Crying Wolf Read Free

looking at someplace else.

2
    All journeys fall into one of two categories, to home or from home, each unsatisfactory in its own way.
    â€”From Professor Uzig’s welcoming remarks, Philosophy 322
    F reedy heard a man’s voice from inside the house: “Better put your bathing suit on. The pool boy’s out back.”
    Freedy stared up at the house, saw nothing but his own reflection in the glass sliders. He looked buff, ripped, diesel, a fuckin’ animal (except for the intelligence in his face, not visible in the distant reflection, but he knew it was there). The intelligence in his face—according to his mother, he had eyes like the actor, name escaped him at the moment, who played Sherlock Holmes in old black-and-white movies—that intelligence was what separated him from all the other fuckin’ animals out there and made him more of a lady’s man. Women liked brains, no getting around it. Brains meant sensitivity. For example, floating in the water near the filter was a little furry thing.
Poor little fella,
you could say to some woman who happened to come by the pool. That was all it took: sensitivity.
    Combine that with the ripped part, the buff part, the diesel part, so obvious in the window—that bare-chested dude, wearing cutoffs and work boots, the skimmer held loose in his hands, was he himself, after all—and what did you have? The kind of dude women went crazy for, absolutely no denying that. Freedy squeezed the skimmer handle a little and a vein popped up in the reflection of his forearm. Amazing. He was an amazing person. But
pool boy
. He didn’t like that, not one bit. Would they say it if he was black? Not a chance. That would be racist, and none of these people in their big houses in the hills over the Pacific ever spoke a racist word. They were politically correct. Well, on the panel of the van he drove it said:
A-1 Pool Design, Engineering, and Maintenance
. So that made
pool engineer
the correct term, didn’t it?
The pool engineer’s out back
. That’s what he should have said, the asshole inside the house, Dr. Goldstein or Goldberg or whatever his name was. Freedy swept the little furry thing into the skimmer and tossed it over the ridge.
    Thong.
He turned back to the house and there was Mrs. Goldstein, Goldberg, whatever, walking across the patio in one of those thong bikinis. What a great invention! About forty, maybe even older, what with that sharp face and turned-down mouth, but the body: all these people with their pools, houses, cars, worked out like crazy, probably harder than he did. Except they didn’t have a bottle of andro in their pocket. Or maybe they did. Nothing surprised him anymore. That was one thing he’d learned almost as soon as he’d come to California, three or four years before, the precise number momentarily unavailable. He’d been in a bar down in Venice when a cigar-smoking guy beside him answered his cell phone, listened for a while, and then said: “Nothing surprises me anymore.” Right on the money. Freedy’d used the expression for the first time himself that very day.
    The woman in the thong was talking to him.
    â€œExcuse me?” he said.
    She raised her hands to shade her eyes, bringing her breasts into play. “I said, are you new?”
    New? What? He’d been doing this pool for six months. Three, anyway. “No,” he said.
    â€œSorry, I didn’t recognize you. Aren’t you a little early?”
    â€œColumbus Day. Traffic was light.”
    She nodded. “What’s your name again?”
    â€œFreedy.”
    â€œNice to meet you, Freedy. This is when I normally do my laps.”
    In a thong? You swim your laps in a thong?
Then he got it:
Put on your bathing suit.
She swam them in the nude.
    â€œWant me to come back some other time?” Pause. “Mrs. . . .”
    â€œSherman. Bliss Sherman.” From the front of the house came the