Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Pool


The sky was perfectly blue and warm, its color matching the bright rectangular pool below a cloudless sky.

The pool was alive with bright blue waters, rippling and bouncing off blue painted cement that had begun to fade and looked like the skin of an old person, splotched and uneven in color. There were speckles of pale blue, spots of cream and white, though the overall image was that of bright blue.

On the cement ground beside the pool sat a deep mesh net on the end of a long metal pole. The net was lined with a few inches of soggy leaves and small dead bugs that had been filtered out of the pool. It sat now silently in a stain of water, a shallow puddle that marked its journey.

The long rectangular pool lapped just a few feet to the right of the white painted house. Closest to one length of the waters were the French doors and side windows of a teenage boy’s room. The shades were drawn oven the door, as were the tiny shades specially made for the two five inch windows on each side of the double doors.

The other long length of the pool was edged with a four-foot high stucco wall. Behind the wall was a wide sloping landscaped hillside covered in lavender and large bushes that were every color of green and yellow. Bees moved purposefully between lavender flowers, staying close to their nectar and never veering away from the boundary of plants to human domain. At the top of the hill were large pine and birch trees and barely visible beyond them was the geometric roof of the neighboring house.

There was a girl floating in the pool. Her lower half was covered in a small orange, yellow and green narrow Brazilian bikini bottom. Her pale white breasts were covered in a shiny black bra. She was in the pool, in the center of a hot pink inner tube made of clear plastic that was opaque enough to look through and see the light filled waters below.

The only other thing in the water with her was the fleshy plastic mouth of a pool pump that sucked on the cement edges of the submerged floor. It was attached to a long white plastic hose that was connected like an umbilical cord to one vertical wall of the pool.

She held onto the float with her arms while her feet propelled her across the length of the pool. She was breathing heavily while she moved her legs in an amphibian way, drawing her touching soles together and towards her crotch, then pushing them apart and out, and then, completing the circle, drawing them in once again.

Amidst her laps, she would look occasionally to the French doors covered in shades. There was just a foot of non-covered window at the very bottom of the door and she would look towards it, searching for eyes.

The water was a perfect balance of warmth and refreshing coolness. It lapped across the edges of the pool and spilled over onto the cement floor of the walkways surrounding it. Long streaks of it continued past the black metal gate several feet from the end of the pool. The gate stretched from the pale stucco wall edging the lavender and ended beside the wall of the house, very close to the kitchen door that led to the patio.

Beyond the metal gate was the formal patio area with a floor of red bricks that had been heated by the sun. As water from the pool spilled over the edges and past the metal gate, it met the hot red bricks and some of it turned immediately into steam.

The formal patio was cluttered with various pieces of outdoor furniture. A wrought iron circular table and six matching chairs sat close to the metal fence, as did a small circular fire pit and two chairs made out of metal and gray plastic fabric.

Across the fifteen feet of red bricks, on the edge, by the grass, were two chairs and matching ottomans that were made of espresso colored rattan and padded with thick beige pillows. Perpendicular to them, against the white wall of the house, was a long sofa made of the same style and covered with the same beige pillows.

The girl drifted in the pool. There was only the sound of the lapping water. She made lazy laps and protected her sensitive lips from the sun whenever she turned towards it.