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A Pool and His Money

Monsieur Richelieu has more money than the Pope. He drives a fire-engine red Ferrari that glowers in the dark. His second car is a deep blue Rolls Royce, deep blue like the evening sky over the Mediterranean, where he keeps his forty-two foot turbo-charged silver bullet yacht, equipped with a satellite dish, Jacuzzi and hot and cold running maids. However, Monsieur Richelieu has little time for gallivanting around the Côte d'Azur. Corporate affairs keep him in Paris, where he resides on a houseboat, upscale and upstream from mine, although his is definitely not a barge like mine. It

Pigeons, perched on the lampost, unloaded their woes in strafing patterns.

resembles a big blocky white elephant, floating on a stubby platform -- not unlike Monsieur Richelieu, who parades around his sunken living room in full view every morning, sporting only a white terry-cloth bathrobe and velvet slippers. He boards his floating container via a motorized gangplank, controlled by an electro-hydraulic system of winches and pulleys that raises and lowers the cantilevered bridge into place. Monsieur Richelieu doesn't use a key to open his door. He taps in secret numbers on a weather-proof keypad panel. Inside the foyer is another chrome control panel, set in the softly textured azure velour wall fabric. One code, 8638B, turns on the crystalline chandelier swinging in the foyer; 8612A turns on the wrought-iron 19th century lamps on the 16th century end tables bracketing the marble fire place; another code bathes the living room with amber floor light, still another swishes the vertical window blinds into position, and 1795L rotates the blinds closed with the snap of privacy. James Bond would feel quite at home here. I know Monsieur Richelieu is wealthy because he parks both his Rolls Royce and his Ferrari on the street. I park on the street too, but always on the far side where there are no roosting pigeons to deposit their little dark blue comments all over my dirty yellow paint job. Mr. Richelieu parks on the near side next to his houseboat, where broad-trunked chestnut trees billow forth 30 feet above the pavement in a canopy of bifurcating branches punctuated by clusters of brooding pigeons. Sometimes he parks under the street lamp, which the pigeons prefer most because they can perch five abreast on the brown barreled crossbar directly above ground zero and unload all their woes. Unlike the random dot Rorschach splotches that characterize their fare from the tree branches, the lamppost launching platform produces a dotted line strafing pattern that would be the envy of diving Messerschmidt pilots. These prolific pigeons plaster Monsieur Richelieu's glowingly polished vehicles day and night. But he doesn't care; he just sends out Chula, his Sri Lanka house boy, with a zebra-striped rag, a squeaky clean red-handled squeegee, a chamois cloth, some car wax and a lot of elbow grease. Chula wears a hat. One of my less wealthy neighbors comes home too late to park on the safe side of the street. Her little old Fiat is perpetually covered from front bumper to rear tail lights with little peaked mounds of Hershey Kisses, sprinkled about by the trick-or-treaters above. Her four-wheeled compost heap is further festooned with feathers, leaves, twigs and other small debris that happen to be blowing by while the bodily fluids from the pigeons are still curing. It is no longer possible to tell what color her Fiat is really supposed to be. I think she washed it once and the paint came off. She never has to lock her car. One doldrum day in the middle of a heat wave Monsieur Richelieu, fine droplets of glistening perspiration sprouting in areas vacated by his receding hairline, decided he ought to have a swimming pool. He was certainly frustrated seeing the whole Seine float by his window and not be able to spring in for a dip, especially since he knew he also had a 42-foot turbo-charged silver bullet yacht sitting around the Mediterranean, with maids frolicking in the water whenever their fancy struck. Mamud and Abdul, two skilled welders, arrived from the shipyard in grease-smeared navy work coveralls that hung around their bowed legs like the wrinkled knees of an elephant. Mamud sported a fraying billed cap that had settled into the shape of

They suddenly found the extra strength that mothers use to lift Plymouth station wagons.

his head and shaded his squinting eyes. Abdul kept his new hat folded safely in his rear pocket. They unloaded acetylene tanks, torches, welding rods, masks, heavy leather gloves and plenty of casse-croûte for their lunch breaks. With the help of a clanky World War II vintage riverboat-crane, Mamud and Abdul constructed a deck patio next to the living room. A square opening was left in the center of the patio. At each of the four corners Mamud welded vertical support poles, extending down into the river. Monsieur Richelieu's 500-gallon swimming pool came delivered by UPS. It was the kind that sits above the ground in American backyards, supported by armatures, and filled with water for kids to splash and play. The light blue swimming pool was fabricated out of an extremely tough flexible plastic sheet, three-eighths of an inch thick and crisscrossed with a diamond pattern reinforcing texture for that extra super-strong laterally reinforced weave, guaranteed to withstand all normal rough-house water play, patent pending. Mamud and Abdul were joined by Chula, the house boy, to stretch the swimming pool liner above the opening in the deck patio. At each of the four corners of the plastic liner, running vertically the four foot depth of the pool, was a sleeved loop that would sheath the metal pole for support. Monsieur Richelieu supervised the process, gesturing now and then with his favorite Havana cigar, when it wasn't tucked inside his cheek. Working their way around the pool in a clockwise direction, Mamud slid the sleeve down over the pole while stocky Abdul and wiry Chula tugged on the awkward pile of plastic to stretch it into position. The first two corners went on smoothly; the third corner took a bit of dickering; the last required a prolonged struggle.

"Chula, don't pull in the same direction as Abdul," instructed Monsieur Richelieu. "Get on the other side." Chula tried to comply and was soon engaged in a silent tug-of-war while Abdul muttered under his breath in Arabic. Mamud pulled on the corner sleeve and got it within an inch of lining up with the pole. The surplus plastic liner that would form the depth of the swimming pool lay loosely bunched on top of the hole getting in the way. Monsieur Richelieu kept giving orders, pointing with his cigar, "No, Chula, pull from here. Grip it higher. That's it. Brace your feet against the lip of the patio." The three managed to pull the sleeve within half an inch of the support pole. Finally Monsieur Richelieu squatted down and lent a hand. He couldn't brace himself very well with his Bruno Magli shoes or keep from sliding on his rump in his crisply creased gray Versace slacks and he certainly wasn't about to give up his morning smoke. "OK, now pull," Monsieur Richelieu barked around the cigar. Mamud, Abdul and Chula suddenly found that extra strength, the kind that mothers use to lift Plymouth station wagons when their babies are pinned underneath, to line the sleeve up with the pole. "There," grunted Monsieur Richelieu. "Now pull it down. Pull it down." Mamud, who had already pulled the sleeve halfway down the pole into the water, silently thanked his client for this advice. He kept pulling from below and feeding the bunched up plastic from above, until the full length sheathed the pole. "Voila," proclaimed Monsieur Richelieu. They all stood around admiring the result, a pile of blue plastic stretched tight as a trampoline at the corners and bunched up like an aging soufflé in the middle. Mamud pulled out his dirty old crescent

"Delicious," Christine murmured, dipping her bronzed toe into the clear rippling oasis.

wrench and bolted upper brackets attaching the tops of the four corner poles to the deck for added structural integrity. Monsieur Richelieu brushed off his gray Versace slacks and ran a spit-moistened finger across a scuff on his slick Bruno Maglis. His cigar was still puffing and from the way he shuttled it from one side of his mouth to the other, he seemed pleased with his morning's work. Mamud, Abdul and Chula eyed the pile of loose folds floating on top of the water in the center of the patio and waited for inspiration. "Well, fill it. Fill it with water," said Monsieur Richelieu. He spat his Havana into the Seine and lit up a new one. Chula fetched the fat green garden hose which lay in a tightly coiled spiral on the other side of the boat. He started hosing water onto the tangled liner;. Abdul tried poking the folds into a concave shape to hold more water. "Don't worry about that," Monsieur Richelieu said. "The weight of the water will push it down." And he was right. Slowly the soufflé began settling below the surface of the deck, the layers of diamond-textured plastic unfolding, sliding apart, transforming themselves into the swimming pool shape diagrammed on the UPS box. All four sides of the blue plastic liner extended down about a foot into the Seine. The water in the pool sparkled with the pure clean aqua cast that dots so many suburban backyards in the US. Christine, Monsieur Richelieu's long-legged girlfriend who had been monitoring the progress, stuck her nose out of the upstairs bedroom window. "It looks like Evian," she said. The flat dirty moss green of the Seine turned a shade darker in comparison. Chula kept hosing water and soon the swimming pool had deepened to two feet. Monsieur Richelieu called up to Christine, "Come down for a swim." She had already donned her one-piece emerald-green suit which barely visited her hips before it tapered off into a ribbon of optimism. The Spandex fabric, stretched tautly across her derriere, flexed left-right-left-right as she waltzed down the stairs. Stretched just as tightly, the walls of the pool were now filled to three feet deep. A deep sound seemed to resonate from the fabric of the pool as the inflow of Evian pushed back against the flow of the Seine. "Delicious," Christine murmured, dipping her bronzed toe into the clear rippling oasis. Only another foot to go and the concave enclosure would be completely filled out. The plastic swimming pool was brimming and bulging like an juicy plump plum. So was Monsieur Richelieu. Mamud was the first one to notice. A splurge of Seine water splashed up between the deck and the lip of the swimming pool wall. Then another. "Monsieur," he pointed. Back pressure building against the upstream wall was creating a little wave of Seine water rising up against the light blue barrier. Green water began gushing over the top rim of the pool. The barrier was breached. "Halt the water!" Monsieur Richelieu bellowed. Chula dropped the hose and scampered around the corner to the shut-off valve. Monsieur Richelieu yanked the still-running hose out of the pool and whipped it across the deck, splaying water across his Versace cuffs and into his Bruno Maglis. He was only momentarily distracted by his cold wet socks because he quickly noticed that the surf was bending the top of the plastic hem down and Seine water was now gushing into the pool. "Grab it. Grab it! Raise it up." All four men tugged at the plastic liner, pulling it back up above the surge of the river. They were slipping and sliding on their soaked backsides as Christine retreated discreetly upstairs. The tide had been turned. The barrier was again intact. But how long could these four brave men hold out? Even if they rested in pairs like River Seine Tag Team Wrestlers, how long? Four pair of sopped arms were tiring, eight slippery grips were weakening. It didn't matter. A combination of sounds and movements choreographed the inevitable sequence of events. As these valiant swimming pool rescuers pulled on the liner from the top, the force of the river pressed in on the bottom. The swimming pool became a giant undulating amoebae, bulging the fabric past its factory design specifications, patent pending. An ominous music of the spheres rose as the cell oscillated in the current below the patio deck. Prrrrrrrrfft! Within one second of the first tentative ripping sound, the entire sleeve, looped around a corner pole, ripped full length like a giant zipper opening on an overladen bladder. A moment later the second upriver sleeve split open. The mass of the swimming pool lunged against the remaining two corner sleeves, which ruptured without a moment's protest. Eight hands were suddenly clutching air. And a good thing too, or all four men would have instantly found themselves in the Seine, being dragged along, fully clothed, by a run-away swimming pool. Monsieur Richelieu stood up, clenching his soggy Havana cigar, and watched his mail-order pool float off downstream in a gentle unstretched equilibrium, its pure waters co-mingling with the pollution of the Seine. One gray morning a week later Mamud and Abdul showed up with large steel plates, their set of welding equipment and casse-croûte. They ended up extending the sunken living room on Monsieur Richelieu's boat into the space of the erstwhile swimming pool. I am reminded about this whole sorry affair every time I look upriver, my view increasingly blocked by Monsieur Richelieu's expanding container home and wonder if this wasn't his plan from the beginning.

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