She noticed him now that he was a young man, and after a year of college and almost nineteen, a sleek and muscular one at that. She began following more than just his performance in swim meets at the club. Observed giggling girls and more composed young women, some married as she was and some with children, both older and younger, follow him with their eyes secreted behind glossy magazines and then slide into the pool to cool off after their thoughts turned as humid as the summer day. Watched him with his friends play volleyball and basketball on humid afternoons, lithe and muscled male bodies slick with perspiration engaged in ritual combat, before they too dove into the cool relief of the pool.
Last year she had caught a few of them celebrating graduation late one night by downing a case of beer next to the brook between their houses, and rather than tell their parents she merely confiscated the contraband, this being a first offense. He politely thanked her and promised never to get caught doing that again; never to get caught, mind you. She even watched him through the screen of her sun-porch as he and his prom date stole a kiss, graduating seniors both, he in perhaps his first tuxedo and she a lovely girl in a low cut, powder blue gown, both of whom exploded anxiously and still like teens from the rear of their white limousine for obligatory pictures.
Growing up he had mowed their lawn yearly and cleared their rain spouts when they clogged. Once in his senior year he even saved her from an errant mouse when her husband was in Taiwan on one of many business trips, all friendly gestures from a neighbor who employed gardeners and a day-maid and really didn't need the lad's assistance, but who understood how to maintain the social bonds of neighborhood, theirs being one of opulence built for the grandchildren of America's nineteenth-century robber barons. But the ancestors of men who had made Ford and Chevrolet household words now drove Mercedes and Jaguars in what had become an exclusive, gated community.
As planned he had gone away to college and on a full swimming scholarship. And on his return, that summer at the club where he worked as a lifeguard and the entire neighborhood gathered, just two weeks after he finished his freshman year, she finally noticed her neighbor had, well, developed. Developed nicely. Sitting by the pool, she overheard fragments of a surprisingly frank conversation between three bikini-clad young women also home from college, sitting behind her on three colorful beach towels, their voices they mistakenly assumed lost in the din of the mid-afternoon crowd. They dressed to see and be seen in bright colors, in daring tops that afforded little coverage for their tanned breasts, and skimpy bottoms that barely contained their tight and perfectly curved derrieres in diminutive and insecure triangles, and not to dive and swim, for their bikinis were as insubstantial as they were revealing.
"I'm telling you, watch when he gets out of the pool. Theresa said," and here the redhead with excessive eyeliner paused, either for effect or to make sure she wasn't being overheard, "he's like, lucky he can walk when he's got a boner. He wouldn't even, fit, so she used her hands 'cause they were in a hurry."
"He didn't fit?"
"Fit where" one giggled as she tapped her nails on her soda can, pushing the conversation in an even edgier direction.
"Duh. Anyway, that's what she said."
The girls giggled at the silly description of his inability to walk, and one pretended to be so amused that she spit out her soda at this tidbit of information.
"Well, Theresa would know" a leggy blond offered after a brief silence. "She could line up the guys in our class and name half of them just from the waist down. Knowing her she, like, got more than sticky hands. And I can't believe he didn't fit her somewhere; I mean, she practiced on everyone."
Again they laughed at poor Theresa's expense, a young woman whom they believed had her fill of the senior class in more ways than one.
"Where is she now, by the way" the third blond asked.
"Northwestern, pre-med." A longer pause, "she must have sucked out some brain cells from some of them."
"Oh Camille, that's so gross."
"Yea, like you never" the redhead said, and they all chuckled at their experience and maturity.
"Not that many" she responded and laughed. "And not one that ginormous, gaaak" she finished with a mock gagging sound.
"Anyway, if he dives in after his turn at the high-dive, watch when he gets out and he's still wet. I'd love to see him again in that blue nut-sack he wore on a dare at Erin's party. Mmmm, yummy. He, like, got embarrassed and changed into shorts in about five minutes. But you still can see it in those baggies he's wearing now."
"Cute butt too. Very easy on the eyes. He's standing up" one finished with a sense of urgency, yet tried to remain cool as they rose and headed in his direction.
Now she wanted to see too, her 6'2" eighteen year old neighbor with supple muscles layered over a lean swimmer's frame. She didn't remember ever thinking of him in that way until he was about to leave for college, but boys do become men, and men, she mused, have their uses. She strolled to the snack bar for a diet soda and slowly returned to her chair by way of a complete circuit of the lap pool where he was working that day, slowing to greet briefly other friends of leisure.
