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It was hot as balls in Philadelphia.
The city was being brought to boil, oozy grey clouds suffocating the sky like smears of milk in tea. The air was humid, heady, suffocating. Breathing in felt like choking back warm, wet sand.
“It’s hot as fuck,’ Dee groaned. She rolled an empty bottle of Coors back and forth across her face like she was flattening dough.
“We-“ Mac grimaced, and mimed as if to smack her upside the head with his own empty bottle- “we fucking know, Dee. We can feel it.”
“Kill yourself, Mac.”
“Kill your own self! Dennis, Dennis, can you do something about your sister? Can you do something about her? She’s being annoying, Dennis.”
Dennis Reynolds curled his sweaty left hand into a sweaty fist and wiped droplets of sweat off his sweaty brow.
“You’re both irritating the shit out of me. I’m two seconds”- he made an aggressive V-sign- “two seconds away from sparing either of you the trouble of suicide and taking you both out myself.”
Charlie, sitting with Frank at the other end of the bar, sighed long and loud.
“Can all of you shut up, maybe? Maybe? Please? All of you?”
Dennis did not grace this with an answer. He flicked a tea-towel, sopping wet with his own perspiration, over a beer tap, and gestured to Mac.
“Mac, I’m going back to the apartment.”
“The apartment doesn’t have aircon either, dude. It’s cooler at the bar,”- Mac made a flattening motion in the air with his hand- “‘cause it’s lower down.”
“I’m starting to think your science might be off, Mac, and anyway, I’m sick of present company. Frank’s sweat smells weird.”
Frank did indeed smell markedly different in the summer. Sweat, typically, was acrid and disgusting. Frank smelt sweet when he perspired- in the worst possible way, like he was rotting from the inside-out.
Mac rolled his shoulders and slumped off his stool. The heat was physically melting them all like candles, and the amorphous shape of him took a few moments to compose itself and stretch upwards from the floorboards, glistening wet under the lamp bulbs.
“I’m coming with you, Dennis. Sure.”
“Right. Settled. Charlie?”
Maybe Dee’s grasp tightened around the Coors bottle and maybe her knuckles twitched- perhaps because she was never invited to hang ‘round at her brother’s apartment- but nobody noticed, so maybe not.
“Eh,” Charlie said, hand-waving, “nah.”
“Suit yourself.” Dennis plucked three full bottles by the neck and oozed out the door, Mac in tow, obedient. Frank began to cough.
“Fucking heat’s jamming me up inside,” he spluttered. “Anyway, Charlie, you got the time?”
“Half-five,” Dee answered, because she knew Charlie couldn’t read the analogue clock that ticked away over the dartboard (and Frank should know that too, honestly, surely).
“Half five,” Frank grunted. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fashionably late. Awright- sorry, I can’t stay. Gotta meet a man under the bridge.”
Frank melted off his stool and tottered to the door. The air turned rotted behind him, stink-clouds wafting almost visibly as he walked.
“What’s that about?” Charlie asked, and to this the fat old sod only laughed.
“Aw, Charlie, you don’t wanna know ‘bout this one.”
Charlie might have followed him- undercover or otherwise- on any other day, but the world was too hot for extracting secrets. Humidity was the perfect weather for secrets; the low-hanging sticky clouds blanketed the footfalls of the deceitful and baked the minds of the curious. Charlie raised a dirty pint glass in goodbye, and then there were two.
“So,” said Dee. She expected Charlie to pick up the rest of the conversation and she had a fair idea how he’d do it. So, yeah. I’m gonna go to Mac and Dennis’ after all, I think. Um, I’m gonna go tail Frank, I reckon. Uh, Dee, you have fun- I’m gonna go hit up the cafe. The waitress is still on shift.
“So,” said Charlie.
“It’s fucking hot,” said Dee.
“Fucking sweltering,” said Charlie.
“Oooh, big word.”
“Yeah, I was watching this nature documentary yesterday. The hyenas lived in the desert and it was-“
“Sweltering?”
“Yeah, sweltering. They said it all the time. It means, like, really hot. Like in Africa.”
“I know what it means.”
“Cool, cool.”
