by Edward Hogan
I sat down. “How come you can swim so well?” I said.
“People think you have to thrash around to swim well, but it’s not true. The average dolphin is eighty percent efficient in the water.”
“The average dolphin?” I said.
“Eighty percent of its energy goes into propelling it forward. Guess how efficient the average human is.”
“I don’t know. Fifty?”
“Fifty! Way off. Three percent. Three percent efficient. Ninety-seven percent of their energy is wasted.”
“Right.”
“Swimming’s easy,” she said. “You just make a wave and ride it.”
We sat for a moment, watching a heron on the far side of the lake, his crown feather like an old man’s comb-over gone awry. We listened to the park waking up behind us. One of the staff started checking the boats over by the harbor.
“You must have good eyes,” she said.
Not as good as yours, I thought. They were brown and green, dizzying.
“Why?” I said.
“You saw me, the other day. When you were in the electric carriage.”
“I knew it was you! I saved your life.”
“Not sure about that, Daniel. And you saw me last night. When you left the Pancake House.”
“It’s not that far away. You were wearing a bright-red top. There was a sign that said NO SWIMMING, but you were swimming.”
“Well. Not many people see me.”
“I’m glad I did,” I said.
“Steady on. Don’t give your heart away yet.”
I turned away because I could feel my face going red. I put the sweatshirt over my man boobs. “You know, I was only looking at you, because —”
“Because you wanted to. Because you’re a boy and you can’t help it. It’s in you,” she said.
“What’s in me?”
“The darkness. The will to do bad things if you can get away with it.”
“I don’t think —”
“All you boys. And men. You’ve got all this hate and anger and desire, and when you’re faced with the temptation of a woman, you can’t help yourselves.”
“Hate? It’s not hate. I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you like. It’s your nature.”
“Are you religious?” I asked.
“Not anymore,” she said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Lexi,” she said. She extended her fist, and I knew she was being sarcastic. I laughed. “Come on,” she said. “Touch the glove.”
I looked down at her hand and the big watch on her wrist. Something made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t work out what it was. “It’s very nice to meet you, Daniel. You’re very interesting, and you have excellent eyesight.”
“I have to wear glasses for reading,” I said.
“You have excellent mindsight, then.”
I put my fist against hers, slotted my knuckles into the gaps.
She seemed to signal that the meeting was over, so I stood up and started walking toward the Shopper. I turned back, and looked again at the yellowy coloring around her eye. “When . . . ? How can I see you again?” I asked. “Where will you be?”
“I’ll be here,” she said. “But no peeping from behind the trees, OK?”
Dad wasn’t there when I got back to the cabin. Sometimes he couldn’t cope with the shame of a hangover. He wasn’t shamed enough to tidy up, though. I went through to the kitchen area (there are few real rooms at Leisure World, only “areas”) and picked up my rucksack. Dad had watered the tomato plant. But I noticed something strange about it. Four or five of the tomatoes had a green tinge to them. My life at home, with its guilty televisions and deliberate nosebleeds, was beginning to look normal compared to Leisure World. I checked that my swim trunks were still in the rucksack, and I left the cabin.
Chrissy, the older of the two sisters, was out in the garden next door, putting last night’s leftovers in the bin. “Hey,” she said. “Daniel. Wait up.”
I stopped. “Hi,” I said.
She crept close to where I was standing with the bike. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“OK,” I said.
“Your dad,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
“He came over to the barbecue last night.”
Maybe, I thought, he went to the barbecue, drank a cup of tea, and told a funny and charming story. Maybe not.
“He seemed a bit . . . worse for wear. Was he OK when he got home?”
“Fine.”
“Does he usually drink like that?” she asked.
“Everybody needs to cut loose once in a while.”
She smiled and her shoulders dropped. “He reminds me of my ex-husband,” she said. “Running too fast because he thinks he might be able to get away from himself.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“You know, you seem stressed out, Dan. I practice Reiki. It’s basically a way to relax. A bit like massage. Maybe I could book you in for a session.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
I grabbed the Shopper and left.
I didn’t really know why I was going to the Tropical Dome. I had forgotten about swimming as an activity. As a kid, I had liked it. Mum had taught me to overcome my fear when I was small. We’d gone straight to the deep end at the local pool. “Are you scared?” she had said.
“Yes,” I’d said.
“What are you scared of?” she’d said.
“Sinking to the bottom.”
“OK,” she’d said. We had climbed into the water together. “Try and sink,” she had said. I looked at her like she was mad. “Go on, I’ve got you.”
Of course, I couldn’t. It was impossible to sink. Once I knew that, I was fine.
For obvious reasons, I hadn’t swum since the toddlerbody incident, but seeing the way Lexi had cruised through the lake, I remembered that it could be a pleasure.
The atmosphere in the Tropical Dome was close and muggy. Once you were in there, it was difficult to tell the real plants from the fake. Women lay on their loungers, drinking brightly colored juices, while the men read the paper or slept. Music blared out from the café shack. The wave machine came on every hour for fifteen minutes, and it was on now, so all the kids were in the water, their screams rising into the Dome’s upper atmosphere. I didn’t want to go in there with the inflatable alligators and the pissing children, so I waited near some thick vegetation, still wearing my T-shirt. I heard a voice above me.
