Poolside Lease

The gate rattled and I came through it at a dead run, which I know sounds dramatic, but I'd been sitting in my car in the pool parking lot for ten minutes working up the nerve, so when the nerve finally arrived I didn't waste it walking.

"Al Cummings! You absolute jackass, you locked the equipment shed and I've got a float committee meeting in two hours!"

He was standing at the lifeguard chair with a hose, spraying down the deck, and he didn't even flinch. Just held up one hand like I was a dog that had come when called.

"You're early, Francine. Pool doesn't open till ten."

"The pool can open whenever you want, I need the shed!"

"Pauline told me about the float committee. Storage for the church fair stuff, right?" He turned off the hose and set it down, real slow. "I said yes. Shed's yours for September. I just figured we'd talk terms first."

"Terms? I'm doing you a favor by not reporting the state of that fence to the county!"

"Were you gonna?" He smiled. "See, this is what I mean. Three years of this. You come in hot every single time." He wiped his hands on a rag. "Honestly, your temper is why I'm gonna enjoy this."

"Enjoy what?"

He walked into the office and came back with a piece of paper. Printed, but with stuff handwritten in the margins like he'd been adding to it all week.

"What is this?"

"Read it."

I read it. And then I laughed. I laughed hard enough that I had to put the paper down on the deck chair.

"You drew up a contract? Like a lawyer? Clause three, voice level not to exceed conversational? Who wrote this, your uncle?"

"Keep reading."

I kept reading. And somewhere around clause seven, where it said full authority over posture and permission to speak, I stopped laughing.

"Al."

"Yeah."

"This says a safeword. This says I kneel when you tell me. This says you have, and I quote, full authority over posture and permission to speak, for one week."

"One week. Starting when you sign. There's a pen."

"Why would I sign that?"

"Because you dared me to prove I'm not the arrogant prick you remember." He leaned on the lifeguard chair. "This is me proving it. I'm not arrogant. I'm precise. There's a difference."

"That's the most arrogant thing I've ever heard!"

"Then don't sign. Take the shed key and go set up your float meeting and we go back to hating each other at Pauline's cookouts." He shrugged. "But you read the whole thing. Twice, I'd bet. Nobody reads a joke twice."

I looked down. I had read it twice. My hand was shaking when I picked up the pen, and I told myself it was the coffee, and I signed it anyway.

"There," I said. "Now give me the key!"

"Kneel down."

"Excuse me?"

"Contract says I don't repeat instructions. Pool deck. Right there. Knees."

I want to tell you I hesitated longer than I did. I want to tell you I told him where to shove his laminated little agreement. What actually happened is I looked at the concrete, all that faded blue paint, and I got down on my knees on it, thirty-one years old, a veterinary tech who supervises three other techs, kneeling in front of a guy who runs a municipal pool.

"Good girl."

I felt that in my stomach. I don't know how else to describe it. Two words and my whole middle went warm and loose, and I hated him for it immediately.

"There's my key?" I managed.

"After we run an errand. Get up. You driving's not allowed, actually. Clause nine. I drive."

"Clause nine says you drive? You added that in the margins!"

"I added lots of things in the margins."

So that's how I ended up in his ancient green pickup, forty minutes to Creston, sitting shotgun in silence while the corn went by. Halfway there he glanced over.

"You okay? Real answer, not the contract answer."

"I'm fine. Weirdly fine. Is that weird?"

"Nah." He drummed the wheel. "For what it's worth, I've never done this either. The contract thing. I read about it online at two in the morning like a crazy person."

"You wrote clauses at two in the morning?"

"Three clauses. The margins ones."

"Why'd you keep it? The paper's been sitting in your office, hasn't it. How long?"

He was quiet a second. "Since last September. Church fair. You told Pauline, loud enough for me to hear, that I peaked in high school and was coasting on chlorinated nostalgia."

"I did not say chlorinated nostalgia."

"You said something like it. I kept the paper anyway."

The hardware store in Creston is one of those old ones with the wooden floors that creak, and Al walked straight back to the rope aisle like a man with a map. Rope aisle. Of a hardware store. On a Tuesday.

"We need rope," he said, "and a shower chain. Not necessarily in that order."

"Shower chain? For the shed?"

"Sure. The shed."

He was doing that thing where he doesn't explain, and I was doing the thing where I want to strangle him, and then he leaned in close, real quiet, right there between the twine and the bungee cords.

"Pick your own restraints. Whatever you want off this shelf. Your choice."

And here's the stupid part. I grabbed a length of bright orange nylon cord, defiant, fast, like grabbing it first proved something. He just smiled, slow, and put it in the basket.

"The orange?"

"I like the orange."

"Good. Orange it is." He picked up a coil of something thicker too, soft white stuff, and dropped it in. "That one's mine to use. Yours is yours."

"Yours to use on what, exactly?"

"You'll find out Thursday."

"Thursday! What happens Thursday?"

"Clause twelve."

"There is no clause twelve, I memorized that paper!"

"Marginal," he said, and paid the kid at the register, and I stood there in a hardware store in Creston with orange nylon cord in the basket and my heart doing things I refused to name.

The drive back was worse. Or better. I genuinely couldn't tell you which. He had the windows down and his forearm resting on the sill, and every so often he'd look over like he was checking I was still with him, and I'd say, "I'm fine, Al," before he could ask, and he'd do that half smile.

"You're gonna ask me something," he finally said. "Go ahead."

"Fine. What was wrong with two years ago? We hooked up once, and I left, and you called me controlling. Was I?"

"You wouldn't let me lead. Not once. Not even a little. Every time I tried something you took it over." He shrugged. "Felt less like a night together and more like a negotiation I was losing."

"That's harsh."

"It's true, though. And now you signed a paper giving me everything. So which one's the real you?"

I didn't answer that. Mostly because I didn't have one. The corn kept going by and I watched it and thought about the word posture in clause seven.

Back at the pool, the lifeguards had shown up, two college kids who greeted us like this was a normal workday, and Al handed me the shed key like he was handing me a medal.

"There. Storage for the float committee. As promised. Meeting's at noon?"

"Noon," I said. My knees still kind of ached from the concrete.

"And Francine? Thursday, nine a.m., before open swim. Wear something you can move in. That's not a clause, that's a courtesy."

"A courtesy. You're a lunatic."

"Probably." He picked up his hose again. "See you Thursday, good girl."

I dropped the key twice getting it in my pocket, and he absolutely saw, and I walked to my car with my face burning and my stomach doing that warm loose thing again, and I sat in the parking lot for ten minutes before I could figure out how to turn the key.

Thursday was two days away. I already knew I was gonna be early.

Thursday. Nine a.m. I was there at eight fifty, because of course I was, and I sat in the parking lot again doing the exact same thing I'd done two days ago, which is staring at the chain-link fence and asking myself what on earth I thought I was doing.

Then I went in anyway. Pattern established.

Al was already on the deck, hauling the lane lines off the reel, and he looked up like I was two minutes late instead of ten early. "There she is. Right on time."

"I'm ten minutes early."

"Right on time," he said again, and I swear the man has never once hurried for anybody.

The pool was empty, the water flat and bright, and the morning sun was already cooking the faded blue paint. He set the reel down and pointed at the diving board.

"Climb up. Sit on the end."

"Al."

"Clause seven. Posture. Climb up, sit on the end, and hand me your wrist."

I climbed up. The aluminum was hot through my shorts and the whole board flexed under me in that way it does, that little trampoline wobble that made me feel eight years old and thirty-one at