Dee could just go back to her own apartment. The AC unit was stuffed, and had been since December, but it would be something to do. She’d come to work today hoping for a scheme or a plan or a plot or at least a trip to the movies, maybe, but it had been too unforgivingly warm to do anything but complain.
“Dee?”
“Hmm?”
“You wanna go somewhere?”
“Like, get lunch? Or, I mean, dinner?”
Half past five was a slippery hour. Too early for dinner, too late for lunch, and too weird for a coffee and a danish. Prime time to get plastered, obviously, but Dee’d already been at it pretty hard- because it was a day of the week that ended in Y- and it was hot enough that she was actually kind of starting to feel nauseous about it.
“No. There’s somewhere else.”
Charlie was throwing back another beer, which he must have cracked open while Dee was counting wood grains and whorls in the table and contemplating Half-Past-Five-Pm, and he seemed actually… nervous, in some weird way. Dee knew his tells. She knew all their nervous tells.
“Yeah? Where’s this?”
“This…. look. I’ll just show you.”
The street buzzed and hummed and oozed with hot, wet silence. Dee felt as if she were stalking through cookie dough, battling through the thick humidity that wrapped about her mind and person like so many Philadelphian pythons. The usual street racket was muted; it was too unpleasant for even vagrants and directionless youths out-of-doors today. Charlie took the lead at a surprisingly brisk pace, hands in his pockets. He still wore a hoodie.
“You gonna tell me where you’re taking me yet?”
Charlie dropped down into the gutter, walked there for a few moments, and rejoined the pavement.
“It’s this really nice house. The owners are on holiday.”
“You’re taking me breaking and entering?”
“I mean, like, I guess. But they have a pool. I’ve been going there the past couple of days.”
A pool. Dee liked the sound of that very much. If the pool’s owners were on holiday, it wasn’t so much breaking-and-entering as it was taking care of the place, right? Making sure thirsty stray dogs hadn’t fallen to the bottom and died on the tiles.
“Do you usually creep around people’s back gardens in your spare time, Charlie?”
She’d sort of meant it as a joke, a remark to fill dead air, but he nodded.
“I like to. I like to see what the common people live like.”
The common people, Dee thought. Funny turn of phrase- aren’t we the common people? And those assholes with in-ground pools and back gardens- aren’t they uncommon?
A picket fence was wrapped around a tennis-ball-green lawn. There was a gazebo, a ping-pong table, and, right in the middle of the garden, pretty as a jewel, a swimming pool. In the steadily-setting 6pm sundown murk it seemed to whisper to Dee- come in! Float on my surface and swallow my chlorine like beer- and as she vaulted the fence the heat seemed to kick up a notch and she felt new beads of sweat falling down the sides of her face.
“Shit,” she said, “Charlie, this is a real nice place.”
“Right?” Charlie looked pleased, like she’d complimented the landscaping in his own abode.
“God. Oh, wow. And the owners aren’t home? You’re sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. Totally. I’ve been keeping tabs on the place.”
Charlie had no problem swinging his little legs over the picket slats and seemed totally at ease in the garden that wasn’t his- Dee wondered how often he came here, how often he took the rest of them. How long, she wondered, had she been left out of the loop in regards to this tight little hang-out spot?
Don’t let it matter, Dee, she thought. You’re here now. You got in eventually.
“I like to swim naked,” Charlie said. She heard him as if through a patchy telephone line. She wasn’t paying attention- she was thinking about Mac and Dennis and Charlie and Frank in the pool- but she eased herself back to reality, to the present, and to Charlie. She owed him that.
“Do you, uh,” Charlie said, kicking the temperature-control box, “do you like to swim naked too, Dee?”
-and, you know, so what about any of it. Dee had let this become her mantra when Charlie looked at her sideways in the bar, ogled her tits a little, when she’d started wearing lower-cut tops so he could- whatever- and when she’d started stalking the waitress with Charlie, driving him around in her car, because they talked about thundergun and shit without Mac nudging in and it was nice, and when he’d called her in the middle of the night because he’d found a new cat he thought she might like as replacement to the cat whose carcass was rotting away in her walls, and he’d given it a pretty bell and everything- and so what about that evening when Dennis had chewed the both of them out, calling them lazy, stupid- stupider than fucking Frank, the pair of you- and when they’d knelt to sweep broken glass shards from underneath the bar, so what that their hands had touched, lingered, so what that grief and rage and frustration had been transferred, electric-like, through their fingernails- so what?-
But humidity hid secrets, and the heat melted inquiring minds. So what?
