The Pool Cleaner

It hit 100 by 8 in the morning, and by 10 we had the streets to ourselves, as if they had been scoured clean by the glare of the sun. It must have been 105, 106 by then, not unusually hot for August in Phoenix, but still. Ordinarily we would have been headed home by then or over to Nick's Diner, but we had a late start. It was Marilee's day off from business school, and I had made breakfast—her favorite, French toast with cream cheese. She hadn't wanted any, said she wasn't hungry, but when I gave her what she calls my sad-eyed puppy look, she ate one forkful, then pushed the plate away and headed for the bathroom.

We bounced along on the bench of the old pickup that came with the pool cleaning business we bought three or four years ago instead of getting married. It was the reverse of the usual argument. I was pushing 30 and ready. Marilee said she was too young—23 at the time, though I knew plenty of people who got married younger. She wasn't sure about kids, either. Didn't want them right away—or maybe ever, she once said after a night of margaritas, but I figured that was just the tequila talking. Since then, we hadn't made much progress toward marriage or children, though for a while I proposed on every big occasion. Her birthday. Christmas Eve. Christmas. New Year's Eve. New Year's Day. Valentine's Day. Sweetest Day. My birthday. Her answer was always the same: "Not yet." After a couple of years, I stopped asking.

I had the blower up high, but something must have busted loose, because it was grinding like a fork in a disposal, and all it did was blow hot air on our sweaty faces. My Cool Pool T-shirt stuck to my back, and the vinyl seat suctioned my bare legs as I worked the pedals. I turned the fan down, then up, then down again, trying to get it quiet.

"What are you doing?" Marilee said, grabbing my hand. "Stop." She squeezed until I pulled away, the blower now emitting the sound of a stick run along a pool fence. Her face was pale, damp, and a little puffy, her eyes embedded in dark half moons. She wouldn't wear the T-shirts anymore. Said they made her look fat. But she used to wear them gladly, when we first went on the jobs together, before b-school. Sometimes that was all she had worn around the apartment, any old thing, then shucked it off in one clean motion before she slid between the cool sheets.

"We could get it fixed," I said, biting off the last word.

"This old thing? Look at it."

She had a point. Flattened paper cups, bits of PVC pipe, torn gaskets, and an array of screwdrivers and pliers were scattered on the floor. The seat was ripped in half a dozen places, and piled in the space between us were old work orders and street maps that would never fold right again. The steering wheel pinched my fingers if I wasn't careful. I had the blisters to prove it.

"It's a work truck," I said. Like the one my father borrowed from my landscaper uncle when I was a kid and we wanted to haul something that wouldn't fit in the station wagon—mulch for the flowerbeds, sand for the huge sandbox he had built in the backyard, topsoil to patch the bare spots we made playing kickball. I pictured my own son or daughter (or both—why not?) riding shotgun the way I had with my dad, standing on the front seat (though that wouldn't be allowed these days), smiling more wildly than for any amusement park ride.

"That would imply we had work," she said.

"Whatever do you mean, dear lady?" I faked an English accent. "We've got a new customer this very day."

"My professor," she said, unsmiling, then went quiet, as if she had said too...