Paid to trespass, pt 1
In the summer of 1995, I was paid to trespass. That is, I was paid to read the water meters on the outsides of houses in my small town of Pottbridge, NY. I carried around a backpack full of booksâbinders, reallyâwhere Iâd write the water usage of residences for that quarter.
This is not going to be an intricate analysis of the technicalities of the job. I have forgotten all about that over the decades and I donât care to reconstruct it. What Iâm going to tell you doesnât require that kind of research. But what I write here is all true. I write that knowing the risk I take, knowing somebody could read this true story I have hidden for decades and that it could incriminate me. Of course I care, and yet something in me needs to get it out, needs to get it down on paper. Maybe Iâll have it printed, maybe Iâll burn it, I donât know. My moods are so changeable these days I donât know what Iâll do from one day to the next.
I was eighteen that year and Iâd dropped out of college once, disastrously. I wonât go into that except to say that I was an extreme disappointment to my family, particularly my dad as heâd helped to pay for a year of wasted time and I was living under his roof. âYouâre going to get a job and pay me back,â he said to me in my room which was in the basement of his house. That was one of the few times he talked to me that May after I came home in disgrace.
All this stuff about âall kids deserve to go to collegeâ is bullshit. College has the capacity to serve as an unnecessary unmasking of the worst traits in a young man. And then the aftermath was much, much worse, as was the case with me.
I donât remember much about the water meter reading job except that it was one of the duties of my summer employment with the Pottbridge Dept of Public Works. I also poured concrete sidewalks under the supervision of Tom Regent, the superintendent, my boss. Regent was a mean son of a bitch and a taskmaster, whose ear had been shorn off in a car accident heâd lived through working as a toll booth operator for NY State. A drunk college kid had decided he wasnât going to pay the toll and drove what he thought was between the toll booths but was instead straight into one. Tom Regent luckily didnât die like the young punk but he lost his ear. Me and my buddy Jason Stark, who worked there too, learned not to make fun of his ear whatsoever in his presence or heâd work us to a psychopathic level of unforgiving heights.
We also weed-whacked the much overgrown, neglected public spaces in the village, a âparkâ that had been left to the elements since the elder Bush administration. I would come home covered with sweat and vaporized weeds, green juice. Then my father would angrily make me mow the lawn and I got greener. My sneakers looked like salad bowls by the time I was done with the day and went out with my friends.
We drove the village truck all over the place and picked up brush around the village. People went berserk on their properties, finding brush all over and putting it out by the side of the road for us to pick up. It was a cantankerous old man thing, a spiteful hobby of humorless jackasses and fascists with chainsaws. Heaps of branches and twigs got piled in the back of the truck and they would often fall off in the middle of traffic and weâd have to retrieve it while honking cars blew by. Weâd take the brush to a pile not far from my house on Hellenic Avenue, behind an enormous pile of gravel, to be burnt with a flamethrower Regent had, somehow. This was the same pile of gravel behind which Iâd go parking with my girlfriend Colleen during those hot summer nights.
This isnât really my story. It was the meter reading job that got me into the other side of Pottbridge, the side I had no idea about. The sinful, crazy side hiding behind the surfaces. Trespassingâs what set the tone within me for what followed. It was a solo job, a break from Regent and Jason and any other company. In your normal life, you walk down sidewalks and drive down roads but you donât know what itâs like to be on someone elseâs property, with hardly anybodyâs knowledge. To see their flagstone paths and pergulums and topiary gardens intended just for their eyes only. Stacks of firewood, fire pits no one but family friends were invited to.
In the binders in my backpack were written notes, clues really, about where to find the meters. Hidden away under shrubberies loaded with spiders. Sometimes the simple three-letter word DOG, written by some prior meter reader (never knew who that was or why they couldnât do it that summer) warned me that I was to watch out for a canine adventure and be ready to run.
I always got the readings. This happened over a two or three day period that summer. On the last day, in a cul de sac on Brown Street, where Iâd never been in my whole sixteen years of living in Pottbridge, on a hot day, I was in a backyard looking for the water meter and couldnât find it. There was a large pool that looked very inviting with a lounge chair and an umbrella. I saw a tall, cool drink on a side table and an abandoned, overturned paperback book. I donât remember the name except that it was by Dean R. Koontz, one of my favorite writers as a kid. Suspense novelist. The book looked lurid. A cigarette was still going in a clear ashtray.
