Little Wreck
By: Alexander Nagel
Tags: Short Story

They decided to go down to the pool because the sun was still out.

The sun is no longer high in the sky, nor is it sitting particularly low. The umbrellas are the same color as the burnt leaves that mingle with the green on the thin branches that dot the area between the wood shingled rooftops and the fence of iron bars painted white. A long, rectangular concrete fountain running the length of the iron fence ends just short of the leasing office to make room for a small gate with an electronic lock.

The iron gate swings open without a sound and in steps a middle aged man, followed by an equally middle aged woman. He is wearing wrap around sunglasses and a black V-neck t-shirt with swim shorts in a shade of solid blue. He carries a newspaper under one arm and a set of keys in the other. She is wearing a white bikini with a bright floral pattern of green and red flowers, a thin, cream colored garment that she wears wrapped around her waist like a skirt, and a white stitched sun hat with a black band stretching around the brim. She holds a magazine in her hand and sunglasses in the other. The man stops beside a set of Chaise lounge chairs equidistant from the pool and the gate. He lifts the t-shirt up and over his short pepper hair and lays back in the chair while she unravels the makeshift skirt and sets it over her chair.

“My word. Your skin is as white as your hair,” he says.

“Stop teasing, Richard.”

“Don’t worry. You’re still beautiful.”

She puts on her sunglasses to look out over the pool; bright and blue as the cloudless sky. She notices, however, that half of the water is shaded in the darkness of the two story condominiums. The man throws his keys on a glass table beside his chair and opens his newspaper. The woman takes her time applying an even coat of sunscreen across every exposed part of her body before sitting down beside him. She opens her magazine and they both begin concentrating on their respective interests.

Before long they hear the patter of tiny, bare feet that is soon joined by the yipping and yapping of small voices. Neither of them bother to look up and they continue to read through the initial plunge and subsequent splashing of little bodies. A man with no shirt and a large belly who is not much younger than the couple appears from behind the gate. He passes in front of the couple and gives them a toothy grin and a sincere nod.

“Hi,” says the man with the belly.

The couple look up momentarily and each gives a strained grin before returning to their reading. The man stands between the couple and the children in the pool with hands planted on his hips, looking proud of all the energy his creations are expending.

“Do you mind?” she says.

The father of the two small children turns around.

“I’m sorry?” says the father.

“Your children are getting my things all wet.”

The father looks with incredulous eyes at a thin pool of water at least a foot away from the woman’s feet.

“Oh… sorry… Molly! Zach! How about we check out the hot tub, huh?”

After the screams of joy and the sound of marching feet fade into the distance, the woman is again free to concentrate on her magazine; shifting the angle of the glossy pages to eliminate the glare. Her partner lets out a long sigh.

“Why don’t you lower the umbrella, love?” he says.

“And just how am I supposed to get a tan with the umbrella down?”

“We all have to make sacrifices, my dear.”

He speaks with a monotone voice from behind his newspaper. Checking to make sure the kids have dispersed, he looks toward the hot tub and sees the kids filling their pool noodles up from the water in the ornamental fountain.

“My word… God never gives with both hands, does he?” he says.

The father notices him looking in his direction and seizes the opportunity to saunter towards the couple.

“Hey. Sorry again about all that. Those little rugrats can be quite a handful,” says the father.

“Quite,” she says.

“You two from England?”

“Manchester,” he says.

“That right? Well, you sure picked the perfect time to come to California. It’s been sunny all week,” says the man.

“Yes. That’s why we’re here. The weather.”

“The U.K. is so grey,” she says.

The father grabs one of the adjacent lounge chairs and pulls the metal over the concrete with a screech before sitting down. He kicks off his sandals and leans forward. Meanwhile, the man from the U.K. redoubles his efforts to concentrate on the paper blowing in a wind that has picked up.

“You guys had a chance to check out any of the golf courses yet?” says the father.

