Di-a-tomaceous Death

Tommy Fitzgerald sat stiffly in his truck, toying with a stale Marlboro he kept in reserve in the clean ashtray, a deliberate temptation to prove he didn’t have to smoke anymore. It was the last one and so long to all that. Tommy reached to remember when he had started, what, 25, 30 years ago, after he joined the Marines.

He took care of pools for rich people. His accountant never stopped trying to get Tommy to call them “clients.” “In case the IRS overhears you,” he’d say with a grin. But Tommy thought that was pretentious and stuck to refering to them as “owners” to the accountant and “Mister or Missus” to their faces if he ever saw them which he. rarely did. For the most part, Tommy cleaned the pools, fixed the pumps, billed them, and never the twain would meet. Except for this one Missus that was always home.

He twirled the cigarette between his fingers, a few dried shards of tobacco slipping out of the business end, and sucked in as hard as he could almost tasting smoke. When done, he placed the cigarette back down in an ashtray that hadn’t seen an ash in year. It was a ritual once every two weeks when he parked the truck in from of this house and only this house. Tommy once went so far as pushing the truck’s lighter in until it glowed and held it in front of the tobacco. When a thin wisp of blue smoke lifted from the end, he put the lighter back and pinched the tiny coal out with a wet fingertip.

Maybe today he’d get lucky today and she’d be away. Get in, get out, and just leave the bill in the mailbox. It would be a first.

He wasn’t lucky

Pam Gilbert took one long sip, using her tongue to ensnare the two olives left behind. Through , a mouthful of dry martini and olive slurry she managed to growl, “Aren’t you finished yet?” A deep swallow followed with a slight choke to get the less chewed olive down. “Eh, pool boy? You hear me?”

Tommy looked up from behind the pump. Sweat left trails in the diatomaceous earth powdering his face, matching the color of his grizzled crew cut. He looked up at three late-middle-aged women, who were holding mostly empty martini glasses, wearing shades that could cover most of the bosoms their tops struggled to contain. The two behind Pam were ogling Tommy.

“The filter needed backwashing again, Missus Gilbert. You get a lot of algae with the heat on and all and not enough chlorine.”

She threw toss her bleached long hair into the air like a horse swishing it’s tail at annoying flies. “You said you’d be done by noon. It’s almost one. That’s an hour longer in case you don’t know.”

He wouldn’t argue with the math and wouldn’t bother to remind her that he never said he’d be done by noon, or that he was always there for more than two hours. “I’m done, but it needs more care, you know. Once, twice a week, at least. It’s not difficult. I can show you something.”
“I’ll bet you can,” said Pam. She shushed the women behind her. “Just do it ASAP.” She smiled to still more giggles.

“That’s why the suction went on you,” he said, clearing his throat at his words. “A bathing suit top, I think, got caught in the pump. Chewed to bits. It’s clear now, but you really can’t throw things like that, towels and such. They clog the system, you know.”

“Oh, so the suction went on me? Maybe I just won’t wear anything. Hmm, gals?”

One of the ladies spit out a stream of Martini, crying she’d ‘norked’ it and wanted a refill.

Tommy,” said the other one, “Don’t let the suction let go of me!” Tommy waved, picked up his gear, and headed out the side gate, saying he’d leave the bill in the box.

“I’d like to meet this Bill he keeps talking about,” said Pam to her friends, one of whom pretty much fell out of her top leaning over to wink at Tommy.
“I like your tattoo,” she said.

Tommy looked to the bulldog etched on his forearm, a ‘Semper Fi’ banner above it. “What the hell was I thinking?” he said, barely hearing the catcalls and splashing from the pool. A wet bathing top hit him in the back of his head.
*
Two weeks later, Tommy was back staring into pool tinged green water with algae and skimmers clogged with debris. He had to flush the pump and cleaned out the filter three times. He also had to extract the remains of another top, or maybe a bottom, that was clogging the drain at the pool’s bottom, putting tremendous pressure on the system.

