Reflecting Pool contractor blames its own repair job, not vandals, for damage judge called 'meritless re-prosecution.'

…(cont) Now I'm out in the garage — car's needed a fan belt since sometime in July, I keep meaning to get to it — standing there with the hood up, and I got to thinking about that pool, because when a belt goes, the first place you look is what you did to it. Did I put it on crooked. Did I run it too tight. You don't generally start by wondering who snuck into the garage overnight and loosened it for you. That's not usually where you start.

So today — today's page, ink's barely dry — the company that repaired the pool told the Times their new liner peeled and tore because of, and I want to read this part slow, "human oversight," and a repair plan that layered two chemicals that don't belong together. That's their word. Not mine, not the judge's. The contractor's own documents, in this morning's paper.

My dog was out there with me while I worked the belt, and dogs don't ask questions, which is more than I can say for me, because I keep circling back to something, and I apologize for it — I already gave you August, and September, and now today — but if the people who did the work say the work is what broke, what's left for the Olympian to have done?

I don't write down answers. That's not the job. I write down what they said, and I let the page sit there.

Oh — hang on, one more thing, because I'd hate to walk out on you without asking it. This pool the judge already stood in open court and called a meritless re-prosecution — is that the same pool the company doing the repairs now says its own crew tore open, not with wire cutters, not in the dark, but with two chemicals that never should have touched, filed under the word the contractor picked for itself, on its own paper, in its own hand — oversight?