Third. A fucking lousy insignificant useless bloody third.
He had not qualified. He had lost. He was a loser.
Coach was standing there, a towel in his hand, telling him that it had been a good effort, that he had nothing to be ashamed of, that he had to focus on the next race, that the next race was his race, and Danny was listening and nodding and convincing himself that, yes, the next race was his race, but there was a thought forming at the corner of consciousness, he could almost grab it but he knew he must not, he could not. He shook his head, he flicked the thought to the back of his mind. But he knew it would be there; afterwards, after he won his next heat, once he came up on top, then he could reach for it. But not now. He knew that Coach trusted him to place in the next race and he wanted to hear that trust from Coach's lips, he needed to hear it, so he could believe it, that he was the best, the strongest, the fastest. Now he had to place all his trust in Coach. That was all that mattered.
Danny sat in the back row of the stadium to watch Wilco come first in his heat for the two hundred metre freestyle. He beat one of the golden boys. No, that's not right, thought Danny sourly, Wilco was a golden boy. Afterwards, Danny waited till Wilco finally emerged from the change rooms and then he bounced down the steps and went up to shake Wilco's hand. The older boy punched the air, raised his fist in triumph. He thinks he's such a hero, thought Danny, the spite so intense it left a foul taste in his mouth. But he knew not to show it, he knew exactly what he had to do.
'You legend,' he said, pumping Wilco's hand. 'You absolute fucking legend.'
Wilco couldn't stand still, his delight had spread across his face, animating his limbs, his whole body. It made him look like a boy again. Danny dropped Wilco's hand but continued to say congratulations. It was the only word he could think to say. He would show nothing of what was inside him, that some deadly serrated knife was carving right through him. He knew that he would not be able to bear it if he didn't qualify with his next swim. He couldn't stand it if Wilco was a champion and not him. If it didn't happen for Danny, he was sure that it would kill him. The knife would cut right through him, would carve him in half. Would destroy him.
He knew at his final turn that the race was his. That didn't make him punish the water less. The butterfly was never effortless, the butterfly was always work: one lapse of exertion led to failure. The stroke wasn't about being part of the water, it wasn't becoming one with the substance and matter and DNA of water. The stroke was a machine, the stroke was about making his body into a craft that razed a path through the water. It was fighting and twisting and transforming the element. On the second turn, his chest and lungs and sternum had morphed into one distinct muscle; his arms a wheel and his hips and legs and feet a threshing machine that kicked in one unified motion. By the last turn he was a perfect mechanism and the water had disappeared, bowed to his will, and it was flight now, the water was defeated, and he was energy working in a cyclical precise motion and the race was his. There was no water and there were no other swimmers and there were no black lines and there was not even the pool. All there was, all that existed, was Danny. He could feel the power of his chest and the strength of his back and the hardness of his abdomen and the potency of his arms. the capabilities of a flawless body, and that was how it was no surprise when he touched the tiles: he knew he had won. He was exhausted, he was breathless, his chest felt as though it would explode, but he was not spent. If he had to, he knew, he could have done it again. He had become the stroke, the stroke was now his. Coach had been right. And even as he punched the air, even as he heard his name called, as he shook the hands of the other swimmers who dived under the ropes to congratulate him, he was pushing a thought to the back of his mind. Not yet, not yet. He was the strongest, the fastest, the best. He was in the finals. He would prove it in the finals.
And he did. At the 1997 Australian Swimming Championships, Danny Kelly placed first in the two hundred metre men's butterfly.
It was in the showers that he had time to think. He thought through every moment of the race. It was mind. He understood for the first time exactly what Coach meant, what the great athletes and swimmers meant when they said it was all in the mind. It couldn't have been done without the strength and power of his body, but that strength and power was also inside of him. He was as strong and as powerful inside: the body and the mind were one, and so they could not break, they could not fail.
A stocky unshaven man came up to him after his shower, congratulated him and explained that he was a journalist for one of the Brisbane papers. He wanted to ask Danny a few questions. The man reeked, a sour odour, of too many cigarettes and curdled milk, but Danny eagerly answered the man's questions.
'And your name is Danny Kelly, that right?'
'Daniel Kelly,' he corrected him.
As the man scribbled in his notebook, Danny looked around for the photographers. There were none. But next time, next time he knew there would be photographers.
He was prepared this time on the plane for when the craft had to prove its strength, when the machine had to convince gravity that it was the more powerful. Again, as the plane rose he experienced the sensation of being dislodged, thrown away from his own body. Then he was one again, and again it was like swimming and there was a tingle in his belly and a tingle in his crotch.
This time, when the plane had climbed above the clouds and was floating in the canopy of sun and sky, Danny didn't look out the window. He was thinking of Wilco up in business class, thinking of when he, Danny, would be flying first class. But it would be his own money, he wouldn't be dependent on anyone. He would fly his parents first class to exotic places for their anniversaries, he would shout Regan trips to Europe and Theo trips to South America and the Poles.
It was then, with the snow of cloud beneath him, the sharpest, purest light in the universe on his face, that he let himself travel to the corners of thought and allowed himself to give shape to the heresy he had been holding back for days. He knew that he was strong, that he was fast, that he was the best. Body and mind. Inside and out. It was that he was convinced that one hundred metres was too short for him. He was strength, he was power; he laid a palm across his chest, where the muscles could unfurl at will, where they twitched, hungry and alive. The Coach had not let him swim that extra one hundred metres, because he thought that it would sap his energy, deplete him for his other race. Concentrate on the butterfly, that is your stroke. But he knew now that with that extra one hundred metres, he would have found the pace, he would have found the power. He could fly as high as he wanted to, he could touch the sun. He knew it. He looked out at the infinite cloud. Frank Torma had never coached an Olympian. That was why he couldn't give it back, that was why he had let Ben Whitter get away with it. Coach did not know what Danny was capable of.