There was a catch in his voice sometimes. A small hesitation, like he was holding back on a secret he couldn’t tell them yet. This was his job, work he got paid to do, and there were moments, she could see them, moments when he really had to try hard to keep his true feelings down. How many times in a week did he end up like this? How much waiting and coaxing and lying were required to get through an average Tuesday night? The worn out pick-up lines of the swimming teacher: how many times did he have to burn through them?
“You need to trust and let go. I’m right here. Come on.”
Sometimes while he waited he would fire a narrow squirt-gun stream of water through the small gap in his front teeth.
By the fifth week, the other ladies had had enough.
“Don’t be such a suck,” the woman beside her said. She waved her hand out to the middle.
“No need to make a big show. Just go for Godsakes.”
“I can’t,” Stace said. “I’m not ready. Still have to sort some things out. I’m working on it.”
She hated even trying to talk about it. What words could you use? How would you describe this feeling? She tried to smile.
“We’ll see. Maybe next week. We’ll see. But you guys are doing great. I learn a lot by watching.”
The woman laughed in her face.
“You’re working on it?” she said. The maternal scolding in her voice was impossible to cover up.
“Learning. Maybe next week. Can you hear yourself talking? Look around. Look at yourself. What in the world do you have to worry about? You’ll make it. Just go. Go.”
Brad took his cue.
“She’s right,” he said. “Take your turn. Can’t keep dodging. I’m right here.”
FOR A MOMENT, she could imagine it: letting go and pushing away, flying toward Brad. She wanted to be chosen and she believed there must be something like a transparent hand that lived inside of water. It made permanent selections and cradled some people, holding them always at the top, but it dragged other people down to the bottom and there was no way to protest.
“What you need to do is get over yourself,” the lady said.
“I’m getting sick of you sitting there watching the rest of us drown.”
She sneered and reached over to grab Stace’s right hand. She pried the girl’s fingers off the gutter and flung her whole arm out into the water.
“Go on,” she said.
Stace watched her hand splash down hard in front of her face. Brad took it, gave a sharp tug and pulled her away completely.
“Come,” he said. “This is it.”
A hot pulse of anger passed through her.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait.”
But it couldn’t be stopped. The hand triggered a chain reaction — the slowest Blast Off in history — and she felt the spring uncoiling, her arms, legs, torso and neck letting go. Brad backed away immediately and moved way out to the centre.
A single perfectly clear breath entered her body and for about five seconds everything was exactly as it should be. She went horizontal, parallel to the ceiling and floor, her weight spread out across the surface tension of the water. She even propelled herself forward, kicking. Her hands scooped through a dog-paddle and she inched towards Brad and his retreating hand.
“Good, good, good,” he said. “Out to me. Come on. You’ve got it now.”
He smiled. He smiled for her, but kept backing away.
“Look at you,” the lady called out, genuinely happy.
“I told you so. You’re doing it. You’re doing it right now.”
When Brad comes to her in the river, when he crosses over and reaches out, it will feel like swimming with no clothes, like skinny-dipping. His body — cold and slippery and hard — will press tight against hers and the water, moving all around and below, will push them wherever it wants. He will get it, understand immediately, and feel what she feels right now: stupid and spared. The same tingling, an electric charge of appreciation for what might have been lost will zip through his system. When they touch for the first time down here, deep where no one else can see, she will initiate the contact and make her intentions clear. Her already wet tongue, still salty with the diluting hint of blood, will go into his mouth and slide around and she will reach down between his legs without hesitating. He will know what to do. When they climb out, the required excuses will be made and they will leave the others behind. Maybe it will happen at his apartment, on a futon mattress on the floor, or maybe in a tent, maybe on the beach with the waves lapping at their toes, any dark place he wants, a car, it doesn’t matter, but it will happen tonight, as soon as possible.
She holds the rope and waits. The current sways her like a kid on a tire swing and she can imagine the time unfolding. In a couple of seconds, his head will break through the surface and he will pop up like a curious seal. At first, he will wear one of those urgent, serious and worried expressions. His mind will be crowded with procedures: the right roll-over for a floating spinal injury, what to do if he finds her unconscious and face-down.
But when she waves and calls out, when he hears her voice, sees her on the swing, it will change. The charge will flow and his worry will fade. He’ll smile and anticipate and his arms will churn. He will crawl through the water, cutting the fastest, straightest line directly to her body.
She waits some more, a little longer, the smile still stretched on her face, but he doesn’t come up. It seems darker than before and against the shifting backdrop of the water, it is hard to mark any clear distinctions or to see very far. An echo from the past, the sloshing of broken wave, whispers in her ear. Her shoulders tighten. Time builds on itself. She pulls herself up a little higher, concentrates, and tries to pick out the exact spot where he entered the river. She can retrace his path through the sky and she knows he came through bullet smooth. He went in deep, the way you practice it on the high dive, and left no splash, no ripples or wake to follow back to the centre of his entry. The wind gusts and she feels the first real chill pass though her body. Her hands are chaffing and with her adrenaline waning, she feels the first true ache begin to emerge from her body. An early redness spreads across her skin, the start of what will be the deep black and purple of an all-over bruise. It has been too long. Already way too long.
Where?
She tries to suppress the question. To think it through calmly. But there are limited possibilities. He is either coming towards her right now or he is not coming at all. Either he is swimming under the surface, playing submarine, already close by and ready to reach out and pinch her and laugh; or he is in bad shape somewhere else, quiet, and carried in the current of a dark river.
There is only one other option. He is not moving at all, not at the surface, not in the current. Limbs wedged between the bars of an underwater cage. Something soft passing through something hard. A picture from TV comes into her mind: One of those deep-sea camera crews, scuba divers with long poles standing in a metal box. They pour a mix of blood and fish guts and stir the chum, baiting the Great Whites to come closer.
She puts her face in the water and opens her eyes, but there is nothing to see. On the other side, she cranes her neck upward and tries to look over the edge of the roof. Nobody is left. Probably on the fire escape working their way to the ground, she thinks. Probably on their way. But that will take at least two minutes. Two more minutes.
She calls anyway, yelling the question up against the face of the building, the hotel windows, the Odeon sign.
“Do you see him?” she asks.
On the night she learned to swim, Stace had to go down before she could come back up. After the Blast Off, she moved toward Brad, but he kept pulling back until he was almost all the way over to the other side and she knew she would never reach him. There was progress at first. She stayed at the surface for what felt like a long time. But then her patience ran out and her concentration lurched. Her eyes wandered from the pruned fingers of his hand and went up to the ceiling, to the network of criss-crossing catwalks and lights and girders above her head. Her chin followed and tilted, and her shoulders dropped and her hips and legs and feet lowered a bit, and then a little bit more, until she was straight up and down, vertical and wrong, standing at attention in deep water. When the grip came back it reached out of the blackest part of her memory and closed around her ankle. It felt like a set of slender fingers, or a vine or some coiling tentacle, extending up from the bottom of a swamp. It pulled her down patiently, insistently, as if there were no need to rush. Her second breath came in a garbled mix of half-water, half-air and every muscle in her body contracted. She felt like she was rusting all the way through and she went down so fast that Brad could not get back in time to make his grab. She sank to the bottom like an object with no life in it, like a bronze sculpture of a swimmer, heaved overboard.