The Pool Boy Read online

  “It’s called Rain at the End of Summer. I wrote it years ago, when I was around your age, but I never sent it to my publisher. The novel has always been one of my favorites, Tacoma. I specially had it bound in leather for you after I told Katz to leave, because I learned how important you became to me. I’ve signed and numbered it. There are only three of these in the world. Any book collector would love to have one. It’s a gift from me to you. A prize, like you.”

  Did he have a tear in his right eye? I was pretty sure he did. He moved forward and hugged me, kissed me hard on the lips. When he pulled off and away from me, he said, “Thank you, Robert. I’ll keep it forever.” Then he hugged me like a bear. The hug was peaceful and perfect. I felt needed against his enveloping chest, content and at ease there. In love.

  But, I knew better. Reality struck me. I had to let him go. He had to leave. It was a must; history in the making between us. He had to be set free. Our summer days together were over.

  I realized that he would hug and kiss other guys in his future, particularly at UCLA. I wondered who would come into his life and who he would fall in love with. He was no longer a boy, now a man. Tacoma would fall in love with a handful of men in his future. And I predicted that he would bounce from one relationship to the next, until he found a husband to keep for the rest of his life, the perfect man, a lifelong lover. He would always be rewarded sexually because of his good looks and charm, of course. Many men would bed him; perhaps too many because of his good looks. And his handsome smile would drop men to their knees, one after the next. He would be held and kissed by numerous companions in his years in college, and afterwards. So many various other men would kiss his lips, hold him, and press their naked bodies to his, because Kent Tacoma was perfect in all the right ways, stunning and beautiful. He would always be loved by other men. But there would be a certain one that he would keep close to him, just as I had kept him close to me all summer long. He would choose a husband someday. A partner for life. Someone his own age. A lover until the end of time.

  But he would never, never be someone else’s pool boy. Only mine. Always mine.

  I told him, “It’s not a Harley or anything like that. It’s just part of me. A special book. Something from my soul. Something you will always remember me by.”

  “I like it. Thank you.” And he pulled away and gently placed the gift back into its black box of tissue, fumbled with his satchel, opened it, and carefully hid the book inside with his clothes. He stood then, looked me square in the eyes, and we didn’t say anything for the longest time, just observed each other’s noses and eyes, lips and chins, and waited for the other one to speak.

  Silence.

  Stillness.

  Nothingness as we listened to the rain at the end of summer.

  Chapter 75: Goodbye

  The wind and rain became fierce, smacking against the lake house, heightening.

  I couldn’t help myself and took him into my arms, collapsing him against me, and cried, “I don’t want you to leave. Please don’t leave. Stay here with me.”

  “But I have to go. Classes begin soon.”

  I held him by his shoulders, shook him a little, and looked him square in the eyes. “Screw your classes. I can take care of you here. I have everything you need. If you have an ambition to go to school, you can attend a college here in West End or somewhere close. There are many local colleges in this area.”

  He became flustered, shaking.

  I became flustered.

  He started crying. Tears skied down his suntanned cheeks, over his dimples, and across his lips. “I have to go to Cali.”

  I sighed heavily and nodded, “Yes, Cali. There’s no changing your mind, is there?”

  “No. There isn’t. There can’t be. I must go to UCLA. I’m no longer your pool boy.”

  Jesus, that stung. That would always sting. So hard. In my heart. Everywhere. “Then I have to deal with this on a different level, don’t I?”

  His chest heaved; he also stung, I believed, or told myself. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “A level of heartbreak. A condition that implies that you’re truly leaving, and I will forever remember being broken during this rainstorm.”

  Tears continued to fall from his eyes, and mine. “There’s no implication. I am leaving. I’m packed. My cab is coming. I have a plane ticket. My plane is leaving in less than two hours.”

  I cried with him, kissed his shoulder, felt his chest tightly rise and fall. Both of us were frazzled, keeping each other standing. “Dear God, Tacoma, I have totally fallen for you. I don’t know if you will ever understand that or not, but I truly have. I love you in so many irrational ways it almost seems foolish. You have completely driven me mad, over the edge in love with you, and now…now I have to let you go.”

  He became silent, but still shook in my arms, upset, just like me. I could hear his heart beating, and I listened to the rain slap against the house and screen door, but I didn’t find any of those sounds romantic or comforting or tender. Tacoma’s skin tightened against my own as lightning flashed and danced over the estate. I imagined the pool and gardens and cobblestone walkways and gazebo all lit up with electrifying yellow-white-golden-orange illumination. And then loud thunder boomed, filling the afternoon, echoing all around us, becoming tempestuous, and providing a somber background to his departure, the breakup soundtrack to our summertime relationship, and the end to something fascinating, romantic, wonderful, spine-tingling, and effervescent, that I would remember for the rest of my life, even to today.

  And then we both heard that fatal sound of his cab beeping its horn in the front drive because we turned our heads in its direction. The sound stung me, deafening my world.

