Halley said, very clearly, “He’s sleeping.”
That’s real, my conscious voice yelled to me. Wake up. That’s real.
“What’s he got planned?” Stick said.
You’re in trouble. Get up. I pushed against the heavy chlorinated water of the dream, dragging me down to cool sleep. I jerked to the surface. Panting, I broke the skin of consciousness, blinking at the shadow staring down at me. “What?” I cried, terrified.
The head answered, “Sorry to wake you, Rafe. I just checked in.”
The dream was over. That was Stick’s head. Halley, wrapped in a large brown towel, was in a chair. Next to her, on a small table, was a glass of iced tea. She had a paperback mystery in her hand. “You slept for three hours,” she said.
Stick moved out of the sun. “I’ll change into my trunks,” he said. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions. Sorry I woke you.”
I nodded. I watched him wander toward Green Mountain’s stone building. My mouth was dry, the throbbing in my head gone, although at my temples there were remnants of pain.
Halley said, “You want some coffee?” I nodded. She waved to a man at a small refreshment stand that had been closed when we arrived. There were four people at the pool, one in the water, two talking, another reading the Times. The attendant started toward us. Halley called, “A pot of coffee,” and he wheeled back to his bar.
“Thanks,” I said and rubbed my face.
“Why didn’t you tell me you don’t know how to swim?” Halley asked.
That was it. That was the surface message of the dream. The bathing suit and my mother’s warning. I had told Stick an idiotic lie that I couldn’t swim and I almost gave it away unintentionally. I was too groggy to think it through. Should I reveal I had lied? Would that be fruitful? And did I hear right? Was he changing to swim? That wasn’t good. I didn’t care for him to resume his daily ritual of triumph over his father on the eve of the encounter session.
“Can’t you admit it when you don’t know how to do something?” Halley fanned herself with the paperback. She had put on dark sunglasses. It hurt my sleepy eyes to look at her. She glowed in a rectangle of the late afternoon sun while I was in a shadow thrown by a wing of the stone hotel. In fact, I felt chilled because the air was dry and cool, hinting at the coming autumn.
I wanted to say (I should say, my id wanted me to say) — I know how to swim, you stupid bitch. I can do everything better than your asshole father. A slice of me was rotting — infected by them. That was why I had summoned an image of myself as my mother in the dream. The dream was a warning that my ego was disintegrating in the countertransference; I was, to put it in laymen’s terms, losing my objectivity. My reaction to Halley’s taunt was that of a lover: emotionally invested in the competition with her father, rather than merely using it for the therapy.
Halley put her book on the glass table and picked up the iced tea. “I can teach you how to swim,” she said. She sipped.
“Who taught you?” I asked in a croaky voice. The pool attendant was coming with a tray. Thank goodness. I needed coffee. “I learned at summer camp,” she said. “You’re lucky Stick didn’t teach you,” I said and laughed. “Why?” she asked. The coffee was there so I ignored her. I drank two cups in a row. She watched me through the black lenses. Black eyes through black glass, I thought, and decided it was time to begin, time to push for a breakthrough before I had nothing left for leverage. “Really,” she said, at last, her voice soft and loving. “I’d really like to teach you. At least let me give you that. We could do it right here. The pool doesn’t get any deeper than four feet.”
I cleared my throat. Behind her, in the distance, I saw Stick appear from the stone building, a towel draped over one shoulder, wearing a navy blue bathing suit the length of bermuda shorts, his feet in hippie leather sandals. “I told Edgar the other day …” I cleared my throat again. “Excuse me. I told Edgar that if Centaur is a success it’s to your credit on the marketing side and Andy Chen’s on the creative. I also told him you’re more qualified to run Minotaur than Stick. He was intrigued. So maybe it isn’t such a bad idea for you to socialize with him.”
Halley was in the middle of raising her glass to lips. She missed a little when I said she was more qualified than her father to run Minotaur. She tried to center the glass as she tipped it to her mouth. That didn’t work. Some tea dribbled down a corner and off her chin. She caught that with her hand, leaned forward with a jerk, and more tea sloshed out onto her towel. “You’re kidding,” she started.
I nodded toward Stick. “He’s coming. And I’m not kidding. You could easily become Edgar’s mistress. You’d dazzle him — with your cleverness, your energy, and yes, with your body and expert lovemaking — he’d give you anything you want. I told you, Halley. I love you. I’m going to make sure you don’t sell yourself short.”
“Hey, Rafe,” Stick called as he reached the border of the pool’s tiles. “How are the courts here?”
“Hard surface. Pretty fast, I think.”
He reached us. Halley was still, her black eyeglasses fixed on me. He draped a towel on the chair next to his daughter. “Maybe we’ll hit before dinner.”
I rubbed the underside of my right thigh. Earlier in the week I had strained the hamstring going for a volley. “You know this still feels tender. Maybe I’d better rest it.”
“You should do some laps,” he said. “That’ll help it recuperate.” Now he had surprised Halley. She jerked her head at him. “But, Daddy, you said …” she started and then stopped. He ignored her. So did I.
“I can’t swim, Stick, remember?” Since I was going on the attack, I decided to maintain the lie. Restoring a feeling of superiority might relax his vigilance.
“Oh, that’s right,” he said, pretending to recall. “But you’re so coordinated, such a good athlete. Come in. I’ll teach you the crawl. I’m sure you’ll get it in a few minutes.”
“No thanks. I think I’ll go up to the room. We’ll play tennis on Sunday.” I stood up.
“Really, Rafe,” Stick stepped in front of me. His hands were on his hips. He breathed in sharply, inflating his impressive pecs. “A grown man should know how to swim.”
“But Stick,” I put a hand on his bare shoulder. He tried not to show tension at my touch. I scanned down, openly studying his puffed-up chest. I said quietly, “God, you’re in great shape.” I hurried on, raising my eyes to his, and squeezed his shoulder, “I thought you understood — I’m not a grown man. I’m just a very self-confident ten-year-old.”
I left them together. Whether or not Halley told him my lie that I had recommended her to Edgar as a future manager of Minotaur, the crisis would come soon. Either she would completely accept me as her new father figure — to the extent of choosing her next lover and marking Stick as someone we were going to get out of the way — or she would inform Stick that I was really the deadly foe he feared and he would be forced to act.
I didn’t go to my room. I took the elevator to the second floor and stood by a hallway window with a view of the pool. When I reached my observation post, Stick still hadn’t gone into the water. He stood beside a seated Halley, not looking at her. She peered across him toward the refreshment stand. But they were talking. That is, Stick was doing most of the talking. Halley occasionally answered briefly.
“Don’t tell him,” I whispered, and it’s still an open question for me whether this was the doctor or Rafe talking. “Make the leap, my beautiful little girl. It’s time to leave home.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN