As we worked, I would occasionally catch Todd watching me. He didn’t say anything, but his shit-eating grin was only partially hidden by his mustache and beard. I initially thought he was concerned I would get distracted and screw up the board cuts, but I soon realized Todd was assessing me, the way he had that first day when he told me to break up the concrete blocks. I suspected Todd still thought of me as a naive kid who had grown up in the Burlingame bubble, which was mostly true. Though I wouldn’t admit it—none of my friends would have—I’d graduated high school a virgin, and I could count the number of dates I’d had, not including proms, on one hand. Going to an all-boys school didn’t exactly foster healthy relationships with young women.
For the next few hours, the two women dove into the pool with a splash and came up shouting at one another, or listened to music as they lay in lawn chairs, acting now as if they had no idea we watched.
“Oh, they know we’re here,” William said. “And they know exactly what they’re doing.”
His comment was a spot-on imitation of Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke, the scene when the prison chain gang worked in the blazing heat, tantalized by a woman washing her car. Just about every eighteen-year-old young man who’d watched Cool Hand Luke, myself included, fantasized about Joy Harmon fondling a garden hose while wearing a skimpy sundress soon to be soaked with water and phallic suds. I figured this afternoon was the closest I would get to anything even remotely close to Joy Harmon, who the actor George Kennedy called his Lucille.
The show continued for much of the afternoon, then the two women went inside. I looked between the maple leaves to the bedroom window, hoping they’d go upstairs and take off their swimsuits, but they weren’t Lucille and I wasn’t Paul Newman.
We worked past five again. When we finished, I was beat. Todd looked around the tripod legs of the miter saw where I’d swept a pile of sawdust and thin scraps of leftover wood. The largest scrap was no longer than a couple of inches.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Todd asked.
I didn’t understand his question at first. Then I realized he was asking about the leftover lumber from the cuts I’d made.
“What did you do with them?”
“I used them for the fire blocks, or for the smaller pieces you and William needed.”
Todd looked confused. He pointed to the sawdust pile. “That’s all that remains?”
I worried I’d done something wrong. “No. We got more eight-and ten-footers downstairs,” I said. “I didn’t unsnap the final two bundles. I reused the roof beams for the longer pieces.”
Todd did not look convinced. He looked like I was pulling his leg. William crouched and smiled up at me as Todd walked to the building’s edge and looked down at the two bundles of wood I had not touched, then turned and peered at me like I’d just landed from outer space. After a beat he looked at William, who chuckled.
“Well, shit,” Todd said. “I’ll take them back to the lumberyard.” He removed his gloves. “Kelley’s working late.” I assumed Kelley to be his wife. “Let’s grab a drink at Behan’s.”
I knew the Irish pub on Broadway, though I’d never been inside, and I didn’t want to risk having my brother’s expired driver’s license confiscated. “I can’t get in,” I said.
William stood from his crouch. “Yeah. You can. Todd and I will meet you on the sidewalk out front.”
I helped clean up the tools and lock down the jobsite, slipped on my T-shirt, and walked to my car parked at the curb in front of the house where the two women had been swimming. As I unlocked the driver’s-side door, the fire-engine-red Mustang backed out of the garage, the two women in it.
“Hi,” the brunette said from the passenger seat. She had both arms folded on the car door, her chin resting on her hands.
“Hey,” I said.
The driver leaned across the car. “You finished for the day?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You want to come out and get a drink?”
This confirmed the two women were older than twenty-one. I was not yet close. I could just picture a scenario where I went out with them and the bouncer laughed at my fake driver’s license, then the two women laughed at me.
“I’m going to Behan’s,” I said. “With the guys I work with.”
The driver got out of the car but left the engine running. The passenger followed. “I’m Jennifer,” the driver said. “This is my cousin, Amy. She’s visiting from New York.”