The man from the U.K. finally looks up from his paper and removes his glasses.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. That’s the real reason we’re here.”

“It’s the reason you’re here, dear,” she says.

“Yes, well… we thought we’d take a holiday. I come here quite often for business. My wife has never been.”

“Oh? And how do you like it here?” says the father.

“I like the weather,” she says.

The father turns toward the man from the U.K.

“You been to the Little Wreck yet?” says the father.

“Pardon?”

“The Little Wreck. It’s a little nine-holer. Not far from here. You should drop by.”

“Yes. We may very well do that,” says the man from the U.K.

“I have four kids and a business, so I don’t have five hours to spend on eighteen holes. Know what I mean?”

The father smiles and chuckles nervously. The man from the U.K. returns the smile with a stretch of his lips.

“This is the time of year everyone goes out to the desert courses in Palm Springs. Why, just the other day…”

The woman from the U.K. tunes out the conversation and begins looking around. She studies the curvature of the L-shaped pool. The bottom of the L bends to her left in a square shallow end. Most of the water stretches past her perpendicularly and the water gets increasingly deeper as it extends further to her right. At the other end of the fountain from the gate sits a hot tub where the children are slapping the surface of the water with their foam noodles. Her attention is diverted by the approach of laborious panting. She turns towards the direction of the new sound and sees a thin, old woman in flowing clothes with frizzy black hair emerge through the gate walking a big, black dog. The woman with the dog holds up a hand in a wave as she rushes past.

“Hi! Just taking a tour. Don’t mind us,” says the woman with the dog.

A boy with the same mop of dark hair follows behind her begrudgingly and they disappear through the leasing office doors. Behind the boy the woman from the U.K. sees someone else at the gate. Two people. A young man and a young woman. Their flip flops crack across the surface of the pavement. They come to rest at a pair of lounge chairs across the pool. The young man is in a pair of bright red board shorts and and the young woman is in a small, black two-piece bikini. He pushes her in.

He dives in after her and the two break the surface laughing. They swim around for awhile before the young couple occupies one corner of the pool. The boy fences the girl into his outstretched arms. Small puddles begin to collect around his wet palms that rest on top of the blue and white tile mosaic lining the concrete lip of the pool. From behind the back of the young man’s head, the woman from the U.K. sees the half-hidden face of the young woman. The young man talks and talks while the young woman holds a pleasant smile for him. Every so often, the girl lets out a polite laugh, but in the many minutes the woman from the U.K. watches her, the young woman never says anything herself.

“Honeymooners?” says the man from the U.K.

“Hmm?” says the woman.

The father is no longer there. The woman adjusts her glasses with delicate fingers and turns forwards her husband.

“What’s that, dear?” says the woman.

“I said do you think those two are on their honeymoon?”

The man gestures with his chin and his wife allows herself a second glance at the young couple who are now creating ripples in the water by rocking back and forth in an embrace. The woman from the U.K. takes a few moments to respond. Her face goes slack; pensive. Her gaze is fixed on the woman’s smooth face and youthful complexion. The husband looks toward his wife expectantly.

“Probably just a fling,” she says.

She returns to her magazine. Her husband lets out a dismissive laugh.

“At a place like this? Not likely,” says the husband.

The wife keeps her head down, hoping to avoid having to explain herself any further. Fortunately, her husband soon loses interest and flips open his newspaper, but the rising wind ruffles the pages. The husband grasps the paper tightly with both hands.

That night, the middle aged woman from the U.K. and her husband sit comfortably in separate beds while she sips a glass of Château Lafite and he watches one of the local news programs on a tiny cathode ray tube television atop a large, dark wooden dresser. The bedroom of the small condominium is a square thing with fake wood floors, white baseboards, and off-white walls that glow pale blue in the otherwise lightless room. Comforters of woodland print that are too thick for southern California at any time of year lay across their laps. The pillows they have pushed against their backs are so soft that they have compressed into a tight clump.