“I like to swim naked,” Dee said, “I do, yeah.”
When she thought of Charlie- when she conjured his image from the mires of her mind in the brief moments when he wasn’t right in front of her, or off to the side a little, sculling beer or strangling a rat- she thought of him in that big green jacket with the iron-on patches half tearing off, and she imaged him smiling with a huge dopey grin. That was Charlie Kelly, the platonic ideal of the man named Charlie Kelly, textbook-picture, default.
She may have a new image, now. A new Charlie Kelly she believed she’d come to recognise as base, as true. The naked man that stood across from her was schoolboy shy and avoided her gaze, kicking a little at the dirt with toes that bore visible scabs and scars, even from here- he wasn’t by any means a clean specimen, but two things stood out- the scars that criss-crossed almost every visible inch of him, and a surprisingly sizeable penis. Dee did not know if she found him attractive this way or not, if she’d like to reach out and touch him or not- it was worth ruminating on- but she felt privy to something quite monumental, as if Charlie had become an art piece they’d have her dissect in 12th-grade literature class. He was…metaphorical.
When she undressed, she tried not to be weird about it. They were adults and friends and it shouldn’t be awkward. It should be normal, and it should feel normal, and as she undid the clasps on her bra she gritted her teeth at how abnormal she felt about the whole thing.
Here I am, then, she thought. Small pointy tits, and big fucking feet, and ten million scars- well, that’s just like you, really- hey, are we even that different? Come on.
“You look nice,” said Charlie. Dee didn’t know if he meant that to come across as polite, as pervy, as genuine, sarcastic, as what. Unable to stand much more, she dived.
Blue enveloped her and rushed into her nostrils. The crystalline water held pressure to her squeezed-shut eyelids and swept up and through her hair and she struck out for the bottom, kicking like a frog until she could blindly graze tile with the outstretched fingers of her left hand, running the tip of a nail down a ceramic indent before striking out for the surface and the sun again, born anew with much dog-paddling struggle. She heard, but did not see, Charlie cannonball into the pool next to her. She trod water as the waves of his arrival buffeted the surface.
“Hey, feel that?” Charlie cried, gleeful, and Dee felt it alright. The cool. The cold, even. The beautiful, sweet ice that ran through her veins and licked the sweat off her forehead. Modesty forgotten she lay belly-up and floated, every part of her uncaringly on display to every passenger plane up there in those fat grey clouds. The coolness was everything. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Charlie join her, or attempt to- he wasn’t so good at floating and seemed to be struggling, bending himself in half underwater and bobbing back up again like an unfolding bulb of garlic. She wanted to give him her hand for a minute, as if that would help, but thought better when she imagined Charlie dragging her underwater and accidentally drowning her, or both of them, and left him to struggle. Spluttering, he made for the side of the pool and grabbed a foam noodle that hung off the edge, and regaining his composure, paddled to join her. To her surprise, he hesitantly took her shoulder in hand and spun her, just a little, and she allowed it- it made him laugh, and, after a few moments, it made her laugh. She spun in a circle, looking up at the sky, and nothing in the sky changed, not one bit- it was darkening by the minute but the clouds were immovable and heavy and loathsome and sweat-filled. But the summer clouds, Dee thought, could wheel around however they wanted up there. Down here, well- she ducked her head underwater, quick as a bobbing duck, and let the heat wash off of her. It was a joy to be so cool.
“How often do you come down here?” she asked, spitting water like a little fountain.
“Plenty!” Charlie hung his head off the side of his pool noodle and grinned. “All the time!”
He slurped a little of the water. Dee considered remonstration and then thought it futile- she didn’t blame him, anyway, because the pool water did look good enough to drink.
“I’m kinda glad,” he continued, “to bring someone else here, actually. I was like, scared of it, but I think we’re having fun.”
Dee blinked.
“You haven’t brought the rest of the gang here yet?”
“Nah. Because Dennis and Mac, like, you know when you find something really nice? Something that’s just for you?”
“Go on.”