“You OK, matey?”
It was the lifeguard, sitting on his high seat at the top of some scaffolding. He was about eighteen, with long dyed-blond hair, red shorts, and a white tank top.
“I’m fine,” I called up.
“Looking a bit edgy, man.”
“I’m just waiting for the waves to finish,” I said.
“Yeah, good call. Good call.” He climbed down from the seat. He wore a necklace strung with brown and white beads and animal teeth. “Even I wouldn’t go in there at the minute,” he said.
“What if someone was in trouble?” I said.
He laughed. “Nice one. Yeah, I’d go in if I had to. But it’s like Pirates of the Caribbean. Without the hot girls. I’m Ryan,” he said.
“Daniel,” I said.
He blinked slowly and held out his hand for one of those high-grip handshakes. I thought back to the fist bump with Lexi: I was lost in a world of special handshakes. “Good to meet you, man,” he said.
“Do you like working here?” I asked.
“You can’t beat the Dome. Hot all year-round. Where else in this stupid country can you wear shorts in October?”
I thought of winter PE on the rugby field, shivering and hoping I’d get hit just to numb myself from the cold, or so I could leave the field injured. Not that the teachers would let me. Come on, Lever. Hefty lad like you. This should be your game.
“Listen, have you seen a girl swimming in here this week, with long black hai
r?” I asked. “Swims like a . . . she swims really well.”
“Lot of girls come through here, man.”
“She might have had a black eye. I don’t know.”
“Is she nice?”
“I guess so. Something a bit, I don’t know, different about her.”
“I’ll keep a lookout.”
The wave machine was coming to a halt, and kids were climbing out of the water. A spiky-haired boy stood in front of us, ready to smack another lad on the head with an inflatable hammer. He raised it behind his back, and just as he was about to swing, Ryan took it out of his hands. The boy swung anyway and looked surprised to find that his weapon had vanished. He turned around, amazed. “Peace in the pool, matey,” Ryan said to him, and gave him the hammer back.
I looked at the water, the lines of the tiles wavy and blue beneath.
“You should get in, man. You look tense. Water’s the best thing for tension,” Ryan said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Part of the service,” he said.
I waited for him to walk away, and then I quickly took my T-shirt off, threw it under a palm tree, and climbed into the water, trying to keep my body facing away from the crowds of juice drinkers and sunbathers. I felt the tiny bubbles I had made climb up the hairs on my legs and arms. Closing my eyes, I plunged under and battered out a few strokes, hearing the noise muffled above. When I came up, I was gasping for air, and I felt like all the energy had drained out of me. I wasn’t in great shape.
The world looks massive when you’re in water. It rises high, but you feel safe. You feel like a child again. The plants curved out over the pool, and I let myself be dragged along in the rapids, feeling the jet streams against my body. The ceiling of the Dome seemed miles away, in the same way it does when you go into a cathedral.
There weren’t many people around, and the water came up to our necks, so nobody stared at me. Everyone’s hairstyles were just about the same. The wet look. By the time the rapids ejected me back into the pool, I had my breath back.
I let myself be carried by the momentum, and then I rolled beneath the surface and opened my eyes to that glassy underworld. What had Lexi said? “Swimming’s easy. You just make a wave and ride it.” I thought about her, the rhythm of her strokes, the perfect timing of them that made her motion look so effortless. One. And. Two. And. Three. And.
I counted the rhythm in my mind. Eventually, I felt my arm coming over my head, and then the other. I felt the bowed swell of the water in front of me, and I chased it, settled into the slipstream. My body moved slowly but inevitably, as if the strokes had already happened and I was just following them. I remembered to breathe and put my face out of the water for a moment. The noise came crashing in — the music, the shouting, the chitchat, the clink of glasses, and the rude squeeze of the inflatables — and then, mercifully, it stopped when I went back under.
This was a space I could be in. Outside of time, outside of my father’s moods and my own hang-ups. There were moments when I felt my legs slowly and forcefully propelling me forward, when I felt like she was there in the pool with me. I half opened my eyes, but the water was clear and empty. I heard the bowstring echo of voices.
For a few moments, I felt completely relaxed. But then I thought of the faint coloring around her eye. Something wasn’t right. I could feel it. I kept swimming, but I was panicking now, my body shuddering, the air going out of me in great bubbles. It was her hand — when she held out her fist for me to bump — there was something not right about her hand. I saw it in my mind. The long fingers, the watch with the digital seconds flickering. It was the watch. I did not have to search my memory, because the images seemed to come without my bidding. The seconds flickering: 34, 33, 32, 31. I burst through the membrane of the pool’s surface and took in a huge, desperate breath. It was almost a scream. People were looking at me. I was standing up in the shallow end, my body on show. Ryan was frowning from his perch. Her watch, I thought. It was ticking backward.
I went over to the palm tree to retrieve my T-shirt. The boys I had seen through the Dome’s outer shell on the first day were sitting on a lounger nearby. The girls in bikinis weren’t there, fortunately. “Nice pair,” one of the boys said, but I ignored him. My mind was spinning with the thought of Lexi and her watch.
