“Thanks,” Tom told the window guy. “If you’re okay going up to the second floor by yourself, I’ll, uh, see about the pool. Careful of the closed doors—some of them are holding back our bees.”
Rose and Tom sloshed through puddles as they hurried around to the back patio. The inn’s pool wasn’t large, but it was located close to the foundation of the inn, and the water levelwas almost flush with the deck. From there, the ground sloped down a few feet to the inn and the fire exit of the basement, where Max had once run a small pub.
The pool was dark and fetid with months’ worth of rotting vegetation. A broken tree branch extruded on one side, and smaller clumps of broken twigs dotted the opaque surface. Rose had caught a glimpse of it out the window and placed it firmly in theDeal With Latercategory of unpleasant tasks. It was obvious that it needed to be drained and cleaned, but nobody was going to be swimming on Martha’s Vineyard until June.
“I bet the drain’s clogged with leaves,” Tom said.
“Is there someone we can call?” Rose said, eyeing the water level with trepidation. If it kept raining like it was, the window guy was right—water would flow down into the basement.
“Nobody’ll get here soon enough,” Tom said morosely. He looked skyward as though asking for strength.
“Maybe I could fish some stuff out with one of those basket poles,” Rose said, looking for a storage shed.
“Nah.” Tom sighed. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” Rose said, but then Tom bent over to untie his laces. “Wait, what? No.”
Tom lifted his head long enough to give her a tight grin. He stepped out of his shoes.
“No, Tom, what? You can’t go in the pool.”
“If I die, please remember I always loved you. I meant everything I said. I think you know how the speech goes now.”
“No,” Rose said more firmly, moving between him and the pool. “It’s almost freezing out here.”
“I did the Coney Island polar bear plunge last year. It’ll be fine.” He unzipped his jeans.
“Put your clothes back on,” Rose said, beginning to feel real panic. “Tom! I mean it. You’re not going in the pool. Anything could be in that water. This is a Florida Man moment. I am playing a Florida Man card. Tom!”
“I’ve got it, babe,” Tom said, shucking off more of his clothing. “I’m a very good swimmer. Didn’t you see me on the news?”
He wasn’t listening to her, his attitude growing downright cheerful as he stripped to his boxers and attempted to maneuver around her spread arms.
Rose’s warnings grew more fervent, a rapid, unheeded litany ofNo, Tom, no, you are going to get diphtheria, you are going to get hypothermia, you are going to stab yourself on a bunch of rebar and need fifty tetanus shots, Tom, no, stop I mean it, Tom, I am not going to have sex with you if your dick touches that stuff in the pool, no, Tom, Tom, TOM!
He slid into the water feet first, yelping when the oily, freezing sludge enveloped bare skin up to his neck.
“You are going to get an ear infection and die,” Rose told him, hands pressed to her temples. Tom felt around in the water with one tentative outstretched foot, wincing when it impacted something. “Tom! Get out right now before you drown.”
“C-could you bring me a couple towels?” he asked through teeth that had begun to chatter violently. “I’m going to need them in a second.”
Rose growled, closing her eyes and lips over the many badwords she wanted to call him. “Don’t die before I get back, because I am going to kill you,” she told him instead.
The towels in the inn could be full of mice and bees and God knew what else. She’d have to get them from the cottage. She turned and jogged for the front of the inn. God damn him. She hated running.
She was breathing in pants and gasps before she even made it back to the cottage, and she didn’t have time to catch her breath before she grabbed the entire stack of towels from the bathroom. She walked to work every day and made it a point to take the stairs, so she hadn’t thought her cardiovascular fitness could bethatbad, but her asthma had been acting up, and she felt dizzy and lightheaded from the effort of making her lungs expand by the time she got back to the pool.
She spun around, looking for Tom. Had he gone inside? No. His clothes and shoes were still in a pile on the ground, getting soaked by the rain.
“Tom?” she called wildly. The rain was disturbing the surface of the pool, but she couldn’t see anything under the water. “Tom?” she called louder.
She’d been gone less than five minutes. Oh Christ, what if hehadgotten caught on something?
“Tom?!”
She kicked off her boots in a panic and shuffled right to the edge of the pool, staring down into the black water. She could barely swim. The water would be over her head.
She was leaning over the surface, eyes frantically scanning the depths, when two events happened in exact unison: first, toRose’s right, Tom’s shaggy head popped up from under the water as he victoriously thrust a rotting oak branch into the air, and second, to Rose’s left, a burst of light and sound like a flashbulb going off surprised and stunned her.
