A Lifeguard's Tale

"So, you know, we've got all these women, a lot of them bored, a lot of them horny, coming out and lying in front of us in the sun all day, with empty houses and nothing but time on their hands."

I kept skimming, even though the water was clean. I didn't know if I wanted to hear what he was getting at.

Barry watched me for a while with a grin on his face. "You should really get your nose out of your books some time and pay attention to what goes on here, Jackie. You'd be amazed. Pretty amazed."

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

Barry gave a couple more blasts with the hose and then dragged it even closer to where I stood by the edge of the pool so he could talk to me.

"You know Nina Schechtman?" It was a rhetorical question. Of course I knew Mrs. Schechtman. She'd been the one who'd cannon-balled us when Barry'd been showing me the pool, and she was one of the mainstays of the group of women we called the Leather Ladies because they spent so much time at the pool that they were all deeply tanned. They all sat together, talked and played cards together, and often brought drinks to the pool disguised in plastic mugs and pitchers. They were a good bunch and a lot of fun, always teasing the guards and making racy comments.

"Of course," I said. "What about her?"

He stepped closer, right next to me, and took the cigar holder out of his mouth. He was enjoying the suspense. "What if I told you that Nina Schechtman blew me the other day? Got right down on her knees in her kitchen and sucked me off like a fucking pro? At three in the afternoon."

"Bull shit!" My reaction was visceral and immediate. "Yeah, right Barry."

"I kid you not, man. It was last Monday. I told you I was going over to Bowles' to get the new time sheets, remember? You and Lionel were pissed about missing your break? Well I didn't go to Bowles', at least not right away. I drove around to the back of the Schechtman's place. She'd given me one of her robes as cover so it would look like I was returning it in case anyone saw. And as soon as I was in that house, she was on me like a fucking monkey!"

"Come on, Barry! I don't believe that shit." I said it, but I'd heard enough of Barry Bortnik's stories to know that he seldom actually lied, at least not like this. He fibbed, he exaggerated, he conned, but he didn't fabricate. But this one just seemed too outrageous.

"Believe what you want man, but this is the God's honest truth. She's been coming on to me all summer, making little jokes, dropping hints. You know that."

"Yeah, but they're always making jokes and dropping hints. They all do it."

"That's right man. But see, I take it seriously. I hint right back. And then one hint leads to another..." he shrugged. " I know what's going on here. And once they know you know..."

He started dragging the hose back to the maintenance shed, and I stood there like an idiot with the skimmer in my hands, my mind doing cartwheels. I did in fact remember the incident with Nina Shechtman's robe. I remember it because I'd been the one who found it as we were cleaning up late Sunday night and had made some comment about how ditzy you'd have to be to leave your pool robe behind, when Barry grabbed it out of my hands and said he'd take care of it.

I broke down the skimmer , unscrewing the handle sections, and brought them over to the maintenance shed. Barry was coiling the hose down but stopped when I came over and looked me dead in the eye, eyebrows raised as if daring me to ask a question, but I had nothing to say.

"She wouldn't let me fuck her because she was on the rag," he finally said. "But tonight, you watch. The old man's in San Diego and the coast is clear. You watch for when her lights go out. She always leaves the front room light on when he's out of town, but you watch tonight. When that light goes out, that's the signal. That means old Barry's going to be doing some serious pipe-laying."

"You're crazy!" I said. "You know what kind of trouble you could get into for this?"

"No," he challenged. "What kind?"

He stared at me. "I mean, sure, if her old man catches me, my ass is grass, but so is hers, so that's not going to happen. As for the other stuff... Show me in the rules where it says a guard can't fuck a resident of Cherry Park Apartments. In fact, if you ask me, it's almost part of our job, like an obligation."

"You mean other guards are doing this too?" I asked.

"I wouldn't know, and I don't want to know, because actually it's none of my business, but I've got some suspicions." He finished coiling the hose down and threw it into the shed. "You really ought to pay more attention to what goes on here. Watch who's going home with who after the parties and what happens when the lights go out. There's a hell of a lot of fooling around going on here, a hell of a lot of bedroom bingo. Why shouldn't we get a piece of it?"