I picked up my T-shirt and put it straight over my wet body. I felt the cotton becoming wet and cold in two big patches against my chest. “Give us a feel, darling,” one of the boys said.
Usually, I would have said something back, maybe even flipped them the finger. But I felt so calm after being in the water. I was in a trance. As I walked past the boys, I saw my Dad, and the calm dropped away. He was pale, and the odd light of the Dome made his skin look green. I could smell him before I could hear him. He smelt like petrol, and he was wearing his tracksuit and sneakers. This was typical Dad: he wore his flip-flops to drive and his sneakers to the pool. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Daniel. Where’ve you been?”
I was sopping wet and standing next to a pool. “Swimming,” I said.
“I can see that. I saw you in there. But I thought you didn’t like swimming. I thought you were too . . .”
“Too what? Too fat?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
I stopped about a meter from him. Shot veins like lightning strikes stretched across his eyeballs. He was holding a paper cup full of coffee, and his hand was shaking.
“You weren’t in the cabin this morning when I woke up,” he said.
“Really? And when did you wake up?” I said.
“I was worried about you.”
“You weren’t worried last night, were you? When you were kicking the TV and throwing up everywhere.”
“Shush. Keep your voice down.”
I could feel people sitting up on their loungers, peering over. “Why should I?” I said. “Why should I behave properly when you don’t?”
I walked past him, but he stuck his arm out, caught me by the wrist. I nearly slipped on the wet tiles. My father was short and weighty like me, but he carried it better, and he was strong.
“You listen to me, lad,” he said.
“Let go,” I said. I could hear the boys laughing in the background. I struggled slightly, but I couldn’t even move.
“Everything cool here?”
It was Ryan.
“It’s fine,” Dad said. “This is a family matter.”
Ryan smiled and looked at me. “Daniel, how’s it going, dude?”
I stared at the water and tried to calm my breathing.
“Look,” Dad said to Ryan. “This doesn’t concern you, all right?”
“Actually, sir, it does concern me. I can’t let you stay in the Dome while wearing outdoor footwear. It’s a flip-flop zone, man. Or you can go natural, like Daniel here.”
He turned to me. “Actually, Dan, you should get some flip-flops. It’s wart central in here,” he said, before addressing Dad again. “But no sneaky sneakers, sir, if you don’t mind.”
Dad took his hand off me, and I walked out before I could see him rub the stubble on his neck. As I got to the changing rooms, I looked at the clock. I could hardly believe it. I’d been swimming for two and a half hours.
I put my sneakers on and ran straight out, half expecting Dad to chase me, half disappointed when he didn’t. I cycled like crazy to the lake, left the Shopper by the first stand of pines, and sprinted into the woods, the patches of cooling cloth raising goose bumps on my skin. I ran out to the clearing, then stopped and put my hands on my thighs. I was dizzy with the exertion. I could hardly breathe and could feel curtains of darkness closing in on my vision. I composed myself. There wasn’t a sound from the lake; the instructors had taken the boats out on the water. There were no clothes on the sandy earth. “Hello!” I shouted. My voice echoed through the treetops.
Some old woman on one of the boats waved at me.
I thought I was going to have to lie down, but then I felt t
his great surge of energy flow through me. I don’t know where it came from. It was something like happiness.
I walked back through the trees slowly and felt that my vision was so much clearer. I could see every groove in the bark of the trees, every contour of the soil, every fern glowing with the afternoon sunlight.
I collected my bike. As I was about to leave, I noticed a carving on the tree against which I had left the Shopper:
For some reason, the numbers sent a chill through my body. Suddenly, everything seemed important, so I stared at the numbers until they were lodged in my memory, and then I rode back toward the cabin, because there was nowhere else to go.
That night Dad brought pizza back from one of the restaurants. He had cleaned the cabin and said he was sorry. I could see from his expression and hear from the tone of his voice who he was sorry for — and it wasn’t me. “It was good to see you swimming,” he said. “You were going fast. Imagine if you pumped your arms a little bit faster.”
“You don’t need to pump your arms. It’s about timing,” I said.
“Your mother was a strong swimmer,” he said.
Oh, Jesus, I thought. Here we go.
He bucked up and shrugged. “Anyway, you looked good in the water. That’s all I was saying.”
Of course I looked good, I thought. I was submerged.
In my room, I stared out the window into the woods. I thought about the numbers on the tree. What could they mean? It wasn’t the usual Tom is gay or Daz 4 Niki. I took Dad’s mobile from the living area and went back into my room. I dialed the local area code and then the first number: 122593.
The number you have dialed is not recognized, the woman said. I hung up and tried the second number.
“Hello.” It was an old man’s voice. Sounded like there was something wrong with him.
“Hi. Who’s this?”
“It’s Mickey bleeding Mouse. Who’s this?”
“I just wondered if Lexi was there.”
“If what was there? Is this a prank? Are you the kid that pissed on my pansies?”
“No,” I said. I started laughing. It was such a funny thing to say.
