Danny had been right about Wilco. He should never have trusted him. Wilco was a golden boy, he didn’t believe Danny belonged there. He was outraged to hear a light snore coming from the next bed. He’d got there — Wilco had got under his skin. Danny’s body was rigid, his breathing was out, he had to chase air, otherwise he thought he might choke. The bile was bitter and chemical on his tongue. He had to sleep. He had to sleep.
He began again at his feet, tensed and relaxed them to rest, then his calves, cajoling the muscles there to yield. From his calves to his thighs, and then he traced a line up the centre of his body, to his buttocks, made a command in the form of a prayer: Let me sleep. Let me sleep. You’re one lucky bastard. Those words ricocheted through him, his body clenched; he had to begin again. He concentrated on his toes, his feet, his calves. Everything falls into your lap. How could that be true? He wasn’t a golden boy, he’d never had what they had. It was envy, a poison, that had made Wilco say those words, it was the poison of jealousy. Why couldn’t it have been Taylor with him? He would never have said any of that, he knew what Danny was. He began again at his feet.
Danny’s eyes flicked open. The moonlight sliced the room in two. He’d been fighting against acknowledging it, but the force of his hard-on beneath the sheets strained the cotton of his jocks, made concentration impossible, sleep unattainable. He tried again.
He began at his feet. You’re one lucky bastard. He moved to his calves, his thighs. The head of his penis had come out of his underpants and rubbed against the sheet. Danny had to force himself to ignore it, not to move; he had to call back sleep, to catch it and ensnare it. He could do it, he had control over his body. He tried again.
He began at his feet. But almost immediately there was another rush of words around his head, a burst of blood to his ears. You’re the luckiest bastard we know.
Danny breathed in and tried again.
He began again at his feet, rushing through the meditation this time, moving quickly from calves to thighs to buttocks to stomach to lungs, calling for sleep. He was at his hands, his forearms, and it was beginning — his arms felt like lead, still against the cool cotton sheets. I hope you don’t ever forget how fortunate you are, mate. The blood surged, his ears burned and his head pounded. He breathed out. He’d have to start again.
His spine was stretched, he had to move. He shifted in the bed. And as he did, as he twisted, the sheets crawled up his body and the cotton rubbed at his crotch, caressed the shaft of his penis, the glans. Danny’s body shuddered as the wave of pleasure rushed, as the semen squirted. But immediately he felt overwhelming panic, shame, as the sticky warm fluid seeped over his thigh and belly and onto the white sheets.
He was wilted, spent. He forced himself to breathe slowly. And this time he didn’t call on sleep, he called on rage. He spat it out, a loud coarse whisper, and he didn’t care if Wilco heard. Let him hear, let him wake; he hoped that at the very least the words terrorised the older boy’s dreams, that they were carried by the wave of his fury all the way back home: It is not luck, it has never been luck, it is because I am the best and I am going to get gold and what you can’t stand is that I am better than you.
Why couldn’t it be Taylor with him? He was nauseated: his body had betrayed him. The sensation was strange, terrifying; he had never experienced it before, his body and himself not being one.
Danny realised that the world was rushing in again, that he was listening to the mechanical vibrations of the cooling system, he could hear the boy’s snores from the next bed. His body had betrayed him but Danny was spent. It had worked. He went to sleep.
He sits on a plastic chair in front of the third-lane block, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his arms dangling behind the orange chair back. Danny knows he is in the Fukuoka Swimming Centre, he knows there are five other swimmers, he knows that a small crowd is sitting in the decks. They are all waiting for the race to begin. There are Australian flags, Japanese flags, US and Canadian flags fluttering above him, red and blue and white festoons garlanded all around him. He knows all this but he sees none of it. Danny is looking straight ahead, down the barrel of lane number three, fifty metres of clean water, a mirror of blue, a highway of black line ahead of him. He sees the water, he sees the lane, he sees the race. He sees himself dive, he sees himself swim, he sees himself win. That is all he needs to see.
And it is his, he knows it, as soon as the starting pistol cracks, as soon as he dives from the block, as his body enters and dolphins and is accepted by the water. As he breaks the surface of the water, his chest, his arms, his legs, his feet, his whole body is an indomitable threshing machine, but even so, in the foam arms of the water, he is cocooned by a tender calm. He doesn’t have to think. His mind and his body and the water are one. All his work, all his effort, all his talent, they are being vindicated. He has won. The water is the future and he has always belonged to it.
It is at the final turn that the water betrays him. His execution is perfect, he feels what it is to be divine. But as he momentarily glimpses the world reflected in the underside of the water’s surface he finds that one of the other swimmers has completed the turn before him. That other swimmer is already racing towards the end. Which can’t be, for that end is his.
And then it is like vertigo when the water drops away and it is only a flicker of time, a second within a second within a second, but Danny is scrambling, struggling in the water. He and the water are no longer one. He can’t understand why his arms are arcing so slowly, as if they have lead weights on them, or why his legs kick so sluggishly, why his chest is tight with every breath out of the water, why the end of the lane seems an impossible horizon. The race isn’t finished but the exhaustion is a flood. He is depleted. He roars his denial into the water itself and it is then that the water answers. Danny kicks, finds confidence again, reasserts the power and drive of his body. He must not think, he can only trust in his body and in the water. It is his race. He pushes forward, he charges, he punches and he owns the water once again; the water has parted to create space for him. He is not thinking of the other swimmers. His body has not failed him, and his mind has not failed him. Of course he will win. Of course he must win. There is no hesitation, no doubt, as his body hurtles through the water, his muscles pumping to his command, his will driving him to swim faster than he has ever swum before, to chase the other swimmer. But the water knows what his body knows. This is his race. His body, the water, they will not betray him. He lunges towards the finish, his hand smacks the tile. He cocks his head out of the water and the sound and the lights and the colours of the outside world explode all around him.
Of course he has won. He has given it all that he has. He has no more to give.
In the two hundred metre men’s butterfly at the Pan Pacific Games in Fukuoka, Japan, an Australian golden boy comes first, an American second and a Japanese swimmer third. Danny Kelly comes fifth.