“Really, Missus Gilbert, you’ve got to be more careful. The pump is going to burn out on you, and they’re not cheap. “

“Well, Tommy, exactly what do you expect me to do? I dove in to get my suit, but the suction just held it in. Don’t accuse me of creating a problem. You’re the pool boy, not me.” Without a martini in hand or her entourage behind, Pam Gilbert could be quite a bitch.

It wasn’t the first time Tommy had to explain simplicity, or the first time he had to swallow bile. He began with the net, telling her to clean out leaves, grass, and debris every day, and especially after she had the landscapers in. “There’s the net right there,” he said, pointing up at the retaining wall. “And I could come more often. And,” he was looking away now. “And, anyway I can come more.”

“That would get costly, no?”

“Cheaper than a new pump and filter system. But you can skim and take crap out of the skimmer drains. You don’t need me for that.”

“Skimmer drains, eh? Those are…?”

Tommy explained again that they were the boxes at the top of the pool where one puts in the chlorine blocks. He lifted the lid to one drain, emptied it of nature’s debris and the remains of butts, a half-smoked joint, and an olive, and added the chlorine.

“You really need to keep chlorine in this. Honestly,” he said.

“Don’t ‘honestly’ me, hon. I pay you as I recall, and it’s quite a nice amount for you to sit around and get a suntan.”

“I don’t mean to be…” Tommy was looking at his feet, then into the pool and squinting even though the clouds were hiding the sun.

“Yes? You don’t mean to be what?”

“It’s just that, and I don’t mean offense or anything, it’s just that, well, those bathing suits really clog the drain. I mean the pump really gets going when they get hold of them. It’s really best if, you know, the suits, or towels, were left outside of the pool.”

Pam Gilbert moved closer to the pool, sitting down on the stone steps that lead to the pebbled walkway. “You are suggesting I swim in the nude, is that it? Is that what’s on your mind?” She let down her long hair to cover her breasts as she played with the straps to her bathing top.

Tommy stepped backward, stumbling over a hose, stammering ‘no’ a few times before Pam Gilbert looked up at the sky and laughed for several seconds.

“You are a prude, my working-class hero. Finish off or I’ll take my swim right in front of you.” She looked into the sky, flung her head back, and howled a laugh.

That laugh that wasn’t a laugh. It was a cackle. He remembered hearing on the Discovery Channel that a cackle was the term for a group of hyenas. “Perfect,” he thought.

He also thought Mister Gilbert must have been very lucky because there was no Mister Gilbert. “Dropped dead, the sonofabitch,” he heard her say more than a few times to the cackle that hung out at the patio. “Asshole ad man. Had cigarette accounts. Coffin nails, he called them. Best line he came up with and not that original,” she’d say. “What can I say? It wasn’t cancer research!” They’d laugh as if they hadn’t already heard it a thousand times. “Smoked himself to death. Poetic justice.”

Tommy thought he’d have something in common with that Mister Gilbert.

He made the final adjustment to the pump, taking down the suction power a notch to reduce the pressure when something would inevitably clogged the system. It wouldn’t work for long, he knew it, but the lessened strain might give him time to get back and clear the unit before it burned out the motor.

Two had passed and he was again sitting in his truck twirling a Marlboro. A fresh one from the pack he’d bought that morning. He inhaled for what seemed like seconds, the tobacco tempting him to no good. He flicked his new lighter on and off before putting it in the ashtray with the cigarette while taking a deep breath. “Let’s get it over with,” he said to no one.

The pool was green, algae creep around the sides. The water was a weak tea color, appropriate given the lemon slices floating around the idle strainers.

“Dead,” she said letting the porch door slam behind her. “Dead as a bloody doornail.”

“How long has it been out? You should a called me, honestly.”

“Do your unplugging thing Mister Roto-Rooter. The gals and I are having a drink.”

Tommy did try to get it going. With his bare hands he extracted bathing suit remains, leaves, grass, and globs of metal-colored plastic. He was already sweating when he realized the pump motor would have to be replaced. That itself wasn’t a big deal. Telling Pam Gilbert was another matter.

