Police Escort

We were standing on the other side of the fence from a swimming pool. We could hear the filters humming and the gentle sound of water licking the edges. Steph told me that I should knock on the door and ask if we could have a swim for twenty minutes. We stood out the front, staring through their screen door, down their hallway, trying to convince the other that there was nothing inappropriate about our request.
Too scared to knock, we instead asked people on the street if they knew where we could find a swimming pool. Two boys told us there was one in a block of units, along The Boulevard, the street that has waves in it like a noodle. Units line each side, and we tried to look for one with a driveway on the right and two gates on the left, but all the blocks were subtlety wrong. The majority were 60’s red brick flats, the kind of places where if there was a pool, it would be choked with leaves and dirty around the edges, as battered-looking as the communal washing machine.
We turned back, and knocked at the door of a party we had passed. All the lights were on and the sound of people yapping leaked out into the night. Steph pressed the doorbell and the ring brought out a girl who, when she heard our request, ran to get the guy whose house it was. A group of people appeared, and stood in a cluster on the sidewalk, trying to solve our problem. We couldn’t understand the directions the guy was giving us, so in the end he decided to show us. He carried a beer in a stubby holder as if he was a Lego man and his arm had been bent into that position. He introduced himself as Rory. He was quite friendly and chivalrous, a generous soul. He seemed bored by his party, and we condemned the people who stayed with the three bottles of Jim Beam, rather than have an adventure with strangers. We approached part of the suburb that I refer to as the gated community – the street lined with apartment blocks, all in the same conglomerate, a small, complete world. We turned into the main driveway, stepping over the Private Property warning that was fading into the asphalt, and began peeking over fences to find the pool. It was encased behind a tall metal gate with a crest of spikes on the top, but it wasn’t hard to climb. Inside, we felt stealthy and triumphant. I took off my dress and waded into the water. I was drunk, and the water felt beautifully smooth. It must have been chlorinated, but it didn’t taste like it when I licked my lips, it tasted delicious and I resisted the urge to drink some. I swum laps sporadically, twisted over onto my back and paddled. The water was a dusky blue that reminded me of one of the shards of gemstone I used to keep in a little box as a child, and the lights of the surrounding apartments flashed on the water’s surface.
Leaving the pool and climbing over the fence again, I was coaching Steph how to get down "Now put your foot here... " when I saw a couple on the path behind us. A wide woman with frizzy blonde hair was staring at us and talking on a mobile phone. I wanted to think she was having a conversation with a friend and just happened to be looking in our direction, but I knew she was calling the police.
"Now –run, " I said, but we didn’t. We shuffled faster, but we didn’t walk as if we were being pursued, we had reached an unspoken, unconcerned consensus. Around the other side, the woman had followed us, cutting through the secret passages in apartment world. "You’d better hurry, they’re on their way, " she said meanly. A man stood behind her, a shadowy figure she had dragged out for protection. Her territoriality was vicious, she stood behind the fence like a Rottweiler.
We split up at the edge of the park, cut through the back of the playing field, and began to walk home. When I was sitting on a wall putting my shoes back on, a police car pulled up across the road, followed by two others. I continued buckling my shoes casually, but I felt a still, sinking feeling in my body, as if I was travelling down a long escalator, not knowing if there was a way to get back to where I started. Six police assembled around us. When they asked what we’d been doing, we answered haltingly, not sure of how we’d structure our story. My mind was crawling through the events of the last half an hour, trying to make something out of it that didn’t sound like something I could be prosecuted for. My mind felt as busy as a telephone exchange as my potential lies competed for dominance.
As we explained ourselves, all of the police except for the two in the first car left, disappearing back into the night. It had been strange to be the focus of all their attention –for that moment, we were the only thing on their minds. Two girls in gowns. Steph had a hibiscus pinned in her hair, and was wearing a floating green dress. I was wearing a smart navy and white floral dress with matching coat. We didn’t look like people who had perpetrated a break and enter, which is what had been reported.
They asked to see the contents of my bag and I took everything out of it and lined them up on the fence. As I did it, I commentated. "Bottle of wine...wallet... " There was a crumpled supermarket receipt in there and I added it to the line, then a five cent piece that was in the bottom of my bag. They asked for my ID and I handed something over. The officer’s notebook and pencil looked small and mean and tiny. Steph gave her surname as Johnson, and gave at fake birthdate, but they had me the real me in their little book.
