thighs. I had a crush on the lifeguard, a high school girl with brown hair and a tattoo of a dolphin above her anklebone. Abby. Once, during the worst of my crush, I saw her at United Artists in the popcorn line with her friends, and she smiled at me, but like an idiot I rushed into the bathroom and stood in front of the sink until I knew she’d be gone.
This pool was simpler. It was indoors, on the eighth floor, and, the first time I went, it was totally empty except for one old man swimming laps and wheezing in the far lane. A matchstick of an old man who I’d seen before in the elevator, always headed out for a run. A sign said, SWIMMERS ARE UNSUPERVISED AND RESPONSIBLE FOR OWN SAFETY. Four big windows looked out from one wall way above Fifty-third Street. Lucy swam first thing every morning, before she went up to her studio. I thought about her peeling off her bathing suit and running hot water over her boobs, and to stop myself I dove in. It wasn’t much of a dive, but it wasn’t a belly flop either, it was more like a tumble. The water felt cold for a second, and I let myself sink down so my feet tapped the tile, and, blowing bubbles, I rose back up and gave a big “Aaaaaaahhh,” because aside from the skinny old man there was no one there to hear me.
I started to swim, and the water felt chunky. Which sounds gross, but no, it was wonderful, it was chunky the way Jell-O’s chunky if you take it out of the fridge too soon, like every time I swept my arms big, solid pieces of water were being pushed back and I was shooting through empty space. I love looking at my body underwater. Every little arm hair waving and the three freckles in a line along my left wrist, my hands looking so huge and weird, every nick and dry-skin flake like it’s under a magnifying glass. What an amazing thing to be, a pink ape underwater! I love thinking in the water. For some reason it feels like I shouldn’t be able to do it, but I’ll putter along the bottom, my belly just barely clearing the tiles, and over and over I’ll think: I’m thinking! I’m thinking! Here I am thinking!
It only took two laps for me to start to get tired, and to start to wonder if ten minutes a day might be a better plan than twenty. I decided I’d rest for a little, then swim a couple more laps and see how I was feeling. I was holding on to the edge when a tall girl about my age walked in holding the hand of a skinny black-haired boy, six or seven years old. OK, I was peeing. The girl had thick brown hair, and it wasn’t that she was fat (but she wasn’t skinny), it was just that she was big, much taller than me, maybe heavier. If a lumberjack had a beautiful daughter, I thought, this could be her. She wore a blue T-shirt over her bathing suit and no shorts.
In case the water turned cloudy I had to start swimming again. Breaststroke is easiest for me, so that’s what I did. I can usually go the whole length of the pool with only three breaths, but after a few strokes the top of my chest was starting to burn.
I was resting again on the edge, pretending not to look at them. She was sitting on a pool chair reading a book while the boy jumped in and climbed out and jumped in and climbed out again and again and again. She had her left leg crossed over her right, and she looked like she was waiting for someone to fit a slipper onto her little curved foot. Her hair looked like it would weigh five pounds by itself. When she talked I thought she was going to tell me to stop looking at her, but instead she said, “Would it be all right if you watched him for a minute?” There was some little something in her accent—I thought she might be from Minnesota.
“No! No, I can watch him for a year if you want!”
She laughed loud and bright and went into the locker room, and I climbed out and went and sat in her chair. I started to open her book—it was purple with a crumbling cover—but my fingers left dark spots, so I turned it over and left it alone. The old man climbed out, shook off like a dog, and left. The kid didn’t seem to have noticed that I was watching him now. “That’s not bad jumping,” I said.
“I’m the best in my group. My dad says I’m the best jumper he might have ever seen for my age.”
He’d stand on the edge, gather himself for a few seconds, then jump in and move his arms and legs like he was being electrocuted before he hit the water. “Do you want me to show you the knee bounce?” he said. On the edge of the pool he got down on his knees and he hopped in and seemed to smack his chest, because when he came up he had a red splotch. “Do you want me to show you the flying kick?” For this one he jumped and stuck one leg out and gave a karate yell. “Do you want me to show you the double twister?” He bent his knees, jumped the highest I’d seen him, spun around, and on the way down smashed his face so hard on the edge of the pool that I screamed.
There was blood in the water. An instant, terrifying cloud. He came up and it looked like his whole mouth was full of blood, and he was howling. I reached over and pulled him up by his skinny arms, and I didn’t know what to do, so I took off my towel and sat him on the chair and tried to wipe off his mouth. “Noooooooooo!” That made sense, not to touch his mouth, and now blood was all over his chin too and dripping on his bathing suit. This was very, very bad. “I’m going to go get someone,” I said, but before I could get up the girl came back, and that made him start howling louder.
“What happened?” she said. “Oh, shit, what happened? What happened what happened what happened? Are you OK? Fuck. Are you OK? Is he OK?”
I told her about the jump and the spin and the side of the pool, and she went over and looked in at the bloody water, and she just kept saying, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Can you walk?” she said, but he just kept crying, rising and falling like a siren, so she scooped under his legs and under his neck like he was a baby, a baby with wet black hair and dark blood still pouring out of his mouth, and she carried him out fast through the girls’ locker room, flip-flops clacking.
I was the only person in the entire pool area now. If part of the pool weren’t still dark, and if there weren’t a trail of bright drops leading to the locker room, it might never have happened.
The strangest part of terrible things is how fast they’re over. For the first minute or two afterward, like when Tucker, my old golden retriever, got hit by a car, I always think about how simple it would be—we could just go back a few seconds, a time close enough to touch, and it would never have happened. My mind would rush to the thought—a happy, grasping feeling—then bump against common sense, then rush to it again, then bump.
I didn’t know what to do, so I went over and looked down into the bloody part of the pool. There was a pink cloud now and a few darker drops floating up on top. For some reason I leaned down and with both hands scooped up some of the water and just looked at these drops of blood, a pair of dark little fish. My heart was pounding like someone was chasing me.
* * *
Sameer didn’t know about a little boy and a tall girl, so I came back again after the shift change and asked Richie. Richie was the oldest doorman, and he took the job more seriously than anyone else. If you walked in with a suitcase, he practically tackled you to get it out of your hands. Whenever he saw me he gave a hard, short nod and said, “Sir.”
“Do you know if there’s a little black-haired boy who lives in the building with a tall girl with brown hair?”
He nodded, not taking his hands from behind his back. “You’re looking for Matthew Marsen in twelve-F, I believe. And the young lady—whose name, unfortunately, slips my mind—is the Marsens’ goddaughter. Just here for the summer.”
That night David and Lucy were out to dinner with friends, and when they came home David was a little drunk. He laughs a lot when he’s drunk, and his cheeks get splotchy. He sat down with me on the couch, smelling like alcohol and cologne.
“How are you, buddy?”
I