“Planning a party?” Pam asked, glaring at Tommy and his armful of debris.

“I did warn you, Missus Gilbert. I warned you a lot. I mean just look at this stuff.” He held up the shreds of metallic plastic. “This melted in the pump.”

“They’re balloons. From my birthday. The girls gave me a shit-ton of them.”

“Umm, well, Happy Birthday, I guess. Consider a new pump a birthday gift.”

“You can’t fix that one?”

Tommy explained it was gone, done, and wasn’t worth replacing. She looked at him, stared, for a long while, and if she blinked once he didn’t notice when he periodically looked back up to her.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, um. Well, what?”

“When can you get it in?”

“Don’t you want to know how much, like an estimate?”

“Tommy boy, I don’t have a choice now do I? New pump or septic tank of a pool, and I’m not filling in the pool. Just get a powerful pump, right, so this doesn’t happen again.”

He explained through gritted teeth that it wasn’t the size of the pump that was the issue, it was the maintenance that someone had to clean the thing out more and keep “crap,”—his choice of word surprised him—out of it.

“Fine, whatever. Just get a decent pump, a more powerful one, and get it in today. It’s hot out here.”

“You don’t need a more powerful….”

“Get one! I like power. And maybe you should clean the thing out more often.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, and he didn’t try to argue. If she wanted a more powerful pump, she’d get a more powerful pump, and he just happened to have one in the shop from the Seligsohns that was barely used. They’d filled in their pool and replaced it with a hot tub. Screw it, he thought, she can have that one.

Powerful it was. It recycled the water in half the time and pulled like a team of oxen. He adjusted the intake to take it down a notch, but it was still a strong pull. A very strong pull.

“Well, is it working?”

“Yup. It’s on. I put those blocks in the skimmers. You gotta check on those. I’ll come back in…a week?”

“Two weeks.”

“But, I need to check on the system. You need to keep junk out of the pool, especially cloth stuff. You know suits and all.”

“Two weeks. I just paid a ton for that pump or filter or whatever it is. I’m not made of money.”

He tried to tell her again, but she just took a slurp of rosé from a very large glass and waved her hand. He went back to the new pump and turned up the power to keep the flow going. The water in the pool was clearly agitating through the drains, which would help keep the algae from building. He added chlorine and was about to leave when he had a thought.
He went back to the pump and turned it up some more.

The day was hot, a real scorcher. Pam had drained her mid-day martini before the girls had arrived. She was in a wading mood and took the steps down, discarding her top, and letting it sink to the bottom where the suction from the drain lured it in.

“Goddamn,” she said to herself, thinking through a fog induced by the heat, martini, and a moment of pool owner pride over not wanting to shell out another few thousand bucks on a new pump. She dove to the bottom where the drain was sucking in her top, barely noticing the pull as she went deeper. She grabbed the top and played tug of war with the pump. She pulled herself right to the drain, her breasts and hair scraping the pool’s bottom in the effort, working to yank out the top, or what was left of it. When the top came free, the pump exchanged its pull for the next best thing. It sucked until the system burned out and let go of its victim.

“Freak accident,” the police said. They were asking her friends how much she’d drunk, and they pointed to the martini glass and the half-empty bottle of vodka on the patio’s table. They weren’t there, the friends explained. Found her floating that way. She had a drinking problem, they insisted. Depressed since her husband, a lovely man, they told the police, had died.
One cop walked around the pool while the EMTs lifted Pam’s body out of the water. “Big pump,” he thought. But then, he asked himself, what did he know?

Tommy showed up as soon as he heard the news. He didn’t wait in his truck very long. Lifting the yellow tape he went through the side gate to clean the pool like any other day. He went to the pump, which had stopped when it got too clogged—a good feature on the newer ones—and adjusted the pressure. He really had turned it on too high.

He tossed a pack of nineteen Marlboros out the window on his way home.