I did something I shouldnât have done. I looked around, saw no one, went over to the lounge chair, and got a closer look at the book. Iâve always been a curious guy, to a fault, especially about printed things. I was definitely away from my proscribed duties. I peered at the drink. A tall glass, with ice and lime slice. It looked like some kind of gin and tonic. I licked my lips. I lingered over the scene when a voice said, âHey.â
It wasnât a mad or outraged voice.
I looked up to see a woman standing in the sliding glass doorway. She was in a bikini. I think it was green but my memory across the decades might be faulty. But nobody could forget her body which was ripe as a cluster of grapes. She had black hair, down to her elbows. My friend Dom DeNucci would have described her as âstacked up to the ceiling.â
âWhat are you doing?â she asked.
Just then, faster than any weather coming on Iâd ever seen before then or since, it started raining, hard. I mean it came on without warning, or at least I hadnât noticed any clouds rolling in. It was like bright sun, bright sun, bright sun, then downpour.
âHoly crap,â the woman said, hiding in the doorway of the dark house. âCould you get my drink and my book? I donât want them to get ruined.â
I did it.
âBring them inside.â She stood aside.
âI should just give them to you and go,â I said, just outside the door under a narrow overhang that barely kept me dry.
âGet in here before you get soaked.â
I went inside, shaking the rain out of my hair.
âJust put those on the counter, Iâll get you a towel.â
We were in a dark kitchen. No lights were on in the house. The only light was from the windows, suddenly overcast. It was humid like a greenhouse, everything looked sticky, but the storm had brought some cool breezes into the house through the old screen door. She had disappeared down a hallway for a long time before coming back with a towel with MYRTLE BEACH written on it.
âIâve never been there,â I said. I was dumbly trying to make conversation. She made no effort to cover herself up at all. She grabbed her drink and took a sip, smacking her lips and sighing afterwards to make a show of thirst being quenched, eyeing me up and down. âWhat were you doing?â
âIâm just reading the water meters in the neighborhood.â
âWater meters, huh?â She was grinning like sheâd caught me peeping and was dangling me over a cauldron.
âYeah, they do it every so often.â
âIâve seen them come around before but I donât remember seeing you before.â
I told her I was just working there or the summer and I showed her my badge which was supposed to be for ID in case a resident got suspicious.
âHow do I know this isnât out of a Cracker Jack box?â she asked. Her eyes were like a dark blue that was still very sharp, like I have since seen in a National Geographic magazine once when they were talking about Indian dyes. Indigo.
It started thundering out before I could answer. âWow,â she said. âYou canât go out in this.â We looked out the screen door together. The swimming pool surface jumped with fat falling raindrops.
âSo whatâs our meter read?â she asked.
âOh I didnât get it yet.â
âYou hadnât read the meter yet but you were checking out my Dean Koontz novel?â
âIâm sorry. I was being nosy.â
âYouâre lucky I donât call your boss.â
âPlease donât.â
She looked at me with a playful predatory expression I hadnât learned the true dimensions yet. âLook at your face. Iâm just teasing. Whatâs your name?â
âPeople call me Okie. My last name.â
âLike in The Grapes of Wrath?â
âYeah.â
âIâve never heard that name before around here.â She moved into another room adjoining the kitchen, no doorway just a large arch, what looked like a living room. âWhere do you live?â
âHellenic Avenue.â
âFunny how you can live in the same town as someone and itâs like other people a few blocks away might as well be on the moon. Have you ever heard of the Berensons?â
âNo.â
âHarry Berenson, my husband. Iâm Belinda. Sit down, youâve probably been walking in the hot sun all day.â
I hesitated. It was really coming down.
âIf you go back out there, youâll get struck by lightning and the village will never get its meter readings,â she said, snickering before taking another pull from her drink.
âOkay,â I said.
