Know what happens when you pack your house’s gas line with dirt, then bury it four feet deep in your backyard?

Well, to start your boiler's pilot light keeps going out, inexplicably.

Then you smell gas. Of course. But only when the wind blows a certain direction - or when there's no wind at all. The bevy of plumbers you organize to take a look seem flummoxed. One reseals a threaded joint that abuts your wall. The next says it's probably a fault in the City's connection, so best to call their 800 number. The next simply replaces the outdoor regulator to the tune of $600, plus labor.

Meantime, you're in Florida (of course) and you're having your pool replaced, which, is all well and good but, no goddamn way, I don't like the tone of your voice, I had nothing to do with any gas issue, says The Pool Guy.

The Pool Guy is aggressive mostly, at least when he's not banging red-packaged cigarettes and holding court about how he's the best pool guy ever. He sports too-tight T-shirts in faded pigment colors. He's sundrenched tan, built like a mini hulk, with a chiseled chin that has a notch in it like a sliver of hate; his tired-brown hair is short-cropped and curly, sloped over a brutish forehead with leathery wrinkles furrowing at the corners of his eyes.

The backyard is full of churned dirt the color of burnt coffee, trees are uprooted, and dozens of boot tracks stagger where flowers used to bloom. The Next Door Neighbor calls, furious, because he no longer has running water; he's aware of the pool project and notes the C-lug caterpillar treads that zig zag right up to his exterior wall, to his shattered shut-off valve.

The Pool Guy has a Bachelor's Degree in gaslighting. No it wasn't me, the nerve of the accusation. The Pool Guy asks for proof, then ignores you to bark orders at a dozen of his team members at once, shouting like sandpaper.

The Pool Guy refuses to admit any fault but - signaling his excellence in customer service - agrees to a fix, for an extra charge. Then adds that the project will most certainly delay because of the extra time for this work.

Later, The Pool Guy's Pool Designer Lady says that the pool is exactly in the right spot per the plan. You tell her that's nowhere near the plan she showed you, with a tape measure, from your backyard fence, just a month before. She reminds you she holds an award as 'Pool Designer of The Year' for Southern Florida.

She shows you the ground plans and notes the shell build up and slope grade, and asks if you understand architectural drawings. She ignores your plea that the measurements she showed you aren’t the same.

The Pool Guy is listening in, bored, as if he is a Sensei evaluating her grasshopper-level gaslighting capabilities.

The Neighbor Across The Street sends an angry text about the three dumptrucks of gravel on the sidewalk and mud stains on his herringbone brick driveway, and informs you they will be tattling on you to the Home Owners Association. The Pool Guy denies, denies, denies, then stares at The Neighbor Across the Street as if a Crested Carcara seeing roadkill a hundred feet in the distance.

He's a garbage disposal lusting for leftovers. 

The Neighbor Next Door sends a photo of The Pool Guy's crew sleeping in his front yard, with a caption: "I do not want the Pool Guy, his employees or his materials on my property for any purpose. He has caused me unnecessary damages never mind the headaches for all of us."

Then, as if ensuring you understand the local mob seeking permission to guillotine your head, "This was all reported to me by..." [list of a dozen Other Neighbors On Your Street].

The Most Recent Plumber has quit because The Pool Guy was caustic and terrorizing and, I won't be treated that way. The Next Plumber has more zen; he's performing calculations, offering deductions, spray painting the ground. He begins to dig and, lo and behold, finds a live gas line, freshly stuffed full of dirt and gravel, not to mention a merry handful of stray lug nuts.

The Next Plumber is slowly backing away and offers, "You're lucky your house didn't blow up every time you tried to relight your pilot."

He says the City will need to shut down the pool site.

The Pool Guy finds that offensive; he says it wasn't him, and by the way if it was, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, so stop all of your whining.

As you drive down your street, you perform some calculus: Your perfectly-gated (with three-story sniper towers) Florida community contains 1,100 homes, each with their own pool, each with their very own house gas line and their own Pool Guy who doesn't give two flying hootenanny fücks what you, the homeowner, nor the gas company, thinks about anything.

You've paid twice as much as proposed. It's taken three times as long as planned. The pool isn't where it should be. You've lost six palm trees, your boiler will need full replacement, and you are habitually chewing aspirin like kids' candy to lower your resting heart rate.

You send a fruit basket to The Neighbor Next Door because his water line was run over one more time, it seems, for good measure or maybe out of spite.

The Neighbor Next Door (who you are now told is a lawyer) sends an email: "You think a fruit basket is going to just make everything ok? Think again."

Later, the pool has to be filled twice, because your hose is a loser's hose and it didn't fill the pool fast enough and the low calcium water etched tiny pits and ridges into the plaster that can never be fixed.

That said, from afar it looks stunning, which The Pool Guy's Designer Lady notes when she asks if she can come shoot photos for her award-winning portfolio, but also because this is how The Pool Guy can get more business from people who happen to be just like you.