Pool Boys Read Online Free PDF

wall. He’d seen enough. What was he even hoping to find there? Every single member of Silver Oaks—officiallyinducted or not-quite-inducted, newborn or deceased, dating all the way back to 1922—just kept smiling lifelessly at the untouched linen and polished silver, as they always had. And in a matter of minutes, those empty tables would be packed with those very same smiling faces (the living ones, anyway), fresh from the courts or golf course or pool.
    The saddest part was that Caleb had studied the pictures with as open a mind as possible. Who here is a possibility? He wasn’t averse to going the American Pie route, either, i.e., hooking up with a woman his mother’s age. But most of those women were plastic surgery disasters. They all bore a freakish resemblance to Mick Jagger, with gaunt, lined faces and rubbery lips— blech. And the girls his age were out of the question, too. Okay, he had lingered on that photo of Brooke by the pool, taken last summer, in her silver bikini. Hey, why don’t I ask Brooke over the next time my folks are out of town? But that just gave him the creeps. It would be like hooking up with his sister. And Georgia? She was an inch taller than he was. Plus, she was obviously still hung up on Ethan. She would swat Caleb with her racket if he suggested as much.
    Which left Charlotte.
    In truth, Charlotte was the only real consideration. She’d pulled off the fantastically impossible stunt of growing up with Caleb— and making out with him—and still not crossing the lines of incestuous weirdness (Brooke) or Amazonian impossibility (Georgia). She was a special case.
    But she would probably just crack jokes the whole time.
    The new chick, Valerie what’s-her-face, was obviously out of his league. She was out of Brad Pitt’s freaking league. But hey, things could be worse. After all, there was a kind of nobility in preserving one’s virginity.
    Caleb didn’t want to be noble, though. He wanted to get laid.
    “Hey, you want to hear something funny, kid?” Jimmy the Bartender asked.
    Caleb glanced up. He must have been even more despondent than he realized. He hadn’t even noticed the grizzled, grinning Jimmy come in from the kitchen.
    “Sure, Jimmy,” Caleb said. “I’d love to hear something funny.”
    “A dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s mouth,” Jimmy remarked. “Did you know that? It’s safer to kiss a dog! Hah!”
    Caleb blinked. “Nope. Can’t say that I knew that.”
    “My son the newspaper man told me that. Pretty nuts.”
    Somehow, even though Jimmy the Bartender was significantly older, wiser, and just plain weirder than ninety-nine percent of the people he served or worked with, he still was called “Jimmy the Bartender”—and that had always bothered Caleb. All the other staff members were known as Mr. This or Ms. That. (Even Mr. Henry, the creepy maintenance guy.) And the unfair part was that Jimmy was one of the few adults at Silver Oaks who was truly worthy of respect.
    “So why the long face, kid?” Jimmy asked. He strappedon his apron and began polishing the bar glasses. “It’s the first day of the new season. Summer’s here!”
    “I know. That’s why I have the long face.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Neither does the stuff you said about the dog,” Caleb said.
    “You got me there, kid. Hey, listen. I did you a favor.”
    Caleb frowned. “You did?”
    Jimmy sauntered back into the kitchen through the pair of swinging doors. A moment later he reappeared, bearing a heaping plate of food: the Silver Oaks Club Sandwich, neatly cut into quarters, with a side of fries and a little dish of ketchup. It was Caleb’s favorite meal—indeed the very meal he’d been about to order. Nothing drowned sorrow and self-pity better than a triple-decker of turkey, bacon, and mayonnaise.
    “What’s this for?” Caleb asked.
    “Well, I saw you loitering in here for the past half hour, and I knew what you were gonna order anyway, so I