She looks up from her magazine occasionally to steal glances at her husband to see if he has fallen asleep yet. After nearly an hour, she sees that his eyes are closed and his head is pressed back against the concave clump of pillows. She lifts the sheets over herself and scoots further down the bed. She pretends to sleep until she hears him snoring. She slowly makes her way out of bed and creeps out of the bedroom and into the living room.

She unhinges the lock of the front door, turns the handle, and in a single swift motion slides out the open door before carefully pressing it shut again. She knows the trick is to set the door in the frame before turning the handle back. That way, the latch won’t make any noise when the door is shut. It’s even easier with the television on.

She makes her way down the wooden steps and over the parking lot to the small iron gate. She removes the key card she has stowed in the pocket of her nightgown and steps into the pool area, passing over where the big black dog had walked and where the children’s feet had been running several hours before. She stops at the lounge chair closest to her. She removes her nightgown and underwear and places them on top of the chair. With short, measured steps, she makes her way to the lip of the pool and lingers for a moment, savoring the warm night air on her bare flesh before jumping in.

She rises to the surface of the water and swims with graceful strokes over to the corner of the pool where the young couple had been. She nestles herself into the concrete wedge where the girl had been comfortably pinned in by her partner. From here she can see the other end of the pool with the lounge chairs, the umbrellas, and the leasing office. She raises her arms out of the water and sets them down behind her on the pavement to support herself while she floats.

Her eyes close and she reaches a hand back into the water. She presses her hand against her stomach. She begins moving her palm in soft circles, edging her way further down until she brushes her pubic hair. With her head leaning back, she allows one of her fingers to slide inside of her. Her mouth opens and she presses her finger deeper inside of her and then out again before snapping herself to attention to look around. After convincing herself that she is truly alone, she closes her eyes again, and slides two fingers inside of herself beneath the silver light of the waning moon.

The couple from the U.K. rises early the next morning. She takes a few eggs from the refrigerator and scrambles them. With eggs safety in the skillet, she takes a moment to retrieve a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator. She carries the bottle over to the dark, wood table where her husband is reading a biography of Lord Nelson. She pours the juice into his empty glass. Her husband continues reading.

“How did you sleep, dear?” says the husband.

“Quite well, darling. Thank you,” says the wife.

“Good,” says the husband.

He lifts the glass to his face and begins gulping down the juice without looking up from his book. She traipses back over to the kitchen and prepares the rest of their breakfast by placing two slices of whole grain bred into the toaster oven.

At eight o’clock the couple appears at the front gate of the condominium complex in their rented BMW. He is wearing a dark blue polo shirt tucked into black trousers. She is in a bright, lime green shirt and white athletic skirt. A man wearing a black polo shirt and khakis greets them at the gate with a smile and friendly wave. The man from the U.K. rolls down his window.

“Mind opening the gate for us?”

“Of course, sir. Where are we off to today?” says the gate attendant.

“A place called Little Wreck.”

“I’m familiar with it, sir. I hope you enjoy it. It’s one of my favorites.”

“I expect we will.”

The large, white iron gate swings wide and the BMW slowly pulls forward. The woman from the U.K. sits in silence and stares out of the window as the car makes its way down the long length of road with the endless row of palm trees lining the perfectly manicured grass.

They return to the complex around four o’clock in the afternoon. The sun is still out, so they decide to go down to the pool. They stay there for a long time reading and making occasional comments about the other people that come and go. The woman from the U.K. even enters the pool for awhile. Her husband notices her first tentative steps towards the pool, but thinks better of saying anything. Everyone else is already out of the water this late in the day, so she falls to her back and spreads her arms and legs wide. With her submerged head creating a comfortable cushion of compressed air around her ears, she abandons herself to the ambient drone of the water. Everyone exits the pool as the sun begins to settle over the rooftops of the condominiums, leaving the couple to bask comfortably in the remaining rays of sunlight.