and there was Sinatra again, singing about a piper man and losing someone to the summer wind. But as I held the card, I realized that by giving them Ernesto, I would also be giving them me.
I went back outside. They were loading Ben onto a stretcher. His cigarettes lay on his shirt. Oh, what the hell. I reached out and grabbed them, tapped one from the pack, and lit up. On my phone I looked at the picture of Ernesto and me. Gave me pangs to think it was over. I flicked the card against the phone, then the thought came to me: maybe his wife would like the photo too.
The Expendables
by Rob Roberge
Wonder Valley
1981
Have you ever seen government agents feed radioactive cereal to a group of mentally ill children, just to study what would happen, and have them call it a medical experiment?
I have.
What happens when you poison mentally ill children with radiation? With dusts of plutonium? Any children, of course. We used the institutionalized. What happens? They die. Of radiation poisoning.
The ones who ingested the most, the luckiest, died fastest. The others died slowly and more painfully than you could possibly imagine unless you’ve ever witnessed it. There are the enormous skin blisters and burns down to red muscle and the white — with a subtle shade of light blue — bones exposed. The constant diarrhea and vomiting. Often, blood from every orifice. The organs break down and basically liquefy. The child dies a savage death.
And I thought then, and I still think: why in the world did you need that experiment to figure out what the results would be?
I’m hiding, even if you couldn’t tell by looking. I sit on my screen porch here in the high desert. An unforgiving burning sun that keeps most people away is perfect for me. You spend a summer out here, and you wonder why the people stopped here on their westward expansion. A hundred and twenty miles from Los Angeles. From paradise. But it wasn’t like that distance was easy back then. My guess is they rode until they dropped. And they probably got here in fall or spring, when the weather sits in the low nineties and loosens its grip on everybody when the nights are all seventy-five to eighty-five degrees.