The neighbor had put a pool in the side of his yard and it glowed and shimmered in the night like a radioactive kidney bean. His just-graduated-from-college son had come home from the bar with a woman and they were swimming together in their underwear. From across the street I couldn’t tell if she was attractive or not, but her hair was pulled back in a pony tail and that made me like her. In the shifting blue light, their pale skins glimmered as they came together and kissed. I watched thinking of Cheever stories and Holden Caulfield and all the girls I’d never had. And I tried to breath quietly, afraid they’d hear my stirring lungs even from 200 feet away, as they made love like strangely unattractive animals. It was over in moments and I wondered how she could be happy with that having offered him everything and gotten so little in return.
