"Yeah," Torchiano says. "Something about somebody moving a chair."
When the whistle for adult swim blows, and all swimmers age 16 or younger have to leave the water, Eisner lowers himself into the pool and cruises the shallows. Even in the water, he wears his cap and, under that, a plastic visor emblazoned with a stars-and-stripes pattern and, under that, his sunglasses, which sometimes slip to his chin and make him look as though he has a second face.
George Romero tries to chat with Ana Chicas at the Wheaton-Glenmont Pool.
(Photograph by Greg Miller)
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Eisner says he began swimming when he was 6 years old, in lakes and rivers around the Sudetenland region of what was then western Czechoslovakia. Eisner's mother was Catholic. His father was Jewish and a partner in a successful import-export business trafficking mainly in children's toys. In 1938, when Adolph Hitler annexed the Sudetenland, Eisner's father was arrested by the Gestapo and then released with the warning that he and his family had 72 hours to abandon their home. The Eisners resettled in Prague, where they were told they had to register with the Gestapo and sew a Star of David onto their clothes. Because of Nazi anti-Jewish decrees regarding public schools, Eisner, who, according to Hitler's racist Nuremberg Laws was considered a mischling (someone of mixed race), was expelled from third grade. He was also prohibited from owning a bicycle, a radio or a record player, and from entering libraries, parks or museums, and from swimming in public pools.
In 1944, when Eisner was 12, he and his father were sent to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp north of Prague, where they were held until the camp was liberated by the Russian army in the spring of 1945. "You'd wake up in the morning, and the guy next to you would be dead, and you'd take the body outside for the cart to pick it up," Eisner says. "When I got out, I weighed 63 pounds. I had a touch of tuberculosis and dysentery. They sent me to Switzerland to get cured up." In Switzerland, Eisner says, he also got back into swimming. "They had a lake near the place where I was recuperating, and I'd be in that water every day."
In 1949, an American philanthropist arranged for the Eisners to emigrate to the United States. When U.S. immigration officials asked Eisner to state his religion, he decided that it was time for his affiliation with the Jewish faith to come to an end. "When I came over, I detected traces of anti-Semitism in America, too, and I decided I'd suffered enough. I wanted to go with a religion where no one could pick on me. I declared my religion as 'no preference.' "
After high school, Eisner began a 27-year career in the Army and completed tours of duty throughout Europe, Asia and, as a civilian consultant, in the Middle East. In his off-hours, his career gave him the opportunity to swim in a large number of lakes, oceans, pools and seas across the globe. "I've swum in every ocean in the world: the Atlantic, Pacific, the Red Sea and the Dead Sea," he says. "I swam on China Beach in Vietnam. In Korea, I'd go up to Cheju Island up toward Inchon . . . I was in Saudi Arabia for three years, and I'd get off work and go to the pool every day, and there's no winter over there." He also swims on the vacations to Hawaii and other warm climes he takes with his wife, to whom he's been married for 46 years but who doesn't often join him at the pool. "My wife's from Japan, but she doesn't like the water. She says, 'You must have been born a frogman or something.' " When Labor Day arrives, Eisner greets it with frustration, because it means he has to do his swimming at an indoor pool in Bethesda.
As adult swim wears on, Eisner completes a slow circuit of the shallow end, mostly walking along the bottom but occasionally floating into a gentle breaststroke. With the slow, careful stealth of an aged shark, he moves past young men splashing one another and couples embracing. Then he hauls himself out and resumes his spot in his chair.
He talks for a while with Torchiano. Their discussions tend toward military topics, and today's conversation turns to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Torchiano decides to go home, he puts on a black T-shirt that reads "Bada Bing!" He gathers his towel and other belongings and gives Eisner a casual salute. "Colonel," he says, "as you were."
WHEN THE DOORS OPEN FOR TEEN NIGHT, George Romero is the first one at the gate. One of the plainclothes officers calls him over and subjects him to a vigorous pat-down, which causes George to wince and giggle. He walks past the tables by the snack bar, arrayed with decks of cards, Scrabble and checkers, games that are still in their cellophane and will stay that way all night.
The kids lined up at the door are many of the same kids who show up during the day, though for the boys at least, the tropical motley of bathing costume hues has dimmed mostly to black T-shirts and pants. Josh comes through the line wearing a dark shirt and dark jeans, whose cuffs he'd arranged to sit perfectly on the tops of his butter-colored boots, until the frisking messed them up. "Come on," he says to George, and the two of them and about a dozen other kids go over to a set of bleachers and watch the people filing in.
No one here is dressed to swim. In fact, everyone ignores the pool, as though it's an uncomfortable reminder that they're not at a nightclub or some other grown-up event.
"What are we doing?" one kid asks after a good 10 minutes of uneventful sitting.
"We're waiting for the girls," someone answers.
"I don't wait for girls," says a pudgy youth. "The girls wait for me."
When the girls don't immediately materialize, Chino goes over to a volleyball net set up behind the bleachers, and a few guys begin an impromptu game. But the game ends quickly when, early on, someone knocks the ball over the fence. Everyone turns and notices a police officer stationed in the weeds on the other side. The officer watches the ball bounce off into the underbrush. Someone voices the first syllable of a request for the officer to go get the ball but then thinks better of it.
At length, one teen gets restless and strips to his bathing suit. He goes over to the diving board and begins a series of suicide dives. Soon the others join in, leaving Chino and Josh on the bleachers.
Josh will be finishing up his high school coursework this fall, after which he hopes to win a scholarship to college. Someday, he says, he'd like to be a music producer or an engineer, or to run his own barbershop. In any case, this will probably be his last summer of daily visits to the pool. He watches the younger kids diving with an expression of both approval and regret. "Man," he says ruefully. "I should have brought my suit." After a while, the last and most reluctant of the Romeros' companions decides to give up the bench. "All right, I'm about to get my black ass in the water," he says. "Gonna get in, Chino?"
"Maybe later," Chino says.
Ryan White strolls past. "Hey, Ryan," Chino says. Chino is always solicitous with Ryan because he wants a job lifeguarding here next summer. Ryan nods and continues on his rounds.
Ryan is planning to take his entrance exam for the Secret Service a month from now. Already, he seems to have a knack for taking in his surroundings with wide-angle surveillance, simultaneously watching the fences, the bleachers and the water. He says his ambition for law enforcement took hold during the 2002 sniper attacks, four of which happened within a few miles of the pool. "I found myself mapping out the places they'd hit, thinking up these profiles of who it might be. It just sort of piqued my interest in doing something with intelligence or law enforcement."
Ryan is a focused young man who has respect for people who, as he puts it, "do what they're supposed to do." Under Ryan's recreation department polo shirt, at the top of his spine, he has a tattoo of a Superman logo, whom Ryan admires "because he's strong; he's smart; he does what he's supposed to do."
Suddenly, there's a commotion over by the bench where the Romeros were sitting, and Ryan walks over quickly.
Josh intercepts Ryan. "It's squashed," Josh says. "It's killed." A disagreement, evidently, between a couple of guys over a girl. "I know both of them," Josh says. "I got between them. I didn't want them to fight."