I knew he was right. I really was oblivious to what was going on around me at Cherry Park. I just didn't pay attention. What the adults did there was like a separate world that didn't concern me, so I never thought about it. I tended to bury myself in a book when I was on guardroom duty or just lose myself in daydreams while watching the pool.

"In fact," he went on, "If you occasionally took your head out of your ass you might even have noticed how Shelly Greenberg's been coming on to you."

"Right, Barry. Listen, she's nice to me because of the way I get along with her kids, that's all. Because I taught them to swim."

"Yeah. That's why she's always asking you whether you have a girl friend and what you do on your days off and talking you while you're in the perch so you can see down her top." He laughed. "Anyone but you could see it, Jackie. And I happen to know for a fact that she's interested. Very interested."

"What do you mean you know for a fact?"

Barry smiled with satisfaction. "Because Shelly talks to Nina, and Nina talks to me. Shelly Greenberg wants your bod, and that's no shit."

Shelly Greenberg -- Mrs. Greenberg -- and I were friends of a sort. I mean, as much as I thought I could be friends with a wife and mother that much older than me, an adult. Her kids especially were crazy about me for some reason, and I assumed it was because of this that Mrs. Greenberg was so nice to me, bringing me an occasional iced drink or standing and chatting with me when I sat in the perch or was in the guardroom.

She was also one of the hot ones at the pool, and for me, the fact that she taught kindergarten the rest of the year made her seem especially perverse and exciting . She was in her early or mid-thirties, but small and girlish with a tight body accented by a pair of very womanly breasts which she wasn't shy about showing off. Like a lot of small women, she looked younger than her age and even wore her hair straight and loose as was the fashion with younger women then, often crowning it with a scarf or barrette.

It was her eyes that were the key, though: very light brown, almost amber against her deep tan, but with a surprising depth that told you she knew more than she told, and that she found everything just a little bit amusing. There was a calmness about her, a deliberateness, and it was kind of hard to understand how she and Nina Schechtman could be best friends given their difference in temperament. Nina was loud and brassy, and Shelly was quiet and sly. But then I suppose both of them were very direct and knew just what they wanted, so maybe it wasn't so strange.

Barry laughed at me, seeing me standing there in disbelief. "Wake up time, Jack. You think these women are any different from the girls in high school? You think they don't sit around and talk about us just like girls in school sit and talk about boys? Who's the best lay, who's the cutest, who they'd like to do? I hear about it all. Nina tells me, and she knows everything. You think when you're sitting up there on the perch with your shades on staring at these women that they're not lying there in the sun doing the very same thing and staring at you?"

He laughed again. "Come on, man! Get real! Sherry Greenberg wants to fuck you. She wants you to do to her what her old man doesn't."

"This is bullshit, Barry!"

"She and her old man are on the outs, you know. Supposedly she caught him fooling around with some other piece at the Annex, and they might be headed for the big D, according to what Nina tells me. Things are pretty icy between them."

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of Ray Krantz pulling into the lot in his dirty gray VW bug with our dinner. Barry kicked the rest of the hose into the maintenance shed and leaned on the door.

"Listen, man," he said in a lower voice. "Why do you think I even told you about me and Nina? Because Shelly knows about us and she's jealous. She wants some too, and you're the one she wants. All I need to know is that you're willing."

"Willing?"

He looked at me in exasperation. "For fuck's sake! Do I have to draw you a map?"

Ray sauntered into the guardroom with the bags of food, and we had to shut up. He was followed immediately by a young family, ready to take their evening swim, which meant one of us would have to take the perch.

"Ray, you watch the pool while Jack and I eat and then we'll spell you."

Ray was a good guy, agreeable to a fault. He'd do anything he was told. I wondered briefly if he was fucking anyone but quickly dismissed it. He was a guy who seemed to have no desires whatsoever.

As we dug into the bag of food, Barry asked me, "So? What do you say?"

"About what?"

"About what!" he mocked. He stared at me. "You want to do her? You want to fuck Shelly Greenberg?"

