Raymond to Roast

Cowabunga

I had a grudge.

Uh-huh. Sure did.

My grudge went like this: Johnny hadn’t invited me to the company party. The company party hadn’t been exactly a ‘company party,’ but it took all but four laps to know that everyone at the company had been invited—Even Anders, our gaunt employee who I’d hired specifically to fill the margin of creepy white man.

I had waited. I had cruised past enough Annies and Anthonys and Carlees and Caras for somebody to extend the offer, but they all went mum. I heard them, though, heard phrases like, “I can’t wait,” “I’m ready to just relax,” “I haven’t swam in so long,” “I won’t go in, but I’ll lie on the side and just roast.”

I wouldn’t be so offended, I’d decided, if Johnny hadn’t been telling me I should come over for a swim. Me rounding the corners with a flicked finger, saying, “What’s the temp?” Him: “We’ll get you to that pool soon.” Not to mention, he’d done it when I was injured: when my ankle was bothering me, and I had to lean on aisles to get around the store. It could do me some real good, I knew, to lie on the side and ‘just roast.’

I let it go, pulling the freezer closed. I let it go, talking to fucking Chelsea, who’d taken a pack of gummies as her one-day splurge. I let it go all the way out of the parking lot until I saw Johnny at the end, looking ruefully into his trunk. I was going to walk on by until I thought: ‘Let’s give him a chance. What the hell?’

He’d been asked to take inventory to the Santa Monica location. He drove a beat-up Kia, and he’d gotten all but four Agua Fresh cans in. I said, “Let’s do some rearranging.”

Within four minutes, we’d got it down pat. Brushing our knees off as I stood, I pretended it was all casual. “What are you doing this weekend?” But the words hung in the air: vapor cloud and insinuation.

“Oh, just hanging out at home. Busy week.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“My little girl’s keeping me busy,” he said, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“No need,” he said. “I’m happy. She’s just a complainer.”

“Ah.”

“Any other occasion, I’d have you over to the pool.”

Folks, I almost couldn’t believe it.

“You would?” I said.

“I would.”

His answer was immediate, but let me tell you, there was a lifetime of conversations between our eyes. He looked rigid, the coldest I’ve ever seen. I’d always been jealous, his hair stuck in a perpetual wave—but now I saw it for what it was. All those pool swimmers were the same, I knew. Anybody who went home to a body of water. Anyone who said, I’m going to defy the one thing made to defy us, (the ocean), I’m going to go against Mother Nature’s man killer, the thing made for the seals and the whales and the dolphins and take control of it. Ego, plain and simple.

“Do me a favor, Johnny,” I said.

His wave sure didn’t move, then.

“Have a good weekend.”

Johnny allowed himself a smile. Relief.

If only he knew.

* * *

Raymond, my mother used to say. A classic one of hers:

Why do you always have to make a scene?

* * *

I arrived at the pool party at 4 PM. It’d started at 3, but I didn’t want to be one of the first guests. I wanted to make an entrance. The street was a flatland of hedges and neighborhood watch signs. Seeing the size and scale of the houses, I thought, ‘Johnny, why are you working at a Trader Joes?’

By the time I’d seen Brian and Chelsea enter, I figured it was high time to move in. Blending in wasn’t so hard. I angled my Buick on a safe-to-drive street and came out of my car with a towel tied around my hips. The drive was a flat cobble of tan bricks: the most expensive type. My leg was bothering me less, but still there was a bit of limp in my right. I tried to pick up my foot. As I wrapped around the house, toward the gate, my own name came from the bushes.

Anders stood primped by the garage. He was angled against the wall.

“Sup, Ray,” he said.

“Andy.” It was my pet name for him. I wouldn’t be stopped by our resident white man. I slid the sunglasses up my face and looked about the front yard. “Can I help you?”

Here to catch me? I wondered. Here as Johnny’s ghoulish bouncer, locked and loaded with word of my arrival?

Anders grabbed at his own knee, worked the calf forward and back. “Just stretching.”

Stretching? Even he looked confused.

I tried a mix of humor and chutzpah. “Don’t make me fire you,” I said.

“No,” he smiled. “No.” Anders had his own familial troubles, I knew. He had been far too vulnerable in his interview (a Zoom call with Maria and me) and had said that he’d never had much of a family growing up. Something about him, they thought, was fundamentally unlikable, which he’d always put to his essence and his core, but he’d realized he could have a family, and that by God, he’d do it at Trader Joe’s. To which I turned to Maria and said, ‘I feel like we have to hire him now.’

“You ready to get your swim on?” I said. I’d gotten a sudden blast of pity for him.

“Yeah,” Anders said. “One problem.”

“Out with it, Anders…”

I was coming around on the fact that he wasn’t in a power position at all. It looked like he had some problems of his own.

“I forgot a towel.”

“Andy…”

“That’s something I should’ve brought. Isn’t it?”

“It would’ve been nice.”