  Kent Tacoma pulled away from my grip. “It’s that time.”

  “Yes. It’s always that time. Nothing lasts forever in our lives. The old cliché is true.”

  “Know that I’ll miss you. Always.”

  “You won’t. I’ll be a memory to you by October, or sooner.”

  He reached out and held both of my hands with his own. His stare locked to my eyes. Tears the color of the pool’s water rolled down and over his face. His lips quivered. “I will miss you, Robert. Please believe me when I say this.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, young man.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to leave.”

  I kissed him hard on the lips, held him tight against me, and rubbed his chest with two fingers over his heart, pressing them hard against the T-shirt he wore. Then I pushed him away, letting him go, because I had to do that, because he had to be set free, because he was no longer mine. “Go,” I told him through my own tears. “Go, Tacoma. And don’t look back. Never look back.”

  His arm brushed against the door’s screen. “But I will look back in my mind. I’ll never forget this summer as the pool boy. Never.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  He cocked his head a little, smiled, and dazzled me with his twinkling brown eyes. “You love me,” he whispered. “You fell in love with me when you first met me. You still love me, Mr. Fine.”

  I wept, “Yes. I do,” and wiped tears away from my eyes and cheeks. My breath became lost. I felt dizzied and confused. I could barely stand.

  The cabby beeped his horn again. Two loud honks. “I have to go.”

  “Yes, I know. You have to leave.”

  His cheeks turned red and his chest puffed, fell inward, and puffed again. I think he was hyperventilating, something. His eyes were glassy and also red. He gurgled, “I’m…sorry,” and pushed on the screen door.

  I shook my head, rushed forward, and brushed fingers against his chin, his dimples, over his lips, touching him for the last time, and cried, “Don’t ever apologize for unnecessary situations. Don’t ever cry for me…or over me.”

  We broke apart.

  “Goodbye, Robert,” he whispered; his last words.

  “Goodbye, Tacoma,” I cried, and watched him lea
ve the lake house with his single bag, exiting my life as strangely as he had entered.

  * * * *

  Would I ever see the pool boy again?

  No…Never.

  Would the pool boy write?

  No…Never.

  Our lives together during that summer had been nothing more than a coincidence in time, a mismatched adventure between souls. Almost three months of pleasure and pain. Intoxicated bliss. I felt younger and freer then, alive. I was thirty-six. So young compared to now. Simpler. More handsome and dashing. Younger…

  Epilogue: December/The Ad

  I needed a houseboy. There was the truth. Almost four months had passed since the pool boy had left. I needed someone to tidy up the place. The house was in a state of disarray, total shambles from top to bottom. Dust accumulated on the banisters, inside the gym, and under the unused beds in the spare bedrooms on the second floor. Margarita glasses needed to sparkle again. Pillows needed fluffed. Warm blankets needed removed from closets, and flannel sheets needed put on all the beds. The sitting-room looked like a pigsty. Floors needed swept. The marble fireplace needed a raging inferno within it, and wood needed stacked beside it for daily use. The library needed organizing because books were scattered everywhere. Too much work needed done inside the lake house.

  Winter was upon me in West End. Why not implement some winter joy into a lonely and dirty house by Lake Erie during those wicked snowstorms and low temperatures? Why not obsess over a houseboy with blue-blue eyes, and a muscular body? One who was possibly named Coyne, Derrick, or Tack? An attractive twenty-two-year-old young man who needed a place to live for the long winter months, for repairs in his life, for companionship, for a romance writer to watch, kiss, hold, befriend, toy with, and so much more.

  I could no longer stare at myself in the lake house and see a lonely man of thirty-six with blond hair, shimmering yellow-green eyes, narrow hips, and a flat stomach. The house left me as a singular blur, hideous and unrefined, an unpleasant spectacle. Lonely. So lonely without Tacoma. I needed company…a houseboy.

  I needed a houseboy. No argument there. And that is how the ad came into being. During that first week of December. I created it to be simple and to the point, easy to read, self-explained:

  HOUSEBOY NEEDED

  CITY AREA. FREE ROOM/BOARD

  FOR INTERVIEW CALL:

  800-555-1512

  I placed the ad into two major papers for a week, also online, and waited for the calls to come in on my 1-800 line: patiently, resolutely, unconditionally…

  THE END

  ABOUT R.W. CLINGER

  R.W. Clinger is a resident of Pittsburgh. He has a degree in English from Point Park University of Pittsburgh. His writing entails gay human studies. His work includes Just a Boy, Skin Tour, Skin Artist, Soft on the Eyes, Pool Boy, The Last Pile of Leaves, The Weekender, Cutie Pie Must Die, Frat Brats, Panama Dan, Spoil Me So, The Shower Police, Splash Boys, and several stories with Starbooks Press. For three years he has held the position of managing editor for the literary magazine The Writer’s Post Journal.

  For more information, visit rwclinger.com.

  ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC

  JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!