I couldn't believe it all came down to this, a simple yes/no question, like it had already been arranged. I was still struggling to understand all the stuff Barry had just told me and trying to imagine Shelly Greenberg as a real life sex partner--a bridge between my world and the world of adults. I had no idea what might see in me or what she expected and whether I could deliver it. I mean, she was married, had kids, seemed way older than me, and no doubt much more experienced in sexual matters. And on top of all that was the possibility of her divorce.

But then too I was 18 and saturated with sexual desire. Barry's story of what he'd done with Nina--what Nina had done with him--made me burn with envy and feel like a fool for never having paid any attention to all these sexual possibilities around me. And now here was Sherry Greenberg herself, being handed to me on a silver platter.

"Yes," I said. "Of course I do. Fuck yes. But, I mean, what am I going to do? I just can't go up to her and ask her if she wants to fuck."

"It's all set up," Barry said. "All you do is tell me yes and I tell Nina and Nina tells Shelly and then you two just work something out. Her old man's going to be out of town all week so things couldn't be easier. Then you just stroll over there some night after the pool closes--have her leave a sight on or some kind of signal--and you take it from there, whatever you two want to do. You can handle that, can't you, Jack? "

I ignored the sarcasm of the last remark as Barry helped himself to my fries. "So that's all there is to it? She already knows about this?"

He nodded. "I just told you she did, didn't I? This is all Shelly's idea."

I was incredulous, sitting there holding my dripping burger.

The thought passed through my mind that Barry might be setting me up for something: some kind of practical joke or maybe something much, much worse. But really, while Barry could be a schmuck in a lot of ways, that wasn't his style, and strange as it seemed, everything he'd said made a lot of sense.

People were screwing around at Cherry Park Apartments. They were screwing around every day and every night. I'd been to enough of the late-night pool parties to see husbands flirting openly with other men's wives, and couples leaving together who didn't live together. I'd just never stopped to consider what it all meant.

"Only one thing," he said. "You'll have to cover for me tonight when we close up, since I expect to be busy. But I'll cover for you when you take off with you-know-who, so we'll be even."

"Sure," I said. "Sure. No problem." Then: "Jesus! I don't know. I mean, what do I do? What does she expect? What if someone finds out?"

He wiped his mouth with his paper napkin and sucked on his coke. "Worry, worry, worry, Jackie. You never let me down. What do you think you do? You've never been with a woman before? And no one's going to find out. And if they do, well fuck them. It's none of their business what you do with a consenting adult in her own home."

"A consenting adult," I repeated, the implications sinking in. "Yeah, okay. Yeah. I'll do it. God yes, I'll do it!"

~ ~ ~

It was only about an hour later that the Greenbergs showed up for the evening swim--the whole family: Matt and Michelle running ahead with their inflatable floats, and the Steve and Shelly. I felt a moment of panic until I realized that there was no way Shelly could know yet that Barry'd talked to me or what I'd said, or if she did, she was keeping it very well hidden. She barely glanced at me when they came in, though I could feel Barry checking me out from his post in the shallow end, looking slightly amused.

Instead I paid attention to Shelly and Steve and how they interacted, or rather, failed to interact. They kept a polite, cool distance between themselves, a tension that was palpable even from where I sat in the perch. I remembered what Barry'd said about Steve's having another girl over at the Annex, and Shelly knowing about it, and then it was pretty obvious they were putting on this show of family togetherness just for the kids.

Steve Greenberg was a good-looking guy, a little short, compact, but with a good body covered with fine reddish blond hair, just beginning to bald. He wasn't a regular at the pool because he traveled so much, but when he did show up he was famous for his fine swan dive from the high board, which always drew a lot of attention, attention he didn't seem to mind at all.

He showed his skill tonight, executing two beautiful dives while his kids were still getting their tubes on, but then he turned his attention to playing the good daddy, roughhousing with the kids in the shallow end, pulling them around in their tubes and splashing with them in a way I knew they didn't like. Despite their swimming lessons, Matt and Michelle still hated getting their faces wet, and their father seemed to have no idea of that.

Shelly, for her part, sat on a chaise with a novel and never even took her robe off or barely looked up till Matt slipped through his Donald Duck float and jumped up crying and choking, coughing up water. Steve was right there to scoop him up, but their evening was over. Shelly grabbed him out of the water and wrapped a towel around him, and within a few minutes the whole family was drying themselves off and collecting their things and heading for the gate. Shelly and the kids in the lead, Steve following behind.

A while later Barry came over . It was getting on to nine o'clock and he leaned against the perch and looked up at me.

"You see Nina's window?" he asked. I'd thought he was going to say something about Shelly. I'd forgotten about him and Nina.

Nina Schechtman's townhouse was in plain sight, right across the parking lot and down at the far end of the second building north. The front window was dark. There was a light on in an upstairs window, which I figured must be the bedroom.

"I'm going to be taking off," Barry said casually. "You and Ray can close up. Richard's here to help too. Let him hose the deck. He likes doing that."

"Sure."

"Tell them I had some family emergency or something, whatever," Barry said. "Or even better, tell them I had a hot date."

"Right." It wasn't unusual for guards to spell one another for closing up if they had something else to do. No one would be suspicious.

Barry paused at the foot of the perch, looking up at me. "What did you think of the happy family?"

"Not much. It looks like she can't stand him."

He smiled. "That's about it. Just like I said. So... You still on?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sure."

Barry gave me a comradely slap on the foot, then left, walking toward the locker room to change, and as soon as he got inside, I blew the whistle to clear the pool. The next hour was spent collecting towels and garbage and straightening up the lounges and chairs, and when I next looked over at Nina Schechtman's house, all the lights were off.

~ ~ ~

I don't remember being especially excited or keyed up about what was going to happen after that. I suppose the whole thing just seemed too unreal, too alien for me to get my mind around it.

Even the next morning, when Barry came in and said, "Okay. You're all set. I told Nina you were in," it still seemed too unreal and too improbable.

"And did she tell Shelly? What did she say?"

Barry shrugged and took off his sunglasses. "I don't know. I didn't get out of there till like 2 AM, you know? But maybe Nina talked to Shelly this morning. I don't know. Be interesting to see what happens when Shelly shows up, huh?"

He put his glasses back on and smiled at me wolfishly.

Shelly showed up at the pool unusually late, after one, and without the kids. I was working the guardroom, and maybe her smile was a little broader than usual as she walked by. I couldn't say for sure.

She put her book and other stuff down on a lounge by her usual spot, then sauntered over to the guard room wearing a light thin blouse over her suit and carrying her big straw pool tote. She was all smiles, waving and saying hello to people as she threaded her way through the lounges. She seemed totally relaxed, totally self-assured.

"Hello, Jack," she said as she put her hands on the counter. "So I hear you had a talk with Barry last night? And I was involved?"

She caught me by surprise and I nodded, my face blank. I really hadn't expected her to be so direct, and I was suddenly strangely intimidated by this kindergarten teacher.

But Shelly was totally at ease, smiling all the time. "And he made a proposal to you? Something concerning me?"

"Yes. I guess you could say that."

Shelly one elbow on the counter and peeled her sunglasses off. "And what did you say?"

"Didn't Mrs. Schechtman tell you?"

"Oh yes. But I want to hear it from you."

I looked into her eyes, and what I saw there left no doubt: the directness of simple desire, the clarity of lust. I don't think, up until that point, a woman had ever looked at me like that, and it suddenly made it all very real, shockingly real. I felt a thrill in my stomach and my cock immediately started to harden.

"I said yes. Definitely yes."

She gave me that coy smile and said, "Good. I'm glad to hear it," then leaned over the counter resting on her elbows, giving me a good shot of her oversized tits pressed together in the snug top of her two-piece. "That means we can dispense with a lot of the BS."

I nodded, still held in thrall by her eyes. Then she gave me a break and released me from her gaze, letting her eyes slide demurely away from mine.

"You know, I've been wanting to do something for you in return for all you've done for the kids--maybe make you dinner, or have you over for a beer some evening. Would you like that?"

"Yes," I said, my heart hammering. "That would be great. That would really be nice. Anytime you want." Then a thought occurred to me and I asked, "Where are the kids today?"

Shelly didn't bat an eye. "They're with their father. He's leaving for Dallas tomorrow morning and wanted to spend some time with them, so they're over at the annex pool." She didn't have to say any more than that. "He'll be gone all week, so maybe tomorrow, the night after...?"