Poolside
Two men sat by the motel pool from precisely noon to 2 p.m. each day, sunning their doughy-white, sunscreen slathered bodies and drinking iced tea. Despite the mirror image they projected, they did not know each other and rarely spoke to one another. They had an unvoiced agreement that one reigned over half of the pool and the furniture lined up against one side of the water, and the other ruled over the other half. They both wore sunglasses, the better to ignore each other with, or secretly eye each other, comparing guts and muscle definition. This went on for three days, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, until the weekend crowd interrupted the usual abandoned feel of the hotel, and families with swarming kids took over the pool area. On Friday, the only place the two men could find to relax were two lounge chairs, side by side.
Bill Harrington arrived first, carrying his own striped beach towel and The New Yorker. He lowered himself into the chair, flinching at the shouts of two boys trying to hit each other with pool “noodles,” those obnoxious strands of colored foam that floated. He commenced slathering sunscreen, and just as he finished, Roy Jacobs sauntered in the gate, wearing a white polo shirt and swim trunks, carrying a canvas tote bag. His face fell, seeing the glut of people everywhere, and the only available spot next to Bill. He trudged to the chair, yanked his shirt off and plopped down.
“All good things come to an end, huh?” Roy leaned toward Bill, who was rubbing at his hands furiously with a handkerchief.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Having the pool to ourselves. It couldn’t have lasted forever.”
“No. Yes. You’re right.
“It was nice while it lasted.” Roy rummaged in the bag and pulled out a huge, grease-streaked bottle of sun screen so old the lettering was starting to wear off.
Bill decided it would be better to shake hands now. He hated the slime feeling of sunscreen on his hands. Elsewhere, it was fine, but if it touched his fingers, he felt as if he’d been doused in a vat of liquefied fat. “I don’t think we’ve properly met. I’m Bill Harrington.”
“Hi-ya, Bill. I’m Roy. Jacobs.” He thrust forward a thick-fingered hand and vigorously shook.
“So what do you do, Roy,” Bill asked, aware of the fact required chit-chat had commenced. If he had just nodded at the first comment, and remained silent, they would both be sunning themselves by now, avoiding eye contact, acting as if they were alone at the pool. The introduction had sent them plunging into inevitable conversation, like dropping down the first roller coaster dive. Might as well submit to gravity at this point, he thought.
“I drive a bus. In San Jose. We’re over here, my wife and I, to get away from the rat race, you know? Take in the desert air, get a little sun. What do you do?”
“I’m an airline pilot.” Bill slipped on his sunglasses.
“Oh that’s nice.” Roy knew Bill was used to hearing exclamations at this fact, forced amazement. “We’re both in the business of carting people around.”
Bill forced a chuckle. “I suppose you could say that.”
“You suppose?”
“Well, I don’t mean to imply that driving a bus isn’t important,” Bill said, groping about his mind for a quip, a rescue. “It’s just that flying a plane isn’t like walking and chewing gum.”
“Oh, and driving a bus is. A monkey could do it.” Roy gave a wide grin. His teeth were so white and straight people often asked him if they were fake. Bill cringed. Roy watched a bead of sweat trail down Bill’s forehead, then leaned toward him and intoned, “Try driving a vehicle almost twice as wide as most cars, in rush hour, trying to keep a schedule, while listening to people shout at each other so bad you think a riot’s going to break out. Or a stabbing. I’ve had stabbings on the bus before. Now handling all that takes talent. You’re locked in some little compartment giving orders to a co-pilot I assume.”
“It’s not a good thing to assume,” Bill stammered.
“Oh, just you get to do that. Because you’re an airline pilot.”
“No, I didn’t mean to assume what you did— I was just saying… I was just saying flying an airplane is technical. It’s not a people mover. It’s a delicate, immense, deadly, involved piece of machinery that must be handled with… with skill.”
“Right. You’re a character, Bill.”
“Well, that’s right. I am a character and so are you! It’s not my fault someone’s putting words in my mouth. I find that I rarely agree with them.”
