Cool Pools for Claudine and Prince Albert
The two main pool areas, located next to each other, were tucked away privately behind the clubhouse in lush gardens, mature tropical plants, and fully-grown palm trees.
The larger pool was for children, young family groups, and a baby shallow pool, with a small gate, which no one ever seemed to use.
The ‘adults only’ pool was slightly smaller, heavily protected with greenery, and hardly anyone swam in it.
The ten-seater Jacuzzi was always full and therefore very unappealing to me.
We positioned ourselves far away from everyone, right in the middle of them both.
I avoided small children in water, as you often ended up a volunteer lifeguard for selfish parents who never noticed you plunged into freezing water to save a kid who had been previously annoying you all day.
At the pool’s edge mothers with no makeup and hair pulled into bands with protruding bellies rummaged through bags full of domestic nonsense while father lay motionless, baking in the hot sun until a shapely pair of legs walked by.
At the other end were the older retired folks, in Boca for the season as ‘snow birds’ escaping the perilous winters in the North.
It was a frightening sight and a sign of what we would become.
In Europe older folks seemed to keep their clothes on even if they were deeply tanned and looked more outdoors and healthy.
We had a huge tree for shade, plenty of towels and water, a few bottles of lotion, and we were settled for the afternoon; it was heaven.
Noises faded into the background, merging together like oil paints, with an odd shriek or scream piercing the air like a distant parrot in branches high above us.
As a soft breeze tiptoed all over us, just enough to fan the hot spots, and the tensions seeped out of my extremities.
Forty minutes later and regaining consciousness, I heard a voice that went through my skull right into my brain, so I turned my bloated body and opened one eye.
To my horror, all that empty space had now been filled with chairs, tables, and a group of about eight men and women in their early fifties. They were from New Jersey, and all uncomfortably close to me.
“Hello,” said a man next to me, hardly turning his head.
“Hello,” I replied, leaning on my elbows and staring at the pool.
They were obviously old friends but I still hadn’t identified that shrill voice.
From behind big Versace glasses I peered around and there she was. A head of rich auburn hair, flashing white teeth, very thick burgundy lipstick, and small, round black tinted spectacles, so her eyes were not visible.
She was watching, not being watched, except by me.
Some of the men just languished, fighting off an afternoon’s sleep in the baking sun, and most of the women had formed an inner circle, furnishing each other with the juicy gossip missed out from last year’s reunion.
“No, that was his third wife, not his second.”
“Are you sure? She told me differently.”
“Yes, because the two daughters were from the first wife who died.”
“She died!? I thought she lived here in Florida?”
“She did. Then she died. Anyway, I saw him playing golf and he’s going chapter eleven.”
And so these fantastic tales went on, each more tragic than the last. I was becoming part of the audience and wanted to ask my own questions.
“Didn’t she serve him with divorce papers?”
“How did his children not know?”
“Is it legal to marry twice?”
“How long can you live with that kind of serious illness?”
It never stopped. They covered every experience known to man, and lawyers, and it was fascinating.
The entire time the auburn head bobbed up and down and I notice she was a petite woman with the energy of a tiger.
She played the crowd, only speaking to those with something interesting to contribute, let the boring ones listen and seem to know more that the rest of them put together.
She sat nearest to the women and it was impossible to say which man was her husband.
The laughter died down as the heat sapped the energy from the most resilient. Some people wandered off for drinks, some looked for shade, and one or two just slept.
“Where’s Michael?” Asked a blonde woman with no make-up and large green eyes. She leaned forward, looking into the distance.
“He was here a minute ago. I just saw him,” someone answered from behind.
She held on to her bone-thin brown ankles at the end of runner’s legs. She did not have an ounce of flesh on her bones, just thin hanging skin, and her eyes were sad like a puppy’s, not desperate enough to get up and find Michael, but still counting the time that passed.
Who knew why she searched for him? But I thought it was very sweet.
The auburn hair was quieter, deep in conversation; with her hand on the knee of a woman she was telling a story while delicately holding her captive.
With white flesh against thick black hair and huge almond eyes, she looked like Cleopatra of Egypt, and was listening intently, enjoying every word.
Some women don’t know they are beautiful, or are too modest to admit it, and she was such a creature now in her fifties, plump and with a body that didn’t look that often into a mirror.
As I was studying all this, a rogue New York Times paper cartwheeled over the patio and stopped it self by clinging to my legs like an octopus.
The more I struggled to break free, the closer it clung, until sheet by sheet, it had to be peeled off.
“Are you okay? Oh my god, honey your paper’s blown away,” one woman called out.
Two leaned over to see better and a man came over to rescue me, or save the paper, I was not sure which.
“No, no, I’m fine. Thank you, don’t get up.”
“Are you British?” The man asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh how lovely. Here, let me help you get rid of that. Are you visiting?”
“No I live part of the time in the US.”
“Oh how lovely,” he said again. He and the auburn woman looked at each other.
“What ‘part of the time’ is that?” The auburn lady, with the small dark glasses and the very big expensive smile, asked. “My name is Claudine, and that is my husband, Albert,” she said, waving over to grey, ordinary man asleep and uninterested.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had just secured my place in their next year’s reunion stories and that clinging newspaper would alter the course of our winter.
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