The Risk Pool

might circumvent the covenants and restrictions of the Kings Road neighborhood. Anyone could have told him that wasn’t likely, but he didn’t ask anyone. The new in-ground pool was combined recreation and revenge, and the neighborhood petition lost momentum when in place of Aunt Rose’s little picket fence a five-foot-high chain-link fence went up around the entire property, undercutting the sole rational basis for objection, and refocusing the object of resentment from the big hole in the ground to the fence that surrounded it. There would be no cross-cutting this particular lot. “Good fences make good neighbors,” Claude Sr. often remarked with satisfaction and without attribution. It certainly was a fine fence, and when completed, the pool was fine too, along with the ramada and gas grill, all firsts in our neighborhood and all regarded with distaste.
    I was Claude Jr.’s only friend, perhaps the only friend of the family. And never was the term friend more qualified. As I rememberit, I can honestly say that back then there was never an ounce of honest affection between myself and any of the Claudes (their name was Schwartz, but I always thought of them as the Claudes after discovering that the mother’s name was, incredibly, Claudine). Mrs. Claude and Claude Sr. were clearly disappointed that I was the best their son could do. After all, I was two years younger than he, and undistinguished to boot, though I overheard Claude Sr. once remark that at least I wasn’t “typical Mohawk,” which I took to be a compliment. And while they treated me well enough—I was practically a fixture at their dinner table (they ate abundantly, wonderfully) that summer the pool went in, I cared for the Claudes no more than they cared for me. Claude Sr.’s sarcastic and condescending manner made me feel ridiculed, and his wife’s constant lament about Mohawk’s not being able to support a single top-notch hairdresser I took to be somehow my fault.
    My relationship with Claude Jr. was strangest of all, predicated entirely on competition, or, more precisely, the lack of it that I could provide. Claude insisted that everything we did be a contest. Swimming, throwing, running, eating—it did not matter. He loved to win at anything, and the two years he had on me pretty nearly always ensured success. I have since heard of psychological profiles done on children that illuminate, to some degree, Claude’s character. A child is given a beanbag and invited to toss it into a circle. From close up, the task is easy enough, but as the child, on succeeding tosses, is backed farther and farther from the circle he inevitably encounters more difficulty. From across the room, the circle is pretty tough to hit and the child’s chances of success are diminished. When the child has tossed the beanbag from each varying distance, he is told he can have one more toss from anywhere he likes. Relatively few will grasp that success from the nearest stripe is a rather qualified affair and these will go directly to the farthest. Others, caring only for the assurance of success, no matter how qualified, indeed never suspecting that success could
be
qualified, will stand at the lip of the circle, plink the bag down, and be enamored of themselves for so doing.
    Claude Jr. was just such a boy. His appetite for victory was insatiable. If he beat me ten times in a row swimming freestyle laps in the pool, he’d immediately lobby for an eleventh race under the pretext of giving me another chance. If I demurred, he would lecture me that I’d never get anywhere if I was just going to give up.
    One September day after lunch, he emerged from the house with three large bags of Oreos. He carefully arranged the cookies in three equal columns, one group before me, the other before himself. I was extraordinarily fond of Oreos, but the long phalanxes—eight cookies deep, three high—were discouraging to look at, as was Claude, whose greedy eyes had already begun to devour his. His thick stomach hung out over his bathing suit, and his chest looked vaguely feminine. It did not take a genius to figure out what he had in mind.
    We ate Oreos.
    I scarfed the first half dozen or so happily, the second six without serious misgivings, except when I contemplated how many remained. Before long, however, it became obvious I wasn’t going to win, though Claude was slowing down too. He kept a comfortable half-dozen lead at all times, and at the end of my second dozen I