“Well I agree with mine.” Roy furrowed his brow, staring hard at Bill.
Bill wiped the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. The temperature had become unbearable all of the sudden. “Does that make you more real then? Where did you get the capacity to agree?”
“Well where did you get the capacity to disagree? You just said something the writer of this story obviously didn’t plan on. But you just blurted it out, all on your own, like you… we are the ones in charge. Maybe we’re really writing this story.”
“No,” Bill argued, raising his voice to Roy’s aggressive volume. “Because I would have gotten rid of all these annoying people by now and we’d be sitting back, relaxing, enjoying ourselves. I don’t have an ulterior motive. The writer does. And I’m beginning to think you’re in cahoots with her.”
A chubby girl stuffed into a pink bikini ran screaming off the diving board into a cannon bomb, splashing the legs of both men. Bill gave Roy an accusatory look. Roy ignored the look and pressed, “How do you know it’s a her?” It was the first genuine question he’d asked all day.
“Well I know that much,” said Bill.
“Right, I’m asking you how you know. Because I don’t. All I know is the writer is manipulating us to fight in an attempt to show something. I’m supposed to show how you assume things about me when you don’t know me at all. For instance, did you know I’m a trust fund baby? I chose bus driver as a career because I like driving around all day and people watching.”
“You are?”
“See! You assumed I was some poor Joe nobody who was forced into the job. You resented my comparison that what we do is the same thing, because you think you’re job is more skilled and don’t want to be compared to someone of a lower class. A lowly bus driver.”
“I’m not of a higher class,” Bill contested, holding up his hands in defense.
“You’re not?” Roy paused, running his eyes over Bill’s The New Yorker, his meticulously trimmed mustache, his personal beach towel instead of a hotel towel, his fancy watch. “Then what’s with all the ‘I beg your pardons’ and ‘I supposes?’ You sound downright stuffy.”
“My good sir—
“See! That! No one actually talks like that. Are you British?”
“Look, I’m simply conveying my character through dialogue, as you’ve been constructed to do. So lay off.”
“Ha! Lay off! That’s something I would say, not you.”
“Quite right. Let me see… So bugger off!”
“That’s more like it.”
“May we get back to the point at hand, please, Roy?”
“Sure thing. Go ahead. I don’t mean to be so distracting. Although I really do, if you know what I mean,” Roy scrunched his face to give Bill a wink, wink. He wasn’t a good winker. It looked more like a grimace after eating something much too sour.
“The point at hand is that like you, my background isn’t what you would assume. I grew up in a rough and tumble area of Pittsburg with six brothers and sisters. I started working full-time at age 14 to pay for college because I knew I wanted to get out. Now I have a master’s in engineering and I’m an airline pilot and my wife’s a gorgeous lawyer and I’m damn proud of myself so if you don’t mind, I’d like you not to belittle what I do.”
“Okay, okay. I see where this is going. We were supposed to somehow come about these discoveries and both feel guilty for assuming things about the other person and learn our lesson so hopefully the reader learns their lesson too. Heavy handed, if you ask me.” Roy shrugged his shoulders and noticed the pool had suddenly emptied. The water was smooth as a sheet of paper, no movement whatsoever.
“It wouldn’t have to be heavy handed,” Bill argued. “What we just did was heavy handed. A skilled writer could pull it off with finesse, with delicate artistry. With…”
“Without cliché’s? Like ‘rough and tumble’?”
“Rough and tumble? Oh, I did just say that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. Totally cliché.”
“Well it’s not my job to avoid such pitfalls. It’s hers. In no way am I to blame.”
“True. You’ve got her there. This whole thing is her job. Pity she’s not as good at her job as we are at ours.”
“Well, it’s obvious she’s taken the easy way out.”
“It’s a downright shame.”
“However, she is revealing something about her character this way.”
“But she’s not a character. She’s real. Something I’m kind of glad I’m not.”
“Maybe she is a character. I’ve got a feeling I’m writing this story more than her.”
“Me too.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment