Moorpark Palms - 8. Chapter 8

Romantically, Kevin – the band’s bass player – began the summer games by making the first pass at Teri, from UCLA. He’s Black Irish. She’s Tuesday Weld. This was stuff soaps were made on.
One afternoon, several weeks after they’d been seeing each other, I caught her whistling at him from the pool. It was mid-June, the water was warmer, but Teri was merely sunbathing in something shy of a bikini. Kev quickly joined her, soon there was a splash, and he was shivering – fully dressed – near the deep end.
“Didn’t think you’d do it,” she said laughing.
He grinned as only a guy who’s done something goofy for sex can. “Hope I didn’t ruin my boots.”
As she kissed their inlaid toes, I moved on.
Soon after – maybe challenged by Kevin – Dale, the mechanic, went after Lisa, the possibly unwed mom.
“There actually is a father,” Dale told me, while flopped on the ground changing the oil in my car. “Well, of course, there is, dimwit!” he corrected, comically hitting himself on the forehead. “What I mean is they almost got married.”
“The guy back out?” I asked.
“Nah, Lisa wasn’t sure he was really the dad. She was afraid – if the kid didn’t look enough like the dude – he’d beat the crap out of her.”
“Sweet people.”
“New York. What can I say?”
Next, Younger Brother, our fearless manager – “He’s older, but I’m more responsible” he said of his elder sibling – asked out Kim, the second New York girl. “She won’t be a secretary all her life,” he argued. “Like I won’t always manage this stupid place.”
We were in the pool area, and I was helping him assemble a gas grill.
“Can you believe they didn’t even have chairs?” he went on. “First thing I said – even before taking this job – is you gotta get somethin’ to sit on near the pool. Can’t expect us to lie on the cement.”
He suddenly yelped, slicing his finger.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Do it all the time.” He sucked the blood while forcing a bolt into place. “Of course, I was goofin’. I woulda grabbed the job and fuck the chairs. We needed a place bad – got screwed outta our last one.”
I didn’t want to know.
“So the lease wasn’t in our name,” he told me anyway. “We always paid the rent. And what’s it matter how many guys you got sleepin’ in one room? ‘Long as no one complains.”
Somehow the barbecue lit.
“Now Kim’s kinda weird,” he went on. “Always needin’ to check with her roomies before doin’ anythin’. But man, she goes down smooth.”
“Where are you playing?” I asked, trying to upgrade the conversation, if only to grunge.
“Bar off Sunset. Too close to Crack Alley, but it beats doing birthday parties. Shit you gotta play.”
“I’ll try and come.”
“Cool! I’d give you passes, but, hey, we need the bucks.”
Lonnie, the accountant, was next, quickly dating, in succession: Annette – the second UCLA girl, Shannon – the third New Yorker, and Veronica – the last girl from UCLA.
“I’ve got nothing against them,” he reported cheerfully. “‘Specially Veronica. They’re all great, and I told ‘em that. I just gotta keep looking.”
“For what?” I asked.
We were sitting on the balcony rail. Yuck coiled curiously toward me.
“Love,” Lonnie lamented. “It’s really tough! You know that guy in San Francisco? The one who use to go to class naked? That’s weird – too weird for me. I’ll do it on an empty beach or in a private pool. But that guy – I swear, he hung it out there just to meet the right girl.”
I laughed. “You don’t seem to have that problem.”
“But I do. I can’t find one I want to marry. They all keep falling in love.”
I had to laugh again.
“Well, where do you meet them?” he asked. “Women good enough to take home ‘n’ face the family?”
That made me stop. “I guess I’ve never been that serious,” I admitted, without telling him who I hadn’t been serious about. “Maybe, because – well, teaching – every time even my watchband broke was a financial crisis.”
He waved this away. “I’ll always have money – that’s no problem. But I gotta find someone who really wants me. Even if I’m... well... useless.”
I didn’t understand. “Why would that happen?” I asked.
“Who knows? Car wreck. Earthquake. Gotta plan ahead.”
Up to that point, things were relatively clean. One guy. One girl. Heavy messing around. Then Less Responsible Older Brother proved his reputation by sleeping with Teri – while she was still seeing Kevin.
“It’s cool,” Older Brother insisted. “Kev doesn’t care.” He grinned. “Well, I mean, he does, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.”
I tried to sort this out: “You’re sleeping with Teri as a favor?”
“Sleeping? Who’s even lying down?”
That really cracked him up.
“But Kevin wants things to end?” I asked.
“Kev never knows what he wants – that’s what gets him girls!”
I kind of knew that from watching. It was an art I never mastered, no matter what the sex.
“What about Teri?” I continued. “How does she feel?”
“What’s it matter?” He seemed exasperated with me. “Two weeks, and everything’ll change.”
That seemed cynical, but he called it exactly right. As soon as the pool finally heated, the passion play moved outdoors. Lounge chairs became houses. Tables, pantries. The grill burned brightly every night.
For sport, the guys scaled the cinder block wall around the pool, swung to the carport, and cannonballed off the roof. Then they mounted the pool gazebo – higher and further away – and flung themselves at the shallow end. Guys climbed, girls screamed, the baby cried, water sloshed, and burgers, beers, and who knew what else were passed, along with the summer.
Coming home late, I’d see bodies squirming against the aqua light from the pool. I was never sure whose or in what combination. And there were fights – whole apartments bashing each other. Screaming! Accusations! Flying things! And Music! Boom boxes. Speakers hanging out windows. The band jammed after midnight gigs – and they were pretty good. There was dancing. Wriggling. Endless water.
Sally hid. “I haven’t seen you for weeks,” I finally told her.
“Thank god for air conditioning.”
“Has it been that hot? At work, I’m always inside.”
“It’s not the heat! But with the machine on, I can’t hear anything. The kids can do what they like.”
Claire was less forgiving: “They should all be evicted.”
“Four apartments?” I said. “The owners wouldn’t do that.”
“Neutered, then.”
“What about the girls?” Vic asked, ready to discipline.
At least, Claire’s apartment was away from the pool. She didn’t get nearly the noise Sally, Vic and I did. So on nights when the kids partied late, I took Sally’s escape – closed my windows and turned the air conditioner on high.
Vic was probably in permanent orgasm. He’d often ride off just after sunrise for supplies – bouncing his heavy Schwinn down our steps well before I left for work “I don’t trust bike locks,” he’d told me earlier, as though someone coveted his rusty one-speed. He’d be back before breakfast, then would squat in his toasty apartment, hypnotized and munching hot dogs.
The girls knew he was there. They’d sometimes wave. Once I saw Jackie flash him, less than accidentally.
“I like the blonde ones best,” he confessed to me one night. (“Tell me about the rabbits, George.”)
The Hungarian women and the Kansas couple were best shielded, living on the building’s “quiet” side and furthest from the pool. Ironically, two-of-the-three empty apartments were also on that side. A sign out front continually advertised Vacancies, but if anyone sensible inquired, they probably ran.
All summer, the Kansas couple continued their house quest, making several low-end bids and always seeming disappointed when they were refused. Still, even more than a house, they craved a deal.
“Time’s our buddy,” Eric – the husband – told me. “The seller’s market keeps getting worse.”
“You should buy, too,” his wife counseled. “Get something to rent. You don’t have to live there.”
I couldn’t picture myself as a slumlord.
Increasingly, the Hungarian women stayed inside. Chris – the band’s drummer – once tried to talk with the younger woman when she came out of the laundry room just as he leaped from the pool. He wore tiny, drenched Speedos. She halted. Involuntarily.
“Come on in!” he sang. “Water’s wonderful!”
She stared. “I... I...”
At that moment, her roommate appeared, trailing the beast. It barked. Chris growled in fun. The women slipped away.
“Damn!” he mourned, as though he’d been even close. Then he grabbed the fence, vaulted to the roof, and – bleating like Tarzan – cannonballed home.
“Barry” was sighted once. During a full moon.
I swam, too, in my rare moments free. Or when it was so hot when I finally crawled home that the pool was faster than a shower. The kids were always friendly, and if I’d been interested, I might have thought about asking Kim or Shannon out. They seemed the most intelligent. But it would have felt too much like dating students. Besides, watching the horny, nearly naked guys was way more fun.
In the pool, I mostly dove, gliding underwater to the opposite end, reversing, then climbing out and diving again. Strange objects floated by – baby toys and other unfathomables. Or they moved gently beneath the surface. At work, I slowly circled a guy a few years older than I was, a writer, far better established. He claimed I could organize anything, praised me relentlessly, except where it mattered. Through the new friends I was making, I met several other guys. One loved a man he couldn’t afford to support. Another left the following message one Sunday, when I’d been unexpectedly dragged in to work so couldn’t return his – evidently several – calls:
“I spent the afternoon worried you were dead and the evening hoping you were.”
All around me, hormones free-based, and I spent the most cloistered summer of my life.