The three of us were sitting in a small alcove in the Meadows bar, working on a very big problem. It was Thursday afternoon and we were on our second single malt. We usually played golf on Thursday afternoon, but today we were arguing about how to handle our mutual problem: Pedro. Pedro was our Mexican pool guy. And he was fucking our wives.
It is a complicated story. Perhaps I should start at the beginning. My name is Keith Wills and I am a thirty five year old investment banker in San Francisco. I live in Marin together with my wife Gwen. I earn a very good living, even in these hard financial times, because it is the people I advise that lose money, not me – I'm paid on commission.
About three months ago, my wife's friend, Lil, told her about this really great pool guy who cleaned her pool every Tuesday. Lil's husband, Marv Case, was sitting in the bar next to me drinking Macallan-12, and every time I blamed him for my problem he reminded me about all the money he had lost following my investment advice. He could afford it – he owned several large high-end apartment complexes and he was no older than I was.
The third guy at our troubled table was Al Mays and he blamed both Marv and me, because his wife Peg had talked to my wife about Pedro, and had hired him immediately to clean their pool every Monday afternoon. Al was a forty year old tenured Professor at UC Berkley and he had hit it rich with a series of books about the sixties revolution. He could now afford the Marin County lifestyle and so he moved to Mill Valley.
We first got suspicious when our pools started turning green. When I told Gwen to jump on the pool guy, she said she would. Unbeknownst to me she was already jumping on the pool guy, every Wednesday afternoon when he was supposed to be cleaning the pool. The next Thursday at golf, Al and Marv both complained about green pools. It seemed they had the same problem I did.
It was only after we began to talk about green pools that we found out about Pedro, who did all three of our pools. One thing led to another and finally Al used his computer skills and his copious free time (as a tenured professor he only lectured three times a week) to check up on how his pool guy was cleaning his pool. The short answer turned out to be that Pedro wasn't cleaning Al's pool – he was fucking Al's wife.
Al set up his camera at Marv's place on Tuesday and my place on Wednesday and the result was the same. Our pools were growing algae because Pedro was fucking our wives, instead of cleaning our pools. So now we were sitting around drinking single malt and talking about it. What the hell could we do? We sounded more like a script from a Marx Brothers movie than three aggrieved husbands trying to figure out how to reign in their horny wives.
Well at least we had the evidence, which Al had edited and transferred onto DVD disks - one for each of us. Now, Al said, we could show these videos to our wives and demand an explanation.
"That's dumb!" Marv said, looking at Al. "What the hell kind of explanation do you expect? She's fucking him! There is no explanation! You either kick her ass to the curb or put up with it like a wimp. There is no explanation!"
"I can't kick her ass to the curb," Al said. "She's the CEO on my writers copyright corporation. She'll end up in control of all my money."
"How the hell did you let that happen?" Marv asked. "What dumb asshole told you to do that?"
Al pointed to me. "The same dumb asshole who's been investing your money and losing it. Keith told me that there were tax advantages."
Marv looked at me. "I don't know about investment banking but turning your money over to your wife is the dumbest thing I ever heard of."
"Well, " I began.
Marv interrupted me, "Never mind! Just never mind! Jesus Al! She's got you by the balls!"
"But she says she loves me," Al said.
"Yeah," said Marv. "She loves you. That's why she fucking Pedro."
"Look," I said, "all we can do now is show our evidence to our wives so they can't deny anything. Let's find out what the hell they're thinking. And what they plan to do now that we know about Pedro."
"What about my pool?" Al asked. "It's getting greener every day."
Marv and I just looked at him. What the hell could we say? It was his first pool. Peg was his second wife.
We decided to confront our wives at the same time. The next night after dinner, I put the DVD in our player and invited Gwen into the den. We sat on the couch.
"Honey, I have something to show you."
Al may not have known much about the ways of women but he sure understood electronics and computers and remote control and video editing. How he did it I'll never know, but my video opened with a close-up of Gwen riding Pedro like a cowgirl, pounding away with her tits bouncing like jello. The sound was excellent – I'd never heard her grunt quite like that before.
Gwen watched the video for less than a minute, then, she jumped up from the couch.
"You don't trust me!" She shouted. "You don't trust me! How could you possibly take secret pictures of me? You don't love me!"
She was standing there, very angry and screaming. Looking down at me as I sat helplessly on the couch, her eyes blazed with fury. She made me feel like I had done something terribly wrong. Then she stormed out of the den, went up to our bedroom, and locked the door.
I wasn't sure, exactly, what I had expected her to do, but clearly this was not it. I made two quick calls to Marv and Al and then I headed for the club to meet them. It was late. There were only a few people in the bar. We sat at our usual alcove, drinking our usual single malt.
"She was pissed," I said. "She said I didn't trust her and then she locked herself in our bedroom."
"Yeah," said Al. "Peg was the same. She screamed that I didn't love her and didn't trust her. I mean, if she's fucking the pool guy why the hell should I trust her in the first place? It doesn't make any sense!"
"Wimps! I'm playing golf with a couple of wimps," Marv said. "Lil tried that and I shoved her slutty ass back in her chair and called her a whore."
"What did she say then?" I asked.
"Well ... she said ... I mean," Marv stammered. "She didn't really say much of anything. What could she say?"
I looked at Marv's eyes. They were shifting back and forth.
"She must have said something. Did she tell you why she was fucking Pedro?"
"Well ... aah ... kinda," Marv said.
He was hiding something. "Okay Marv," I said, "What exactly did Lil say?"
"She said ... she said," Marv stammered, "Lil said something about me not seeing the most important part of the video."
"Most important part?" I asked. "What did she mean? What exactly did she say?"
Marv hung his head.
"She asked me a question," he mumbled.