The shadows eclipsed his face, hiding his expression. I could only see his firm, unblinking eyes. “See, there’s something about me, Raymond, I always forget these things. I can spend all day getting a roast ready for a potluck, and by the time I get there…” a ghostly, half-smile. “I’ve forgotten the watermelon.”

He wondered, he said, if there was something wrong with him. Separated him from the herd. He’d been dropped on the head as a baby, he explained. His mother said blood had come out of his ear.

“Y’know,” I said, taking a winking glance at the two-terraced house. “I’d bet Johnny has towels inside.”

Anders shut his eyes. “That’s the problem, Ray. I didn’t even think of that.”

The pool churned behind me. The sound of Mai-Tais and slid off Crocs. Anders looked up.

“Shall we?”

* * *

Well, let me tell you, I made a stir.

I can only approximate the ripple my arrival made. The group was crowded on a raised platform amid palm trees. Angela was setting down a case of Modelos when she noticed me. Then, the group effect. Their eyes landed on Anders first—‘He looks like that in a swimsuit?’—and crept to me. I looked good, see? I looked fresh and fun, with those trunks around my legs and my feet plunged straight into sandals.

At the back of the crowd, Johnny stiffened. His head, small and silhouetted, against the light. I thought, ‘Kid, you think you have so much power.’ I thunked a case of Kiwi Sliders on the table. “Six percent alcohol,” I said. “Be careful.”

The group shifted around me then, careful snips of conversation. “Please,” I said. “Please.” I flapped my hand.

Anders copied the casual motion.

Then, squaring up with Johnny, I said: “It is a nice pool.”

“Bit cold,” Jennifer said, but I wasn’t focused on her.

Johnny had his parking-lot face on, that small, tight smile. I cracked a Modelo on the table and leaned it back. “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Let’s drink.” Kicking off my sandals, I looked out at the pool. The water: blue, flat, empty.

I wondered how cold it could be in the middle of July. I kicked off my sandals and pointed at Anders. “My boy’s gonna need a towel.”

The collective heads shifted to him. “Um,” he said.

“Cowabunga!” I cried.

Well, I can assure you, Johnny was watching as I did a flying leap across the concrete. I can’t think of a time I’ve run faster—not middle school, not high school—the type of run with your breath in your throat, the cold in the air. As the concrete approached, my first thought went, ‘I haven’t taken my tank top off,’ but what was a wet shirt? and my second went, ‘There goes my leg.’ The pop was loud enough to hear, over my running, over my breath, like a beam snapped through. I couldn’t stop myself, could only drop and roll and tumble into the pool. I did not understand the severity until I landed in the water. I didn’t even know what an ACL was.

Well, I can tell you, it did not feel good.

The pain was enough to almost make me forget I was holding a beer—I watched it float up to the surface—enough to make me scream water into my mouth. And for a second, I thought, I got a pool in me. The water was nice, nice enough, anything was better than the pain, but gritting against it, I thought, ‘I’m going to die looking at palm trees,’ until their heads appeared over the water.

Before long, Johnny dived in.

* * *

“Were you a lifeguard?”

“I was,” Johnny said. There was no joking in his voice. I lay flat out on the concrete, my wet shirt suckered in on my body. Anders sat on the seat beside me, squeezing my hand at my bursts of intermittent pain. The others lounged back in the veranda, where the flags whipped high. Angela and Jenna lingered, asking if I could have anything.

“Another beer,” I said. At their laughter, “Seriously.”

We weren’t waiting for an ambulance, I learned. We were waiting for me to get my strength and when the time was right, I would get up, and Johnny would get me to a hospital. I had nearly forgotten he’d given me CPR.

“You’re allowed to wait as long as you’d like,” Johnny said.

I did. I waited till the high sun left, till Casey did, and Anthony, and Mira, and Anders too, (he hadn’t needed a towel after all). I waited for the pain to ease up. I waited till the afternoon sun turned orange, till my shirt turned dry, till my beer ran down to the next. All the while, Johnny stayed by my side.

“I felt your mouth,” I said. “It felt good. It felt right.”

Johnny laughed. Then, me too.

A mound of insects bristled under my shoulder. They burrowed home.

“Johnny,” I said. “You got a serious ant problem.”

We waited for the music to stop, for Alexa to ask if we’d like to hear more—to see Angela steal her cake back—to assure Amy that ‘No, we did not need to call anybody.’ We waited till it was just the two of us. The hot ground grew cold soon enough, and I listened to the whisper of the water over the brick. This is what it meant, I thought, to just roast. Looking at him now, there was no anger now, but a strange, unplaced emotion. I wasn’t sure what it was, caring almost, his house framed over his head. Maybe I was just some box he needed to check. But Johnny always seemed to enjoy his tasks.

He wiped the space on the side of my head. I’m told I had a line of blood, just outside of my ear.

“Johnny,” I said. “You should’ve never invited me to this party.”

Small smiles.

But I’ll tell you, there was a lifetime of conversations in our eyes.

* * *

Art credit: David Hockney