By ELANA LAVINE
He gets in the water piece by piece, ankle thigh nipples, grunt. Shoulders below the same surface, it’s obscene, like slipping into my bed.
Oh that’s cold
I’ve stopped for breath. Not for this.
You’re a strong swimmer, he says, I was watching. A round-calved lifeguard stalks, pink toenails at my eyeline. She knows, and I know, that I can’t have a lane all to myself.
I swam in college, he says—as though I’ve asked.
People who swim at night just want to be left alone. Ladies flapping in flower-molded swim caps. Swim team dropouts, mute and sinewed. Their flip-turns soak the deck, thighs like pistons. The old man whose suit is so translucent I look away, and the yeti who fills both halves of his lane, eclipsing the black line. But I’m close enough to touch the frizzle of this man’s neck, my pool lane husband with his streaky yellow smile.
I have enough at home.
is that all you can manage to say—
can you bring me the f—
why do you always—
The man coughs. A dull gold chain on his chest, lost in the hair.
How much have you done, he asks.
I know the question. I also know his species, homo delusionis: veined bellies, straining skin, shoulders lifted with memory of muscles long gone. His liver is half a watermelon, armskin soft and flapping, surrendered to the steering wheel, the lifted highball glass. Not his fault, though. Her lawyer was a snake. The bitter drift of time on dry land, a crumbling of goggle straps. Gout pills/old cheddar/single malt/timeshare/associate director of accounts receivable. Hairless ankle-deep at beachfront Hard Rock Punta Cana, no farther in. A bad knee—the left one. Have to take it easy, the doctor said.
HOW MA-NEE LAPS, he tries again.
I keep my mouth below the waterline.
You’re very conversational
And I push off. Up, over, reach, gasp, glide. Squinting through blue. Up, over, reach. Again, again. An hour, fourteen years, submerged, a man behind me.
when will you be home—
can’t you remember to—
At the edge of another pool, young and dumb, I’d chosen a lane. Scared to swim alone, or not to swim at all, I followed him to the deep end. Ambitious, not exactly mean, not—quite—merciless. I dissociated as needed for cocktail party moments, gripping a glass, waiting to get home to my children. It didn’t start like this, that’s what every swimming woman says, her arms growing tired. Better had I stayed on land, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter.
There’s no one to ask.
Back at the wall now, where the man still hovers, fiddling with his waistband. Stalling.
Blow out, drop.
Heels over head.
Two feet against tile, push off, glide through his bulky shadow. Kick my warning, inches from his hip. It seemed a better idea in that empty black leather condo, didn’t it? Clear blue water, nearby young flesh, get the heart rate up. But colder than he expected, poor baby. He should stay on his side of the line, or I’ll remind him why it’s there.
Elana Lavine‘s short fiction has been published in Fractured Literary, New Flash Fiction Review, and Flash Fiction Magazine. She writes and practices medicine in Toronto, Canada.
