Chapter 1

It was the seventh of July and hotter than Hell -- which was news, and it wasn't. It WAS news, because it had BEEN that hot for over a week -- a serious heat wave -- and it wasn't news for the same reason -- it was just another murderous day in a long line of them. I sat out on my back deck, under the awning, watching the neighbor boy listlessly wander the yard, looking for some respite from the oppressive ninety-nine degree heat. He was one of those scrawny yet doughy-looking kids that the upcoming generation seems to have turned out in great numbers, the pipe-stem legs sticking out of his baggy shorts still managing to look soft and underdeveloped. He was fourteen or so, I figured, with shaggy brown hair framing a studious face. We'd never said three words to each other in the couple of years I'd lived there, but he was looking my way enviously periodically -- and I couldn't blame him for it. You see, I had air conditioning -- and a pool...

It was on the far side of my property from him, but it was highly visible off my deck with its retractable awning. The hot tub was there, too. An eight foot privacy fence kept the neighbors on the other side from seeing any of the hijinks that occurred there, but I'd never bothered on the kid's side -- in fact, there was no fence there at all, just a couple of scraggly trees along the property line. I had the only pool in the neighborhood -- and the only air conditioning, and the only hot tub, too.

You're probably wondering why. More than anything else, it was luck. When I'd moved into the house -- a nondescript three-bedroom ranch in a lower-middle-class neighborhood -- it hadn't sported all the goodies. But my uncle died and he owned a couple of houses that he rented out. My aunt got the bulk of things, but Uncle John and I had talked about those houses on many occasions and as a part of his will, he bequeathed them to me -- IF I could make a certain amount of profit on them two years running.

One of the houses wasn't a problem -- but the other one was a dump, and the tenants sucked. Uncle John's take on it was that the place was never going to attract decent tenants, so he wouldn't put money in it -- he said it would be good money following bad. I always held the dissenting opinion -- that if he kicked out the current curs and put money into the place, he could attract a better quality tenant. We'd argued and wrangled and I'd more or less begged him to let me prove it again and again -- so he left me the experiment on his death.

I took a week after the will was read trying to decide what to do -- play it safe and leave things as they were, or put my theory to the test. At the end of that period, I became convinced that Uncle John had deliberately set the target just high enough that it wasn't attainable by standing fast -- or even jacking up the rental on the good house. That being the case, I had no choice -- I girded my loins and did what was necessary, dumping out the current tenants and putting in twenty thousand in upgrades. To help offset things, I raised the rent on the other house a bit -- but it was nothing more than a nuisance raise.

I learned all about standing on a contractor's leash so he wouldn't wander off before he was done -- the hard way. I barely met my timeline for re-occupancy -- but I managed, and at seventy-five bucks more a month for rent. Fortunately, Uncle John's target numbers were for pure income, not income after expenses -- but the house was paid for, and had been paying its way, anyway. The second year, I did upgrades to the cash cow and raised the rent again -- and the tenant didn't complain a bit, because I made the house more energy-efficient in the process.

Having succeeded, I got the houses -- and took over all of my aunt's other property management activities from the lawyers. That was easy, since they had a good management company in place, anyway. I sold the 'dud' house and poured the profits into an eight-unit apartment building -- and quit working for a living, basically.

I'm single and forty -- marriage and I never got along, even though I tried twice -- so I suddenly had more money than I knew what to do with. Somebody else would have moved, but my little house had everything I needed in it -- well, except central air and a pool and a hot tub and a fancy entertainment center and ... The list goes on, but the point was why should I buy a mansion? I had simple needs, and my current digs were cheaper to fix up than buying a huge, showy place would have cost -- especially with the same upgrades -- so I stayed there and fixed the place up.

... Which brings us back to the present, more or less. The kid kept looking longingly at the pool and I kept watching him out of the corner of my eye as I read my book and sipped my iced tea. It might have gone on forever, but his sister came wandering out of the house, looking wet and frazzled in a halter top and shorts. She parked herself on a lounger and pretended she was out there to get sun -- but the sun called her a damned liar in under ten minutes, beating the shit out of her unmercifully, and she got up and dragged herself back inside, where I could see the fans going in just about every room through the open windows. As I eyed her shamelessly through one of the windows, watching her stand in front of a fan with her hands laced behind her head to try to dry her wet armpits in the humid air, I got to thinking...

The kid's sister was sixteen and had curves in all of the right places -- and a couple of girlfriends that showed up occasionally that were built similarly. Finally, there was the kid's mama -- a woman named Jean who was nicely if narrowly built and had black hair and features with an Oriental cast -- and freckles, like Lucy Liu. I'd never seen a man at that house -- not that I'd been paying attention, really -- and we'd passed about a dozen sentences in three or four years, but she was one hot little number...

I'd learned that if you flashed a hundred dollar bill in certain places and in certain ways, it didn't really matter how ugly you were, a certain type of woman -- the type that had a hard time keeping track of her panties -- could generally be talked into wandering home to your palatial estate to provide a little exercise and entertainment. This type of woman paradoxically was usually easily dispensed with, afterward, too -- but then you had to get another hundred and go fishing again. I generally kept one around for a week or so -- until she got too cocky -- and then engineered a fight and sent her on her way. If I was lucky, I'd have one of her girlfriends in the pipe. It helped that I had a reputation for delivering the goods between the sheets. Problem was, I was getting jaded...

A little thought told me that inviting the girl over was a no-no; I'd have to be more subtle than that -- and that's where the kid came in. Worst case, I figured, I could try a little experiment I hadn't bothered with up to now...

"Hey, kid!" I waved him over. "Want some tea? You look like you're about to sweat to death."

"Uh, sure..." He glanced back at his house, but stumped up onto the deck, anyway, stepping under the awning with a sigh of relief. The scrub trees along the property line gave of some pretty poor shade. I got up and threw open the slider, "Come on, I'll get you a glass." Seventy degree air hit the kid and I thought he was going to step on me in his rush to get inside. I went to the fridge and stuck a glass under the icemaker, "Hotter than fuck out there, ain't it?" I did the 'man talk' thing with him, knowing he would appreciate it. "I'm surprised you aren't inside where it's cool."

"It sure is," he agreed, then, "We don't have air conditioning."

"No?" I pretended ignorance. "That's gotta suck." I handed him the glass.

He half-emptied it in one pass and gasped, "You have no idea! Sometimes Mom takes us out for a drive in the car before bedtime, just to cool us down some..." Seeing my look of confusion, he added, "The car has air conditioning."

"Oh," I nodded. "Does it help?"

"A little, maybe."

"Air quality has sucked for a good week," I pointed out. "Must be tough."

"Big time!" he nodded.

I stuck out my paw. "Cletus."

"Michael." He shook it.

"Doesn't generally get this bad," I observed. Weather patterns had been weird; we'd had a cool, wet spring, then BAM! Out west, things seemed to be alternating between hot and muggy and cool and dry, first in the north, then in the south -- but somehow, we were being bypassed by the jet stream and getting no breaks.

"You're right," he agreed. "This is the worst I've ever seen."

"Dunno if I oughta let you hang out inside," I grunted. "You might catch cold -- and in this heat that would be REAL miserable." I eyed him. "Bet the pool looks nice."

"It sure does!"

I pretended to consider. "Well, I might let you use it -- if your mother says it's okay. I've got some rules, though."

"What are they?"

"There are signs posted," I waved negligently. "You just need to follow the rules on the signs."

There WAS a sign; up top were the usual rules: No Jumping, No Diving, No Horseplay Without An Adult Present -- that kind of thing. Below that, it said, "Adult Swim After Seven p.m." I'd done that deliberately -- it was how I got my women out of their clothing. You see, there was a second sign, off to the side, with rules for Adult Swim -- the first of which was 'No Swimsuits During Adult Swim.' I don't know how many ladies I'd dragged home late at night and tempted with that pool -- or the hot tub -- into showing me their beaver or their bald pussy, one or the other.

I led him back outside; he was reluctant to leave the refrigerated interior, but had no choice, so he wandered off to examine the pool -- and the rules. All he could see from where he stood on the deck were the rules on the first sign, which were pretty innocuous. "Those don't look hard," he opined.

"They aren't," I agreed.

"What's Adult Swim all about?"

"I do that with older folk," I told him. "It probably won't matter for you, since you'll only be around in the daytime, I imagine."

"Oh. Okay."

"Ask your mother -- I won't let you without her permission -- in fact, I'll want to talk to her about it," I told him. "Insurance people get stupid, you know, and lawyers sue the pants off guys like me. If you were to hurt yourself, I could be in a lot of shit, so I'll want her to write something, maybe."

Michael watched the pool turn into a shimmering mirage in his mind's eye as access became more and more difficult. "Oh."

"Don't take it like that, Son," I told him. "Maybe your mother will play ball..."

"Yeah, maybe..." We shot the shit for a while, until the sister came out looking for him. Michael headed home then, and I watched him infect his sister with envy before they went inside; he spoke to her urgently, and she looked first at me, then at the pool, and I knew the hook had been set.

Jean's old under-powered Japanese piece of crap pulled into the driveway at five-thirty and I watched the sharks attack from behind the sheer curtains in my living room. They were all over her -- both of them; in fact, I think the daughter led the charge. Ten minutes later, I was pretending that I wasn't immediately available as Jean punched the doorbell. I dragged ass and timed things so she was about to leave when I threw open the door, standing there in my swim trunks. The air conditioned air wafted out of the door and hit her in the face and she swayed forward unconsciously and licked her lips. "Mr., uh..."

"Putnam. Call me Cletus," I replied jovially.

"Yes. Ah, Cletus, my son says you made some offer..."

"The pool?" I jerked my thumb behind me. "Yeah, we talked about it. Come on in -- we're letting the cold air out." I backed up.

She entered the house cautiously, as if expecting me to be harboring a half-dozen sluts. There was no doubt in my mind that she'd seen me bring home entertainment. She looked around uneasily, but the place was in good shape -- the maid had come through earlier in the day. I didn't let women leave their mark on the place, anyway. I smiled innocently. "Would you like something to drink?"

"Um, no, thanks. Michael said something about rules?"

"I have signs posted," I told her. "The usual stuff -- no jumping or diving -- it's only five feet deep. I just got to thinking -- you know how it is -- lawyers and ambulance chasers are everywhere. I just figured that for liability purposes, I should talk to you directly and maybe have you sign something saying they have to abide by the rules and you won't hold me responsible."

Jean frowned. "I see. Do you have something in mind?"

I certainly did -- I'd been composing it in my head for several hours -- but I pretended differently. "I'll come up with something. In the meantime would you like to see the pool?"

"That's probably a good idea..." I led her outside and showed her the pool and the sign most easily seen. Naturally, she asked after the 'Adult Swim' notice.

"Adult Swim?" she asked, eyeing me.

"It's more or less formal notice that after a certain time I may want to bring adults in and we may not want the younger set disturbing us," I replied. It was a carefully tuned answer, but I could see her draw her own conclusions.

"I see." She eyed me dubiously. "Well, at least you're up-front about it."

I shrugged. "I think it sends a clear signal that the pool isn't available for horseplay at all hours of the day and night, don't you?"

"If you say so." She turned away. I led her back into the house. "What would this release look like?" she asked.

"Kind of like a school sports release, I guess," I pretended to work through it mentally. "I'll just whip up something on my computer." I went into my study and pretended to spend time composing, then switched tasks to the document I'd already created. I sent it to the printer, then took it back out and whipped it under her nose. It said:

I,, the undersigned, agreed to hold Cletus Putnam blameless for any accidents or injuries that occur to myself or my family while using his swimming pool, hot tub, or other facilities and agree to abide by the posted rules for those facilities.