They made us get in the car, and direct us to where the party had been. We told them that we had met a guy who I know from the area, and asked him if he had a swimming pool. He told us he lived in a block apartments, and was having a party there tonight, but he didn’t have his keys with him and so we’d have to jump the fence. I knew it wasn’t a very convincing story, but we stuck to it. I thought of telling the truth, but it wasn’t something a writer should have to do in such a situation. The police car moved smoothly, it felt as if we were floating as they drove us back to apartment world.
"Was it here? " they kept asking.
"No, no... " Steph said vigorously, as soon as they approached where we had been. Our lies were exhilarating, they sealed our swimming into a private world, which I imagined as a large soap bubble. Inside the bubble we were leisurely swimming laps in the pool, Steph’s dress billowing around her in the water, I was watching the matter of factness with which I took of my dress in front of a complete stranger. This was disconnected from our confinement in the back of the car, driving all through suburban streets as if looking for a lost pet.
"There was a park, but it wasn’t this one, this one is locked, " I said, trying to appear as if I really was very confused. We drove around this way for a while, and a feeling of resignation settled upon me. I felt I could be in this car for a long time, the cops could drive me around for hours, until we’d covered every street in the suburb. I decided I should enjoy gliding around the streets in a police car. I settled back against the seat, thinking about the other offenders who had been in my place. Steph was sitting on the seat with bulletproof jackets behind her, and looked uncomfortable. She reached over and grabbed my hand, and squeezed it. Her hand seemed very cold and small and I rvous about holding it because it was the only sign that we were anxious. Otherwise we merely appeared both drunk and stupid.
They pulled over by the kerb and one of the officers climbed out to stand by the car and made calls on her phone. To pass the time, I decided to do some sucking up, and asked the remaining cop how her night had been. Busy? She didn’t want to make chit-chat, but she humoured me. She had a sharp face and a bossy expression. I was sure she was younger than me and it registered that I am now at an age where I am older than police officers. She said she was due to finish her shift at midnight. I looked at the clock in the dashboard –11:55. As I spoke, I leaned forward to the corner of her seat, as if I was conversing with a friend whilst waiting in a parked car for the driver to emerge from a 7-11. I had decided that in order to play the role of cop’s friend, I needed to lean forward and engage, instead of yelling my inane questions from the back seat.
When the other officer returned, she said she was going to drive us home. "You get a ride home anyway, " she said. I was still nervous, and when the car pulled up outside my house we sat in it waiting whilst the officer with the phone stepped out to talk on it again. I could see the car reflected in the front windows, a shiny ghost-car. I thought of the comforting familiar objects inside my living room, divided from me by the shell of the car and the word of the police.
"You gave some people a terrible fright tonight, " they said. I felt like a naughty schoolkid, caught going out of boundaries. They were trying to instil sympathy for the people who had dobbed us in, but I feel no sympathy for anyone in Apartment World. It is an environment that breeds pettiness. We sat through their reprimands, and a few minutes later, we were free. I pushed the car door shut and sealed the police in their gliding machine.
Despite our best intentions, our nights can never stay refined. Steph had carefully purchased the wine, planning on an evening where she relaxed over a couple of glasses, rather than become crazed on the idea of swimming pools and get a police escort home. In the garden, discussing friendship and creativity, we were still respectable. It was the outside world that was our downfall. We wanted to romp over it like toddlers in a playroom. Out there, we had every right to fulfil our desires, and it was that the police were trying to quash, with reprimands like "you can’t just climb people’s fences ".
"Why not? " I wanted to ask. I wanted to hear every excuse they could give me, go beyond law and propriety and make them admit is was because of human selfishness. People should share their pools, you should be able to knock on people’s doors when hungry and poor and ask for Vegemite toast, people should share their good fortune, rather than keep it locked up behind fences.
At home Steph defused my worry, disgusted that I was afraid they’d come back and arrest us. She insisted that we dance, first to Mick Harvey, then to her cock rock CD. She snatched up the vacuum cleaner and used it as a guitar, her fingers splayed into different chords on the silver stem, her other hand violently strumming. I played rhythm on a metal ruler, before slumping on the couch watching Steph whooping and yelling about the chicks in the audience who were in a frenzy of sexual excitement over her guitar prowess. Once the CD ended, and I gulped down the last of the inky wine and tiptoed carefully into the bedroom, easing myself into the bed carefully so as to not wake up Tim. I stretched my hand out to touch him and it kept going, reaching the other side of the bed. The Motley Crue and hollering from the living room had forced him out to his study, where he tried to sleep without thought of the wine crazy girls flouncing around his house.