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.

Paradise

The gate blends almost seamlessly with the fence. Fashioned of some inexpensive wood, it is dark and splintery, unpainted, and unvarnished. It bears many dark grooves, like rough wrinkles in an old man’s face, weather beaten over the countless years since its erection. It is held closed by a small zinc latch secured with a bit of blackened wire. Within its unassuming embrace a garden is tended by nature’s caretakers. Big furry bumblebees, striped with bright bands of yellow and black, busy themselves over the whip-like tendrils of a lavender bush. True to the name, the blossoms are of varying hues of soft and deep lavender, while the stems and leaves of the bush are a frosty green under the coat of fine velvety hairs.
Butterflies with wings of orange and black lace flit lazily about, visiting first one flower, then another. Delicate black legs hold them poised upon branch or bloom as they gingerly extend a long glistening tongue into the secret bed of a flower and draw from it the sweet elixir of life. Tangled vines of musty smelling nasturtiums spill out over stone borders, creep up on faded green cacti and purple tipped succulents, run their long fingers through the dark beds of lavender and unruly humps of catnip. A fuzzy black caterpillar inches its way over the parched bark of a juniper shrub, its body undulating with the motion. In the shallow bowl of a plastic birdbath, a small, dark-eyed winged creature shakes and shivers its tail feathers. Tall elm trees drop clusters of black pods upon a multicolored assortment of natural river rock. They huddle together on the western side of the garden, excluding the sun from their private affair with the stones below.
In the center, concrete stepping stones are pieced together to form a square pathway. Each one bears an impression of a man in a sombrero resting in the shade of a saguaro. Tucked within its perfect perimeters, a vast patch of green grass gazes emptily upward at the blue sky way. Its starkness is marred only by a low-cut stump, the remnants of a once vibrant willow that fell prey to some disease. Now the plot of grass inadvertently serves as a memorial commemorating the life of a tree, its emptiness a nagging reminder of lost fullness.
Adjacent to the garden is a covered porch carpeted with sparkling clean AstroTurf. On one wall, there is a window which looks in through sheer draperies upon a dim master bedroom. On the other wall, a sliding glass door opens into a living room. Big daisy stickers adorn the glass. On a narrow sliver of wall between the glass door and the corner where the two walls join, six decorative flower pots are arranged on a shelf with six individual outcroppings for each pot. The pots themselves are empty, save for a thick layer of dust. Inside the living room, a silver haired old man and a much shorter white haired old woman are waiting. The man stands near the glass door. He is tall and his silver hair is dashingly curly. He wears a pair of overall shorts, in the style of an over grown boy. The buttons which connect the straps to the breast are over sized and fashioned of wood. The creases in his face are deep but soft. His skin is smooth, free of whiskers or stubble. The woman sits upon a chair, she wears a white sweater vest over a brightly colored moo moo. The carpet is a shag rug of a burnt orange color to match the butterfly’s wings.