In a front yard in Lakeview, a boy runs full speed with a yellow plastic bucket in his hand, dips it in the water, whirls and lets loose, just in time to catch his brother full across the chest with a resounding smack. Both scream, dive after more water, take off. Standing silently on the walk nearby, a slender, pretty red-haired girl watches. When the boys are at the far end of the small lawn, she walks briskly over to the pool, picks up the one spare bucket, fills it, and waits. They skirt her carefully on their way back to getting more bucketfuls to dump on each other, but with a slightly awkward, petite fling, she spills some of her bucket onto one of the boys’ legs. He stops in place and stares. Then he’s off in an instant, after his brother, for one more splash. Five minutes later, when his brother’s gone upstairs, he’s splashing, carefully, with her.
She’s wearing a thong, its waist a ruffled peach spandex band, only a cord behind, and her completely exposed rear is as bronze as the rest of her body. She’s had the suit all season or longer, maybe she’s spent some hours at a tanning parlor; she’s used to being looked at. A tattoo of what looks to be a dolphin or some other long thin beast crawls partway out of the left cup of her top. A shark tattoo swims down the back of the same shoulder. Her fingernails are long and curved, painted red, her toenails the same color. She’s solid and strong, broad shoulders. Impossible not to notice the gleaming color, the smooth skin, ripples of muscle and flesh.
She’s standing a little higher than he is, and she bends down to watch her face in his sunglasses as she rubs the oil on her skin. The pose seems perfect–the woman’s complete absorption in her reflection, which the man provides. He says something to her, he’s polite, then walks north a few yards by himself, leaving her to finish oiling herself. She looks intently at the crowd and the watching eyes as he goes over to a blanket where two other couples are sitting. He crouches down to talk, and she picks up black pants and a towel and again looks at the crowd toward the water, as if trying to find someone. Then she walks over to a water fountain to take a drink. Five people behind her stare as she bends.
A book is closed on the chair seat in front of the woman, and she’s talking on a portable phone. They live, then, in one of the high rises looking down on the beach. Married, 30-ish, no children, good jobs downtown, taking a day off together. Tonight they’ll have dinner at one of the restaurants they like in the neighborhood, maybe come home and watch a video. It’s a long weekend. Tomorrow night they’ll go out again. But right now, her face shows, she’s doing business, and when she speaks her tone makes it clear.
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He goes back to twisting his mustache. She picks up the thick book and opens it. Another minute and he asks, does she want to go in once more before they call it a day?
Right on the edge of the sand, next to the concrete, three men in their 30s sit on towels drinking beer. They’ve been at it a while. They’re talking–yelling almost–at two women on a towel three feet away on the concrete. The men are big, a good deal bigger than the two men sitting with the women, and the drinkers are getting more explicit in their sexual suggestions and insults, laughing at their own remarks.
Let him up, let him up, two voices behind begin chanting, not loudly, but enough to hear. Two more pick up the chant, a few laughs are audible, then a few more chant two or three repetitions between audible laughs before they all let it drop.