âI hope our reading isnât too much expensive. I take a lot of long, hot baths. A lot. Sometimes every day.â
âThat might do it. Whereâs your husband?â
âI donât honestly know, Okie. I havenât seen him in a day or two.â
âWould he be okay with some strange guy sitting in his living room talking to his wife?â
She gave a single low, throaty laugh. âAre you very strange?â
âNo, Iâm totally normal.â
âThatâs pretty boring.â
âWhat am I supposed to say?â
âYouâre supposed to say, âMiss Belinda, why donât you get your ass up and make me a drink since Iâm not going anywhere?ââ
âDrinking on the job?â
âThink of it as refreshment. Taking a break on a long hot day.â
I thought about it. Iâd like to say I really hesitated, as if it was a debate inside me, but the thoughtful, hesitant face was just for show.
âIâll take a drink.â
âBeer?â She was getting up and I got an eyeful.
âIâll have whatever youâre having.â
âGin and tonic?â
âSure.â Iâd puked my guts out on gin many times but thatâs because I was a degenerate who didnât know how to drink it before.
âA small one. Youâre busier than me.â She went in the kitchen and into the freezer for some ice. I heard the crunch. âNo, Harry could be anywhere. He could be in New York City or he could be pulling in the driveway right now.â I got up and looked out the front window. Nothing but sheets of rain. âI donât honestly know. And if he doesnât care, I donât care. Know what I mean?â
I nodded. I started looking at her bookshelves which were groaning with paperbacks.
âYouâll have to recommend a book to me,â I called out.
She came back in the living room with my drink, handed it to me. It was cold and I put it to my lips. She held out her glass to clink. We touched glasses like old friends.
âWhat do you like to read?â she asked. We stood side by side looking at her books. At no time did it seem weird to her that I could see every inch of her standing there.
âHorror, mainly,â I said.
âThis is good, coincidentally.â She held up the Koontz novel.
âIâve probably read it already.â
She made a ponderous, accepting face and went back to her chair.
âHey, can I ask you a question, Okie? Do you know someone named Cherie DeNucci?â
âThatâs my friend Domâs older sister,â I said.
âDoes she live by herself?â
âI donât know. Why?â
âIâve just heard about her, is all. I heard she gets around.â
âDom doesnât talk about her much.â The gin and tonic was cold and the carbonation and lime killed some of the pungency of the alcohol.
âHow old is she?â
âI donât know, 25, 26?â
âGuys like her?â
âAlright, I guess.â
âHow old are you?â
âIâm 18.â
âGoing on 40,â she said in a sly voice. âYou know what they say about 18-year-old boys.â
âSame thing they say about 35-year-old women?â
âYou have no idea about it do you? So cheeky. Youâre on the clock, donât forget. Got a girlfriend, I imagine.â
âYeah.â Once the word left my mouth I thought about reeling it back in but it was too late.
âWhat she do?â
âWorks at the video store next to the Big M.â
âReally. The cute one with the red hair?â
âThatâs her.â I felt like I was apologizing for an embarrassing family member by even talking about Colleen.
âThatâs cute,â Belinda said. âYou make a good couple. I can see it.â
âSheâs alright,â I said, taking a drink.
âI bet if she heard you say it in that tone of voice sheâd slap the drink right out of your mouth.â Then a quick smile from her.
It stopped raining. It had been a quick burst. I thanked her for the drink which Iâd only drank maybe a quarter of. âIâll just drink it next,â Belinda said. âItâs just about time for a refill.â She shook her empty glass, ice rattling.
I was halfway down the block when I realized Iâd forgotten my backpack with the meter reading binders in it. I know it sounds improbable. Like how could you forget that. But itâs true, I swear. I went back to the Berensons and rang the doorbell. No answer.
I opened the door. Right away I could see through the house to the sliding glass door and the back deck by the pool, and I saw that Belinda was out there. I got my backpack, and something like the lingering over her book and drink earlier, before the storm, came over me, and I didnât leave in a mess of nerves.
She was on the lounge chair putting on lotion. She didnât take her top off but had rolled it down, taking the straps down off her shoulders to put on lotion and get a more even tan. The sun had come back out. She had sunglasses on and was smiling and kind of murmuring to herself. I wondered how much of our conversation in the living room she was replaying to herself.
Before I left I grabbed a random book off her shelf and took it with me, putting it in my backpack. When I got home from work that evening I looked at the book. It was Erica Jongâs Fear of Flying.