Read Online One Fat Summer by Robert Lipsyte - Free Book Online

that, one grain of sand, just one grain in that cloth, you’ll scratch the finish. You want to pay for a new paint job?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œThen keep the cloth slightly damp, and wipe, one continuous motion.” He made one continuous motion with his arm. He looked like a one-winged hawk about to take off. Didn’t he have anything better to do than watch me?
    I did the dishes Thursday night, and Michelle left right after dinner. She said she was going to visit her girlfriend across the lake, and then go with her to a counselors’ meeting. Another counselors’ meeting? I’ll bet. Probably go to the island. This time I didn’t even bother turning on the radio. I think I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.
    On Friday morning there was a truck parked at the top of Dr. Kahn’s driveway, a rusty green pickup with sloppy red lettering on the driver’s door. JACK SMITH AND SONS LANDSCAPING. RUMSON LAKE -9-9448. The open bed of the truck wasfilled with rakes, hoes, bushel baskets, shovels, chicken wire and bales of fertilizer. Three men I had never seen before were crawling around the flower beds. One was a short, stumpy old man in overalls and a plaid shirt. He was puffing on a pipe and grunting as he smoothed earth around a cluster of yellow flowers. So that was the famous Jack Smith who decked his foreman. I guess you don’t have to look like a hero to be one. Of course, he was a lot younger when he saved the baby.
    The other two looked like his sons. They were both around twenty, tall and lean, and they weren’t wearing shirts, even though it wasn’t too warm yet. They had smooth, tanned skins pulled tight over muscles that flexed and popped as they weeded. And lots of veins.
    For a minute I felt scared and angry. Dr. Kahn called them to replace me, I thought, I’m going to be fired, but then I remembered he had said he had a weekly gardening service.
    As I passed them, they all looked up. Old Jack Smith just moved his teeth so that his pipe nodded at me. One of his sons said, “You still here, beach ball?”
    The other one said, “But you better be rollin’ along,” and they both laughed.
    â€œBoy, come over here,” called Dr. Kahn. He pointed toward the swimming pool. “There’s brushes and soap and a mop in the cabana closet. I want that deck shining.”
    I was glad to be off by myself. It was nice and quiet up at the pool. There was a little white house, just big enough to change clothes in, with a bathroom and a closet filled with cleaning equipment. There were three white iron tables with closed umbrellas in the middle, and a dozen wrought-iron chairs arranged on a white tile deck that surrounded the pool, which wasn’t too big. Pete Marino could cross it in two strokes. I could probably go back and forth underwater twice without coming up for air. Maybe three times. Except for a few leaves floating on the surface, the water was clear.
    I scrubbed the tiles with soapy water, careful not to let any of it slop into the pool, then mopped until the wet tiles glistened in the sun. It looked nice.
    â€œHuh,” said Dr. Kahn. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.
    â€œIs this okay?”
    He nodded and walked away. It must really look nice. I felt good about that. I washed out the brush and the mop and the pail, and put them back into the closet. When I came out of the cabana, there were black footprints all over my clean deck. I heard the Smith boys laughing.
    I did it all over again, and this time I didn’t put the stuff away, I just stood guard at the pool until Dr. Kahn came back.
    â€œAre you going to look at this all day?” he asked.
    â€œWhat should I do next?”
    â€œI don’t like a boy who doesn’t have initiative. There are a thousand things to do to make this place look beautiful for the weekend. Sweep the porch, wash the garbage pails, get the leaves out of the gutters. Just