“I love them,” Charlie said, simply- which was obviously true- “but they don’t know what’s mine isn’t what’s theirs, and I don’t wanna share everything. I mean, they’d make this place part of a scheme. Which is okay- I think that could be fun, maybe later, when I’m bored with it- but I liked having it just to myself. Which is why I showed you, you know.”
“Because I’m no fun? Because I never think of schemes?”
“No,” Charlie said, “because you fuck things up for me the least.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“You fuck things up for me the least, too.”
The pool was rimmed around the edges with solar lights. There was no moon out tonight- it was hidden by the thick, smothering cloud cover- but the tiniest fulgent stars had fallen down right into the pool and arranged themselves into a line embedded in tile, valiantly shining on for two criminals-at-play, who had spent the better part of the last two hours reliving ruined childhoods and diving for Dee’s glinting earrings, thrown onto the tile to be fetched with outstretched hands and chlorine-rough eyes, occasionally taking a break from that game to whack each other with pool noodles or float idly, resting, recuperating. They were childish and idiotic and felt as free as ocean terns. With a kind of shyness that was more juvenile than any silly game they would, on occasion, touch one another- brief and exploratory- over the other’s arms, legs, scars, breasts and thighs- never lingering, or mentioning.
They were two people, the pool lights would have said, if given voice, who didn’t really know how to know each other. But I suppose they were having fun with it.
“We should get back,” Dee said. “Home, I mean.”
It was maybe midnight or maybe a little past midnight. It was still hot out. She perched on the edge of the pool, feet dangling in the water, at home with being naked in a stranger’s garden. Charlie was floating on his back peaceably like a sea otter. She’d taught him how.
“Fine.”
“We could come back tomorrow, though? Maybe?”
Charlie grinned.
“I’d like that a lot. And it can be our secret, okay? Like, don’t tell Dennis and the rest of the guys.”
I am not, Dee thought, going to tell the guys jack shit.
“I am not-“ she was about to verbalise this thought when she heard… she heard Rick Astley.
Loud. Loud, and from behind her.
“Shit!” She heard a voice, familiar, unwelcome, and she could imagine the owner of that voice hanging out the window of a dark green 1993 Range Rover, trashy CD’S blaring, sneering. “Oh, shit, Sweet Dee, is that you?”
If only it wasn’t, she wanted to say. And if only these picket fences were higher, and if only this garden didn’t back onto a weird little dirt-road alleyway- empty, entirely, for the past three hours- and if only my brother didn’t like going for night-time drives down weird little deserted alleyways looking for vulnerable girls. You found one! Not one you’d have liked to find, but here you go!
“What the fuck are you- are you naked? Are you skinny-dipping in some stranger’s pool, Dee?”
Dee did not answer. He hadn’t seen Charlie yet, obviously, but he would.
“You got a pool? Dee, you got a pool?”
Oh, amazing- Mac was there too, in the passenger seat, crawling around with Dennis. His voice was like the humidity itself- soft and too round and painful when it settled onto her skin. She preferred Charlie’s voice. It was cool and refreshing, like an ice-pop.
“Dee, I don’t wanna see you naked, so like, chuck your clothes back on, but we’re coming in the pool. We are coming- in! Aw, this is great. So great. It’s so fucking hot out here, I-“
Mac was blithering, just on and on and on, and Dee felt the night slipping away from her by the second, the slam of the Range Rover doors like gunshots, like she was a busted dealer, a crim on the run, caught.
Charlie bobbed around in an invisible current. He looked at her, hearing everything, making no move. They hadn’t seen Charlie yet, but he didn’t have time to run.
They were dead in the water.
Ahead of her brother and Mac by seconds, only seconds- she’d make something of these last moments before the questioning, the torture, the excuses she was already devising- Charlie and I are being paid to clean pools at night (bad) he dared me into this, he forced me (bad?) This mafia knucklehead came along and stole all our clothes and threw us in the pool (but their clothes were right there. Bad) - Dee slipped underwater, and Charlie slipped underwater. Two otters, sea-fish, rare crustaceans.
They held hands. They held hands hard- with nothing shy about any of it they pressed finger to finger and palm to palm.
They surfaced at either end of the pool, accusations held steady on the ends of their tongues.
Back to it, then.